The Father

"Well, you may be my brother-in-law, but it's had none on me, as you know."

The Captain and the pastor discuss the existence of God. The Captain sees himself as a man of science and his brother-in-law as a man of God. This scene establishes one of several dichotomies that exist in The Father: the divisions between science as and religion. The Captain sees the world in stark contrasts, unable to find nuance.  

"I don't suppose the boy's that innocent, one just can't know, but one thing's for sure: the girl's guilty." 

The Captain hints at his latent misogyny when trying to determine whether Nojd is responsible for Emma's pregnancy. Without evidence, the Captain insists that "the girl's guilty" (43): Nojd get the benefit of the doubt, but Emma is wrong by default. The Captain never states what exactly Emma has done to make her guilty. Instead, for him, Emma—and all women—exists in a state of perpetual guilt simply because she is a woman. 

"And when she'd got it, she'd hand it back, saying it wasn't the thing itself she wanted, just the fact of getting her own way." 

Laura is strong-willed. Like her husband, she relishes an argument. The subjects of these arguments are often irrelevant, and the result rarely matters. Instead, the ability to triumph over someone else is all that matters. From the Captain's perspective, this is a negative quality in Laura, and all women, even though the Captain is guilty of the same behavior.