Statements representing the play through my eyes. 

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3	The man and woman represent the different ways in which humanity might react to such a situation.
4	This is a novel about minute by minute survival. Showing the man resisting the temptation of his memories brings this home to the reader.
5	The woman has a powerful and ambiguous symbolic function in the novel: she represents both the giving of life and the temptation of death.
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8	For the man, the woman’s absence is a constant reminder of the alternative to struggling to survive.