17: The Man thinks of her in a nostalgic and caring way, thoughtfully throughout the extract until becoming resentful at the point when he says "be damned" - he attempts to separate himself from his feelings of the past.
54: She appears to just 'be there' in his memory, in the background rather than playing a part in the scene. When being described as "cradling her belly" she is pictured as soft and gentle - the Man has fond thoughts of the woman and their son together.
56: The man is perhaps longing for his wife, or rather his past. When the Boy says he was with his mum, the Man simply connects her to death and nothing more. Instead of being a person in their past, the Woman is simply another deceased. A representation of death.
57: It is clear in this passage that, at the time, the Man pleads with the Woman to keep her hope and to stay with him and the Boy. In retrospect, the man looks upon this memory with a bitter sense of abandonment. The Woman attempts to distance herself from the Man to make her depart easier - which could be characterised as strength; she chose to do the most humane thing at the expense of her husband's last thoughts of her. In other respects, it could be a gesture of her weakness for being unwilling to support her partner and child in an attempt to survive.
60: The man appears grateful for the detachment he felt between himself and his wife when she dies. The boy simply asks if "she's gone" and the man replies with "yes". No remorse or grief can be detected - but rather a solemness which matches the melancholic tone of the book. Nothing is either happy or sad, but stuck between emotions - supplying an emptiness which the Man felt at the loss of his wife. When the Man reminisces the birth of the Boy, he doesn't speak of his wife as a woman he loves, but rather a vessel that births his child. He only talks of her when saying that her cries of pain "meant nothing to him"; focusing only on his son.
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