Section 21 pages 253-270 q 5

The incident with the thief presents a major conflict in The Road. At first it is a conflict between the protagonists and the thief, but it soon brings back the primary conflict between the protagonists. The thief's actions lead the man to punish the thief in a manner that the boy finds not only inappropriate but deathly wrong. Even though the man later agrees to return to help the thief, the thief has disappeared, and the boy says, " we did kill him" (219)