How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
It would take twenty or thirty men at least, strung out at intervals and walking straight through the forest, and even then they could miss him, dead or alive, accident or suicide or murder. (5.50)
The narrator is mulling the condition in which she and the other searchers are likely to find her father. She's not super-optimistic that he's alive.
Quote #2
I thought, I suppose I knew it from the beginning, I shouldn't have tried to find out, it's killed him. I had the proof now, indisputable, of sanity and therefore of death. Relief, grief, I must have felt one or the other. A blank, a disappointment: crazy people can come back, from wherever they go to take refuge, but dead people can't, they are prohibited. (12.26)
Upon finding some weird drawings her father did of animal-human hybrid creatures, the narrator briefly thinks that he has gone mad—and so, he might still be alive. In this moment, she's realizing that her father was tracing local cave paintings. As a result, she has gone back to assuming he is dead.
Quote #3
"Sometimes I think he'd like me to die," Anna said, "I have dreams about it." (14.53)
Although it's not immediately apparent, David and Anna's dynamic takes on a distinctly nasty tone when we learn how much glee he takes in controlling Anna's looks and behavior (e.g., by making her feel like she has to wear makeup to avoid issues with him). Apparently, things are so bad that Anna even thinks he'd like her to die. The comment comes out of nowhere, but that doesn't make it any less sinister—on the contrary, it's more so.