Book 2: Reading for Nemesis and Theme
For Book 2, our group is reading The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry. The Secret Scripture is a domestic fiction novel that takes place in Ireland and is about a woman named Roseanne McNulty who is telling her story at age 100 from a mental asylum. The novel switches back in forth from perspectives and time periods between Roseanne and her psychiatrist Dr. Grene. In the beginning, Roseanne introduces herself and is extremely personal to the readers, as if she is writing in a diary that she wants to be found. She takes the readers back in time to her childhood with her father, to a period when she’s 14 during the 1920s. Roseanne has been a patient at the Roscommon Mental Health Hospital for about 50 or so years, possibly more; it appears that even Roseanne has lost track for how long she’s been there. Dr. Grene’s perspective is important in this novel because due to the hospital needing to be shut down, he needs to make the decision if Roseanne should be transferred to another facility or be released to the outside world.
Roseanne is a character who just wants her story to be heard, she wants people to believe her and she feels distrust for even her doctor. At first, I didn’t know if I could trust Roseanne’s character given her age and the fact that she is sitting in a mental hospital for more than 50 years now. However, as I continued to read, her honesty about people reminded me of myself and how she believes in the good of people. In the beginning of the book we are introduced to a series of characters such as: Old Tom which she briefly refers to as her husband on page 31, his two brothers Jack and Eneas, John Kane who is a janitor at the facility, and Father Gaunt who is one of the main antagonists on the novel. At the start it is apparent that Fr. Gaunt and her father have a very heavy role in her life and Fr. Gaunt also appears to be a very daunting man from the start.
A theme that is present in the beginning of this book is telling the truth. Roseanne’s story means a lot to her and all she wants is someone to read her secret scripture; although, she seems extremely reluctant to tell the truth. One of the controlling values in this is that telling the truth will set her free but the opposing value is that she is terrified of being released so she withholds the truth from her doctor. When her doctor begins to talks about the possible release of her leaving she cries out no, and on page 27 she says: “I did not intend to cry out, but as you will see these small actions, associated in most people’s minds with the ease and happiness of life, are to me knives in my heart to think of.” Roseanne just wants the truth for her readers and for herself but she is still terrified to do so. When you look at the trailer for the movie, you can even see the fear she has when she first enters the institution.
KKJM Reads 
While I do agree that a theme of the importance of telling the truth and having your story be heard is present in the novel, I felt that there were also theme of lies and withholding information that was occurring. I thought that it was interesting that while Dr. Grene spends the majority of his time throughout the novel attempting to find out the truth of Roseanne’s life, both through talking with her and digging up old records about her life, once he has a secret of his own, he drags his heels in telling Roseanne. I found it to be a bit hypocritical that he exhausted all avenues to gather the knowledge he wanted to find out about Roseanne, yet despite her having asked him to make sure he found her son and got her father’s favorite book to him, Dr. Grene still chose not to be forthcoming about the fact that she was actually his mother. I thought that it was unfair for Dr. Grene to expect so much honesty from Roseanne, yet not tell her the truth. It seemed to me that he thought it was harder for him than anyone else to tell the truth, which bothered me since Rosanne had also had an extremely tough life. I thought that this double standard between Dr. Grene’s own actions and his expectations of others was interesting, and something that could possibly be explored more in your annotated bibliography.
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Truth is definitely the opening theme of the book. But as the story moves along, it is revealed that Roseanne has not been revealing as much truth as believed throughout the beginning and middle of the book. Is this novel a novel of deceit? The reason I am asking this question is that by the end of the text it is revealed by Dr. Grene, that Roseanne Clear has not been a reliable narrator throughout the text. If Roseanne ends up not being a reliable narrator by the end of the story, should we categorize this story as a ‘journey for the real truth’ in the novel. I think your post is overall very good, but I feel this is some food for thought as you further close read the rest of the book.
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It has become evident that when it comes to reading for theme, we can’t have a positive without the negative. Although this story, The Secret Scripture very much so is about truth, it is just as much about lies. Not only lies but the secrets we keep from others, which are also just lies within themselves. It could be easy to find Roseanne as a character that you might not trust, given her age and the fact that she is in the asylum. She easily became a trustworthy character trying to tell her story. I look at this story more directly at Dr. Grene’s secrets. He seemed so deeply investing on finding everything and anything about Roseanne’s life and records but ignores when she asks him to find her son. He holds back telling Roseanne about him being her son. Is he the “crazy” one in all this. He wants to find out everything about Roseanne but why doesn’t he hold these same values for himself?
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