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Thaddeus Matthews
Joseph Byrne is a pedophilic priest. He was close to fellow pedophile Father Thaddeus Matthews and was with Matthews in the mountains the day he was murdered. Although Tom and his partner Billy’s initial investigation of Byrne’s abuse was covered up, he is currently being investigated once more by Detectives Wilson and O’Casey. In an attempt to evade responsibility, Byrne tells the police that he saw Tom the day of Matthews’s murder, forcing the detectives to make Tom into a suspect. Thus, Byrne functions as the antagonist of the novel.
Joseph Byrne Quotes in Old God’s Time
The Old God’s Time quotes below are all either spoken by Joseph Byrne or refer to Joseph Byrne. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 14
Quotes
No crime more dark, more fucking pessimum, more beyond human mercy. To do this with the mote of June in your eye, her essence floating on the Irish wind. All the children gravely assailed. All the children in filthy Irish history, with no bugle blowing to announce their rescue, no arms of love to envelop them, no hand of kindness to wash their wounds. Priests! The boyos themselves, peddling piety and goodness. As pious and good as—but there was no entity, no animal, no thing, to compare to them. A shark was vicious, but it was all beyond the shark.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Possible court appearance. If the DPP thought there was evidence. What of the blood sample? Would that be enough? The word of an evil man, himself under scrutiny, judgement, sentence. But what did Tom care? He didn’t. He had served the only soul he cared about, not his own soul, or the souls even of his children, but the girl he had met in the Wimpy café, who had laughed at Billy Drury’s taste on the jukebox, and in laughing, with her bright face, fished out his deathless love.
Get the entire Old God’s Time LitChart as a printable PDF.
Joseph Byrne Quotes in Old God’s Time
The Old God’s Time quotes below are all either spoken by Joseph Byrne or refer to Joseph Byrne. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 14
Quotes
No crime more dark, more fucking pessimum, more beyond human mercy. To do this with the mote of June in your eye, her essence floating on the Irish wind. All the children gravely assailed. All the children in filthy Irish history, with no bugle blowing to announce their rescue, no arms of love to envelop them, no hand of kindness to wash their wounds. Priests! The boyos themselves, peddling piety and goodness. As pious and good as—but there was no entity, no animal, no thing, to compare to them. A shark was vicious, but it was all beyond the shark.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Possible court appearance. If the DPP thought there was evidence. What of the blood sample? Would that be enough? The word of an evil man, himself under scrutiny, judgement, sentence. But what did Tom care? He didn’t. He had served the only soul he cared about, not his own soul, or the souls even of his children, but the girl he had met in the Wimpy café, who had laughed at Billy Drury’s taste on the jukebox, and in laughing, with her bright face, fished out his deathless love.
