“At any rate, there is seldom a difficulty with religion where there is friendship.”
This quote depicts the complicated relationship Roseanne and her family would come to have with Father Gaunt. Early on, it seems that her father, Joe and Father Gaunt are friendly with each other, with Roseanne being sure that her father was well-liked by the priest. Joe is able to obtain a job in a Catholic church despite being Presbyterian because of the friendship between himself and Father Gaunt. This makes it harder later on when Father Gaunt proves to be a false friend to the family, due to his own beliefs and ideas on morality, which are deeply tied with his religion.
“I knew immediately something was terribly wrong, but you can know that and not allow the thought in your head, at the front of your head. It dances around at the back, where it can't be controlled.”
This quote shows that Roseanne knew immediately that her husband was not coming home, even though she hadn’t actually committed adultery or done anything wrong. She knows deep down how the priests have perceived her meeting with John on the mountain and that she is now facing the repercussions. She knows that something is wrong, yet in order to protect herself from the inevitable pain, she chooses to ignore the fact until it is absolutely confirmed.
“...if it had been contingents of an army meeting to overwhelm the enemy by stealth, it might not have worked out so neatly. But fate it would seem is a perfect strategist and will work miracles of timing to assist our destruction.”
Here, Roseanne is dwelling on the fact that so small a meeting had such a great effect on her life and its downfall. She muses that even armies going into battle can’t plan as perfectly as fate and that with such little information, she was still able to meet John Lavelle at the right time and place to be seen and cause her destruction. If she had been just a few minutes early or later, the priests would not have come across her in a way that made her look guilty, despite her innocence.
“That is because at close of day the ship we sail in is the soul, not the body.”
This quote is from Dr. Grene, expressing how much he loved his wife, Bet. Despite growing old together, he does not notice her physical appearance changing over the years because he is in love with her mind rather than body. He views her as more than just a physical being and sees his life partner in her. It illuminates his deep love for Bet, despite all the troubles in their long marriage. This quote also characterizes the nature of aging, in that we don’t view ourselves aging the way the outside world does because our minds don’t always age as outwardly as our physical selves.
“But I am beginning to wonder strongly what is the nature of history. Is it only memory in decent sentences, and if so, how reliable is it? I would suggest, not very. And that therefore most truth and fact offered by these syntactical means is treacherous and unreliable. And yet I recognise that we live our lives, and even keep our sanity, by the lights of this treachery and this unreliability, just as we build our love of country on these paper worlds of misapprehension and untruth.”
In this quote, Dr. Grene reflects on the nature of history after having spent time questioning Roseanne and fact-checking her old files. It touches on Roseanne being an unreliable narrator, due to her age and own mistrust of her memories. Yet Dr. Grene recognizes that these memories, whether they be completely true or false, or somewhere in between, can help keep us from falling apart. Roseanne may have misremembered certain aspects of her childhood, but it seems she has done so in an attempt to keep her own sanity because of all the horrible things she has witnessed in life.
