Previous
Chapter 16
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
Having uncovered his memories and told his story to himself, Tom feels a burden lifted off of him. He eats less than usual, fixes up his flat, and worries little about his involvement in the case. He enjoys the summer, especially reveling in the beauty of Mr. Tomelty’s garden. His greatest source of enjoyment, however, is swimming. Using the swim trunks he bought back in late winter, he swims in the sea right below the castle. Although he’s aging, when he’s in the water, he feels a deep connection to the body and swims with an immense strength.
Although Tom’s memories of his family’s deaths are terrible, accepting them rather than suppressing them has allowed him to come to terms with his life. His swims in the ocean, the place where he feels most empowered and at peace, signifies how he’s reached a new threshold in his life, where he can hold the grief for his family alongside his joy and love for the world around him.
Themes
Returning from a swim, Tom sees a man he doesn’t recognize enter the building. His presence puts Tom on alert, and he tries to remember where Jesse would be at this time of day. He goes back to his flat and gets dressed, then he goes on lookout. He goes to check the main house and initially doesn’t hear anything, but he then hears crying and spots Jesse being abducted in a car. Tom goes out to run after him. The car gets caught up in traffic, and Ms. McNulty, on her way home from work, catches up to it. Her husband strikes Ms. McNulty unconscious and drags Jesse out of the car, leading him towards Coliemore Harbour.
Tom’s detective instincts come into play when he immediately clocks Ms. McNulty’s husband as a threat. Now that he’s not affiliated with the police anymore, he has the freedom to watch and pursue the man as he sees fit. Even though, by this point, Tom has not successfully saved Jesse, he has fulfilled his promise to Ms. McNulty by keeping an eye out and acting quickly when he sensed something was wrong.
Themes
Tom checks on Ms. McNulty, but he can’t ascertain her condition. He asks some bystanders to call for help and follows Jesse’s abductor. On the beach, he spots Mrs. Tomelty’s unicorn. The man has put Jesse onto a small boat, which he rows into the channel. Tom, not seeing another boat, runs back home and enters into Ronnie’s flat. He goes to the gun and looks through the scope, where he sees that the man and Jesse have reached the channel’s island. Tom shoots the man dead and returns to his flat, where he watches the boy get rescued by a lifeboat. He feels sadness that Jesse will live with the trauma of seeing his father die, but he feels satisfied that he fulfilled his promise to Ms. McNulty and redeemed himself by saving Jesse, even if it results in him being arrested for murder.
The presence of Mrs. Tomelty’s unicorn on the beach inserts a high level of ambiguity to this moment. The only other time this unicorn has appeared was during Tom’s encounter at the Tomeltys’ flat, which was later confirmed to be unreal. This, in combination with the relatively anticlimactic aftermath of Tom killing of Ms. McNulty’s husband, raises the possibility that the events of this scene are not entirely real.
Themes
That night, Tom swims far out into the channel. Floating in the sea, he’s overwhelmed with everything that he’s loved about his life. He knows there’s a whirlpool south of the island, and he resolves to reach it. As he swims towards it, he thinks of both the joys and miseries of his life, which he feels he owes to the whirlpool. As he enters the whirlpool, he wakes up in bed, hearing Kol Nidrei next door. Dawn comes through his window. He sees June sitting at the edge of his bed in a summer dress, and the room gradually brightens. Tom, overwhelmed with joy, reaches out to touch her hand. Touching her fingers, he feels like he did the first moment he met her, but also feels that he knows everything there is to know about her.
The unreal tone of the shooting on the beach intensifies in the novel’s final scenes, with both Tom’s swim in the ocean and his encounter with June being impossible in reality. However, both of these moments—the sea and June—function as symbols for the greatest moments of joy in Tom’s life. Thus, even though these moments are not entirely real—and, given that June is dead, could even be Tom’s dying dreams—they suggest that Tom has finally found closure and happiness in the last chapter of his difficult life.
Themes
Get the entire Old God’s Time LitChart as a printable PDF.
