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The Woman

Character Analysis

The Woman – The Boy's mother and The Man's wife – doesn't appear for long in the novel. Occasionally, The Man thinks of her fondly or The Boy will recall her, but she remains more of an absence than anything else. She is an counter-example to the man: someone who can't adjust to the brutal new world and chose to give up (she commits suicide).

A lot of critics give McCarthy a hard time for his depiction of The Woman. They say she's the weak point of the novel: cold and one-dimensional. What's your take?