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Chapter 12
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Old God’s Time, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory
Grief and Ghosts
Abuse of Institutional Power
Personal Trauma vs. Collective Trauma
Summary
Analysis
As Tom walks home, he feels the urge to tell someone his story. Although many witnesses aren’t believed, Tom knows that unlikely stories are often the truest ones. When he arrives at the castle, his cellist neighbor calls down from his balcony and invites Tom up for a drink. Tom is initially hesitant, but he finds himself more willing to engage with the people around him than before the detectives visited him. He wonders if the cellist will be the man he tells his story to, but he ultimately doubts it. He goes upstairs to the man’s flat, self-conscious about his shabby appearance. The cellist introduces himself as Ronnie McGillicuddy. Tom is surprised, as he’d assumed Ronnie was English.
Tom’s desire to tell his story to someone mirrors Ms. McNulty’s urge to tell her story to him; in confiding in Tom, she’s made it more difficult for him to suppress his own past, showing the impact her candidness had on him. In going up to spend time with Ronnie, Tom is once again reaching out to the people around him after his many months of solitude. However, Tom does not anticipate the same level of frankness as he had with Ms. McNulty.
Themes
Ronnie explains that the flat was his wife’s before they separated. Tom says he’s a widower, causing Ronnie to respond with deep sympathy as he can tell that Tom greatly misses his wife; Tom agrees. Tom then looks at Ronnie’s gun on the balcony, identifying it as a Remington. Ronnie, impressed, asks Tom if he’d like to try it. Tom accepts. Tom looks at the sheet music Ronnie is playing, titled Kol Nidrei, which he recognizes from his time in Palestine as a phrase said on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. As Ronnie sets up the gun, he spots a girl running around on the beach and asks Tom who she is, but Tom doesn’t know. Ronnie speculates that the girl is a ghost, since they found a child’s bones buried on the beach in the sixties. He asks Tom if he believes in ghosts, and Tom says he does.
Although Tom’s initial exchange with Ronnie is not as intense as the one with Ms. McNulty, the way he easily mentions June’s death and acknowledges to Ronnie how deeply he grieves for her suggests that he does feel an innate emotional closeness with Ronnie. The two of them are also on the same page when it comes to ghosts, with Ronnie providing a clue as to the origin of the girl on the beach: perhaps it is not Ms. McNulty’s daughter, but the victim of a much older, long-forgotten tragedy.
Themes
Ronnie finishes setting up the gun and lets Tom try it out. Tom is impressed by the scope, which is much more advanced than anything he had access to in the army. He looks at the cormorants and imagines shooting one but can’t bring himself to; he steps away from the gun without shooting anything. Ronnie offers to play his cello and asks Tom if he knows about Kol Nidrei. Tom decides to play dumb and lets Ronnie explain the story behind the song. Then, Ronnie begins to play. The music sends Tom back into his memory, where he thinks of the many wonderful, normal days he had with June and his children, especially after Matthews’s death. He closes his eyes to the music and comes to feel that June is alive and there with him. He sees her face in front of him and reaches out to touch it.
The end of this chapter highlights some of Tom’s best traits. Despite his history of violence, his inability to shoot the cormorants shows his desire to refrain from any further violence. Furthermore, Tom’s decision to play dumb and let Ronnie tell the story of the song allows the two of them to bond further, highlighting his compassion for other people. Lastly, his ability to remember June and his children shows his ability to reach them even now, when all of them are long gone. All in all, then, this chapter serves as a redemptive moment for Tom.
Themes
