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.
Symbols & Motifs
The Cellist’s Gun
Content Warning: The source material contains depictions of physical and sexual violence against minors. It also depicts suicide, drug abuse, acts of terrorism, violence, and murder.
The cellist’s gun appears at the start of the novel and comes to symbolize violence, redemption from violence, or both. Tom mentions that the cellist uses his gun to shoot distant seabirds for fun. This establishes a world in which actions by people with power wreak arbitrary destruction on those at their mercy, foreshadowing the larger themes of the novel in its examination of Systemic Violence in Institutions. The author, Sebastian Barry, is also a playwright, and the cellist’s gun leans into the narrative principle of Chekov’s gun, which is mostly used in theater. This is the idea that every element that appears in a story has to be necessary; so, once a gun has been seen onstage, it will be fired at some point in the play. Barry places the cellist’s gun in close proximity to Tom on the second page of the novel, and he also establishes Tom’s past as a sniper, heavily foreshadowing that Tom will fire the gun later in the novel. This builds tension by adding to the book’s constant undercurrent of imminent violence.
The cellist’s gun recalls Tom’s army days, highlighting that the skill and purpose he found as a sniper was destructive. The British army’s role in Malaya was, in theory, to counter the ongoing destructive effects of colonization. Similarly, in Tom’s later job as a policeman, his role relates to retribution over prevention. However, when Tom does eventually fire the gun, this is in the context of preventing harm rather than punishing it retrospectively: He lives out his fantasy of rescuing a young child, though this may just be an element of his imagination. Barry shows the complex different possibilities of Subjective Reality Versus Objective Reality: Tom’s acts of violence in his life can be framed as either service or destruction, offering contrasting realities. Ultimately, his mind finds a way to offer him redemption and healing; through the cellist’s gun, he finds meaning by connecting the violence he has enacted in his life with undoing the violence he has experienced.
The cellist himself is presented as an otherworldly figure. He has a godlike power over the birds, he is an unseen but constant presence through the sound of his music, and he is unnamed until Tom finally meets him in person. He plays “Kol Nidrei” to Tom, a piece relating to atonement, solidifying the symbolism of Tom firing his gun as a spiritual act of redemption.
The Bread Knife
June uses a bread knife to kill her childhood abuser; her use of this knife as a weapon is laden with symbolism. The knife represents the love she shares with Tom, and her happy domestic life with her family. When she pulls it out to kill Father Matthews, Tom recalls that they got the knife in the first week of their marriage—“it had sliced every loaf of bread they’d ever owned” (212). This nurturing image contrasts with June’s violent attack when she uses it to stab Matthews repeatedly. Her use of the bread knife represents that her happy domestic life is in itself an act of defiance against her abuser. However, it also shows that Tom and June’s life together is tainted and bloodied by her revenge.
This single object—the bread knife—simultaneously represents both violence and domesticity. In the same way, the violence and trauma of June’s abuse is present for her even in the heart of her loving family home. Her and Tom’s attempts to compartmentalize their lives cannot succeed. Tom notices the knife sitting on the bread board in the kitchen after June’s death, showing that neither her happy domestic life nor her act of revenge has been able to save her from The Lasting Impact of Trauma. While grieving her mother, Winnie cuts the sandwiches smaller and smaller using the same bread knife, showing that June’s trauma is eating away at her daughter, too, and that it lasts even beyond her own death.
Fire and Heat
The motifs of fire and heat crop up throughout the novel, and their symbolism develops and shifts. Tom’s enjoyment of the sunshine portrays an appreciation of life and the value of warmth and light. His remembrance of the physical heat of June’s body shows that he finds warmth and light in their relationship.
Before June tells Tom about her childhood abuse, they drink flaming Sambuca shots, reinforcing the warmth between them. However, fire has destructive powers, too, so the consumption of the Sambuca also represents them confronting the destructive impact of their trauma and foreshadows June’s self-immolation. As June speaks about her abuse, the sun sets, and Tom feels that it has disappeared forever, mirroring the terrible destruction wrought by abuse. He then compares the sun to a candle and a match. Tom uses this metaphor explicitly once he knows June’s story, thinking of the Systemic Violence in Institutions that he has witnessed; he describes how “many a soul [was] put out like a candlewick in the sea” (99). This smaller source of fire and heat corresponds to the vulnerability of abuse victims and shows that their individual experiences changed their entire worlds.
However, on the next page, the waiter comes around and switches on the lights, showing that it is possible to create light through The Search for Healing. Tom and June’s relationship is full of joy and love, despite their trauma. Tom marvels that June is still there, with him, surviving.
June dies by suicide by self-immolating, and this represents a dichotomy: While she and Tom have found love and joy in their life, their trauma continues to exist even within that. She enacts violence on herself, showing that she has internalized the violence she’s experienced. Tom’s relationship with his cigarillos also offers a smaller use of this symbol. The novel describes how Tom “ravenously lit the cigarillo. The blessed heat of it […] Ah, ah” (214). Within his appreciation of this physical sensation is a destructiveness: He knows the cigarillos will kill him; when he decides he needs to live a longer to see how things will resolve, he stops smoking them. Tom uses the cigarillos as a way to cope with anxiety and to find pleasure in a difficult world, foreshadowing Winnie’s struggles with addiction. Winnie’s death, too, recalls June’s, as Winnie’s body is burned by the radiator. In this way, the symbol of fire and heat comes to represent generational trauma, as Winnie’s parents’ experiences and coping mechanisms echo through Winnie’s actions.
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