their son’s death. It is possible to disapprove of all of their actions or to approve of some while rejecting the validity of others.

One step that the men took which does seem entirely justified is to pursue the Boy. When they learned that he had gone “hunting” with just a revolver, rather than a rifle, and had also taken a notebook, they immediately suspect that his intention is suicide rather than hunting. Their action in setting out to find him seems admirable; they travel for three hours to accomplish this purpose. Sadly, they arrive too late to intervene. The Boy has already taken his own life.

The subsequent actions may be more difficult to justify, but it is clear they are acting out of consideration for the family. The Major makes it clear why he did what he did, as he himself had despaired when he was young.

He … himself had once gone into the same Valley of the Shadow as the Boy, when he was young and new to the country; so he understood how things fought together in The Boy’s poor jumbled head.

There are several outright lies they tell. One is to falsify the cause of death, saying that the Boy died of a disease, cholera, rather than a self-inflicted gunshot. Spreading false information that cholera was evident in the area is difficult to justify, as it is a contagious disease and these lies could have led to a public health scare. However, their idea was to create a reason for destroying evidence and burying the body immediately. The “joke” of using his own hair rather than the Boy’s for a lock to send the mother seems an act of kindness, even though it is an outright lie.