The Woman: 

Pg 17: The man doesn't want to remember the past because he is aware of the need of accepting the present, "Now call down your cold and be damned." could be the thoughts of his wife. There was a time of fondness and warmth in his relationship but he realises that that time is spent, now he must return to the cold dark and wake from his dream. The man realises the danger of dreams and optimism throughout the novel, "from daydreams on the road there is no escaping"  this can be read as meaning that once you start dreaming on the road you are in a sense trapped in a false reality, there is no place for hope in the new world.
McCarthy's use of colour in this section provides a counterpoint to the grey landscape of the road, he also highlights the temptation of dreams on the road through the colour and warmth the analepsis creates. The temptation of dreams is in parallel with the woman's ability to tempt the man within the flashback.

Pg 54: This scene provides information that the child was born after the end of the world, this could possibly dispel myths throughout the novel that the boy is in a sense the second coming of christ, why would christ come to earth after the end of the world? In this section the woman doesn't possess the same survival instinct as the man and questions the man pouring a bath. In this scene unlike the last it is the woman seeking comfort from the man, not the other way around. This illustrates the difference between the survivors and the people of the old world. 

Pg 56-57: The man doesn't want the boy to linger on past memories either, "I wish I was with my mom." Despite the fact she is often critically described in the man's memories this shows that she was still a loving figure for the boy and her the boy's need for his mother shows that there may have been a tenderness in the boy's life despite the fact he was born after the apocalypse. A key reason the man doesn't want the boy to grasp at the memories of his mother is because the man doesn't want the boy to commit suicide.

Pg 57-59: The woman wanted to distance herself from the man to make her subsequent death less painful for him. She also feels guilt for bringing a child into a dead world, this is the guilt that has caused her suicidal thoughts, she also feels guilt for the fact that the boy and the man aren't enough incentive for her to choose life. The woman however would not describe it as a choice between life and death but as a choice between death and life in death. McCarthy also uses the woman to create an allusion to Dawn of the Dead, "we're the walking dead in a horror film." This creates a postmodern element to the style of the novel. The woman describes death as a "lover" which indicates the temptation of death as a form of relief in this new world, The Road is set in a world in which dreams and death are both as tempting and potentially noxious as the man's wife.

Pg 60: "She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift." The coldness is proleptic of the coldness to come, after all this is a novel which is "cold and getting colder". This scene proves to be disturbing in its juxtaposition of new life with death. Almost as if the seasons themselves have merged to one cold month of despair.  The child's seemingly emotionless response of "she's gone isn't she?" both shows the lacking humanity in the child and also that the woman succeeded in making her death as painless as possible. The loss of a mother figure in the novel is highly symbolic, the world is now in a sense without a mother. With nothing to nurture or educate humanity undergoes a moral descent and nature dies.