56 pages • 1 hour read
Sebastian BarryOld God's Time
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 14-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary
The next day, Tom is glad he connected to the cellist and his music. He thinks that the truth as he remembers it seems impossible. He and June stealthily followed Matthews and Byrne to a parking lot in the mountains. The priests set off up a path, with Matthews ahead. June took out their kitchen bread knife. She crawled into Tom’s coat and laid on his back, becoming a rat-like creature. Tom ran up another path through the woods to get ahead of the priests. He and June emerged at the peak, with Ireland spread out below in the sunlight. Matthews appeared below them. June ran to him, shouting something and stabbing him multiple times before he tumbled down into the ravine. Then, Tom and June ran back into the woods.
In the present, Tom smokes a cigarillo and enjoys the late-May sunshine. He watches the wild water of the sea. He thinks that murder means life imprisonment. He thinks about the terrible crimes of the priests and the way they were covered up. He feels they are unforgiveable and deserving of tortuous deaths. Tom thinks of all the children through history, suffering at the hands of the people who are supposed to be good.
Tom sees Tomelty gardening and goes down to ask about something his wife said, noticing the car is gone. Tomelty says he got rid of it years ago: He couldn’t bear to keep it after his wife died. Tom retreats to his apartment. McNulty calls on him. She says her husband has sent her a letter which reads “…”: It is a message that he knows where she is. The police say they can’t do anything until he does something wrong. Tom gives her his number to call him if she feels she is in danger.
Chapter 15 Summary
Summer birds arrive and the townspeople start dressing for summer, though the weather is still unpredictable. Wilson and O’Casey visit Tom. They say Tom’s blood is not a match, but Byrne is sticking to his story, so Tom could still be implicated. Tom knows they’d do whatever it takes to get Byrne’s conviction, even at his expense, and he approves.
Tom smokes many cigarillos. Despite some confusion, he feels he has new clarity, as if looking down from a distance. He misses June, Winnie, and Joe. He has always kept his mind purposefully obscured so he doesn’t have to think about the full story.
When June was 45, Winnie and Joe were leaving school, having had a good childhood. June went into Dublin in a nice summer dress and set herself on fire in a secluded park. She left a note saying she loved them all. They buried her in a cemetery near the house; Joe and Winnie were stricken. June chose everything in the house—the crockery, the pictures—and Tom remembers the story behind each item. The breadknife is on the breadboard; it did not save her.
Chapter 16 Summary
Tom thinks of Winnie cutting small sandwiches for the mourners. She was in her second year of college. After June’s death, she turned to drink and drugs, but she continued with her legal training. Tom was full of love for her and admired her tenacity. Eventually, he made her check into rehab; afterward, things seemed better. However, she relapsed and died a few months later; her body was burned by the radiator she slumped against. Tom asked God to give her back, which He did, in a way, but it never helped Tom understand.
Then, Tom thinks of Joe, who had left to be a doctor. He primarily served a rural Native American community, whom he had formed close bonds with. Tom loved reading Joe’s long letters. He wanted Joe to find love, but he never mentioned it. When Joe was killed, Fleming immediately gave Tom leave. The long journey exhausted him. Tom met the sheriff of a Native American reservation; he invited Tom to come to his home for some food. The sheriff explained that Joe was shot in the back of the head in his apartment, and his body was dumped in a dried riverbed. The killer had turned himself in the next day. The killer blamed Joe for his son’s death; Joe had recommended the child be taken to hospital, where he’d died. Against his will, Tom felt an understanding because he, too, wanted to kill his son’s killer.
Tom had wanted to complete his last few years with the police. In his retirement, he felt fate might be finally done with him, after removing each part of his happiness. But then, O’Casey and Wilson had visited, starting everything up.
Chapter 17 Summary
Having faced his story, Tom feels free. He doesn’t eat or drink much. In the summer heat, he enjoys Tomelty’s flourishing garden. He swims in the sea below the house, careful not to go out into the currents. He hopes O’Casey and Wilson will not hold back from Byrne on his account.
One afternoon, he sees an unknown man going into the main house. It is McNulty’s husband. The man kidnaps Jesse and puts him in his car; the boy cries out for help. Tom chases the car down the road, knowing the busy main street will block its route. McNulty appears and tries to grab her child; her husband knocks her out and runs with Jesse toward the sea. Tom lifts McNulty onto the verge and tells two passing women to call an ambulance; then, he chases after her husband. He sees the unicorn from the Tomeltys’ living room standing on the beach. McNulty’s husband steals the motor ferry that goes out to the island; there are no other speedboats nearby to give chase.
Tom runs back up the hill and into the cellist’s house, which is empty. He sees that the man is tying up the boat on the island and turning toward the little boy. Tom makes his decision and breathes calmly.
Later, he goes to his own flat and smokes one last cigarillo. He sees the lifeboat come and get the boy. He thinks the police will come at some point. He feels complete: He has saved a child.
At around 11 o’clock, he swims out into the currents, all the way to a whirlpool he knows of near the island. He feels strengthened with everything good from his life and from his love for June, Winnie, and Joe. Tom feels he has borrowed from the whirlpool, and now he gives back; as it sucks him down, he feels like a dolphin. He wakes in his bed around dawn. He hears “Kol Nidrei” from next door. June is sitting by the bed. He reaches out to touch her hand.
Chapters 14-17 Analysis
The final section of a mystery or thriller will offer information that reveals the truth of events; Old God’s Time partially plays into these genre conventions. Tom thinks how he has “a story beyond description, and he had laboured for many years not to describe it to anyone else, and more importantly to himself” (226-27); he then deliberately recalls each of the painful events he has been shutting out. He reveals that June killed Matthews, and he describes how she, Winnie, and Joe all died. His description of June’s final movements has a detached tone, stating each action she performed omnisciently, although Tom couldn’t have seen them. This is reminiscent of a police write-up of a witness statement, bringing together Tom’s dissonant identities as a loving husband and a policeman who is able to detach from brutality.
As he recalls the aftermath of June’s death, Tom’s tone becomes more emotive and reveals The Lasting Impact of Trauma. He remembers the details of the things she left behind—the everyday clutter of a life, highlighting her absence among these objects. June picked out everything in their home, creating their domestic, familial space; for Tom, June was his home. As Tom goes on to recall Winnie and Joe’s deaths, he maintains his emotive tone, offering details about their relationships: Winnie and Tom would both offer each other food as an expression of support; Joe made him laugh more than anyone else could. Like June, Winnie and Joe were victims of trauma. They both were shaken by June’s suicide and sought different means of escape.
Tom connects Winnie’s addiction and Joe’s murder to a capricious fate. He felt that the fates might be done with him in his retirement, sitting quietly in his wicker chair, but then the screeching front door admitted Wilson and O’Casey. Tom reuses the symbols from the book’s opening: The wicker chair represents his comfortable retirement and the screeching door represents the intrusion of his past and his painful reality. This cyclical reference has a concluding tone, which signifies resolution. Tom feels “lightened” because “his story was told […] to no one” (249). Through The Search for Healing, Tom has found acceptance. He feels free after admitting his truth; with his story concluded, Tom can move forward, toward death. He no longer feels the need to eat or drink much, and he doesn’t feel his age. His final action for Jesse completes this journey. Having spent his life enacting retributive justice, Tom finally does what he really wanted to do all along: He saves a child. Though the novel doesn’t explicitly state what he does, Tom’s final action is suggested by his location at the time he sees McNulty’s husband approaching Jesse. Tom is in the cellist’s apartment, and the cellist has a gun. Though Tom hasn’t fired the gun before, he has held it and admired its power; in the army, Tom was a sniper who killed 57 people. So, he uses the cellist’s gun to shoot the man and save the boy, which is why he expects that the police will come for him soon.
Afterward, that night, Tom feels that “all the things he loved […] filled his heart” (258), giving him the strength to swim far into the current. In his final moments, he is defined by love rather than his trauma; he feels love for June, Winnie, and Joe. When he wakes in his bedroom, he sees June. As he reaches out to touch her, the final lines of narration also explore love: Tom feels that he’s just met her but knows everything about her and that she will understand everything he needs to say. Tom feels “the strange privilege of that. The lovely wildness of it” (261), suggesting that love is miraculous.
This ambiguous ending also taps into the theme of Subjective Reality Versus Objective Reality. Although the novel concludes by solving some mysteries, it subverts the expectation that it will reveal a definitive truth. For example, the version of events Tom remembers of Matthews’s murder includes the fantastical idea that June shape-shifted like a “trickster,” lying on Tom’s back in the form of a rat as he ran up the mountain. Tom notes that this is “true, but not true” (210); it seems impossible, but it is the truth of what he remembers. Similarly, Tom’s experience of saving Jesse features inconsistencies: He vividly feels the pain of running, but he is able to lift the unconscious McNulty onto the verge; also, he sees the unicorn on the beach.
Tom’s mind takes an indirect approach to reality in order to process it. He notes that he can only tell Joe’s story “by twisting ways […], a ruined house of a tale” (238). He uses metaphor as a tool to confront trauma, showing that a fantastical tale can still communicate truth. The ambiguous ending reinforces this idea. It offers two versions of events that can each be read as either the truth or a fantasy: Tom could have hallucinated being in his bedroom with June while drowning, or he could have dreamt his swim from his bedroom, seeing June and reaching out to her as he died. It does not matter which version is objectively true, as each has meaning.
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By Sebastian Barry
