On page 231, the father has just swum back ashore from the boat and tells the boy that they are going to eat well tonight, but that they need to get back to their camp because it is going to rain. The boy and father start waling back to camp when the father panic-ally asks where the pistol is. The boy freezes and begins to sob after realizing his mistake, and informs the father that he left it on the beach as he holds back his tears and constantly apologizes. Although the father tries to hurry, the darkness overcomes them and the two are thrown into an eerie dilemma absolute darkness. Walking like the blind the father and boy try to retrace their steps by trying to make use of brief flashes of lightning off in the distance. It begins down pouring and the father realizes they are in trouble. A breakthrough occurs, however, as the father hears the minuscule sound of rain drops hitting their tarp. The father and boy quickly manage to get under the shelter and fall asleep for the night.
In the morning most of their time was spent unloading the ship and the father made trips to gain supplies and the boy helped pull items ashore with a makeshift tow rope. Later they slept and the father awoke with a terrible cough and he says, " Every day is a lie, but you are dying. That is not a lie." The next morning the father decided to go back to the ship to make sure he had everything. Trying to find a specific object the father enters the captains area of the ship. He sits and ponders on where an item might be until he realizes that he is staring at notches of a hatch and instantly begins to open them. In the container the man finds the item he is looking for, a flare gun. He brings it back to the boy and the boy asks if they can shoot it later and the father replies of course. Later in the night they shoot the flare gun off and watch it go out in the distance, and they boy asks if God could see it.
The next morning the boy and father set out to walk up and down the beach again to search for supplies. To the father's horror, he discovers foot tracks in the beach. The father tells the boy to hurry as they run back to camp to find everything they had owned to be gone. Instantly the father follows the tracks and it leads him back to the road unto which the boy finds sand marking the way the thief went. The boy and father then proceed in jogging until they spot the thief. The man with their cart stands behind it with a butcher's knife, but the father pulls out the pistol and tells him to put it in the cart. Then the father rids the man of his clothing and shoes and leaves him to die just as he would have done to them. This whole time the boy is crying profusely on the ground and pleading the father to stop. The father, however, continues and they leave the man naked with nothing in the road to die. Eventually the boy convinces the father to go back to help the thief, but he was gone. The father tries to comfort to boy by telling him that he wasn't going to kill him, but the boy replies " But we did kill him."
I felt that this section of the book was very heart aching. First with the boy forgetting the gun and then with the thief on the road. Even though the boy was irresponsible in leaving the gun on the beach, the father continues to tell him that it was his fault, and I thought that the man was acting very understanding towards his son. The most shocking part to me in this section was the showdown with the thief though. A new stern side of the father is brought out in this section in which he makes the thief give up all of his belongings because that's what he was going to do to the father and son. It's sort of a Hammurabi law code approach ( An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth) that the father decides to take and it makes him appear almost cruel towards this thief. The boy who is always acting selflessly amazes me that even though this man was going to let them starve and die, the boy believes they should help him out. It's hard to imagine so much goodness in a time so dark.
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