The Hunter

“She feels like she needs to be ready, just in case. The feeling is familiar and strange at the same time. Trey is good at noticing things outside herself but uninterested in noticing things inside, so it takes her a while to recognize that this is the way she felt most of the time, up until a couple of years ago and Cal and Lena. It faded away so gradually that she forgot it, till now.”

Johnny’s return destabilizes Trey’s emotions. Since Cal came into her life, she realizes that she has begun to find emotional stability; however, Johnny resurrects Trey’s resentment. This quote shows Trey’s difficulty in identifying her feelings, even though she has a perceptiveness in understanding others’, and illustrates how the resurfacing of an abuser can trigger old memories or emotions.

“When I was a young fella, people woulda broke their hearts laughing at that. They’d have said you were wasting your time teaching a girl, when she oughta be learning to cook a roast dinner.”

French highlights Johnny’s accent in this quote as a central aspect of his identity. Despite feeling and acting like he’s different from the other men in town, Johnny still reinforces Ardnakelty’s gender norms because he does not understand why Trey wants to pursue carpentry. This reveals how little Johnny understands Trey because he does not take the time to get to know her; rather, he mindlessly assigns gendered activities to her.

“That wears a man down. It wears him till he loses sight of himself, I was turning bitter, taking it out on your mammy—I never usedta have a cruel bone in my body, but I was cruel to her, those last coupla years. She didn’t deserve that. If I’da stayed, I’da only got worse. London was the nearest I could be and still have a chance to get somewhere.”

Johnny makes excuses for his abuse of his family, blaming it on his bitterness with life rather than taking responsibility for his actions. Although Johnny believes that this confession will soften Trey toward him, she does not allow herself to believe Johnny’s excuses for the harm he caused.

“Brendan is buried somewhere in these mountains, Trey doesn’t know where. When she’s out there she keeps watch for any sign—a rectangle of mounded earth, a space where the brush hasn’t had time to grow tall again, a tatter of cloth brought to the surface by weather—but there’s more of the mountains than she could look at in a lifetime. There are people in the townland who know where he is because they put him there. She doesn’t know who they are. She watches for signs in people’s faces, too, but she doesn’t expect to find them. People in Ardnakelty are good at keeping things hidden.”

Trey’s grief makes her look for Brendan’s grave wherever she goes, as she desperately hopes to find closure. However, Trey feels overwhelmed by the vastness of the mountain and the possibility that she will never find Brendan. This quote emphasizes Trey’s distrust of the Ardnakelty people because she knows that they lie with ease. Trey uses this as a reason to punish them with her plan, even if she ends up punishing the innocent as well.

“Trey nods. She’s no wiser. She can tell he believes it, but he always does; it’s one of his gifts, taking every word out of his own mouth as gospel. She had forgotten what it’s like talking to him, how misty and muddy.”

Trey has matured since she saw Johnny last, and she finds it easy to lie to Johnny. She plays on his arrogance, as he is used to people listening to what he says. Her behavior mirrors how Johnny plays on the weaknesses of the Ardnakelty people, showing how the cycle of mistreatment and manipulation is perpetuated.

“‘I’ll tell you a secret’, he says, ‘That I’ve learned along the way. The best thing you can have in life is a bit of a shine on you. A bitta possibility; a bitta magic. A shine. People can’t stay away from that. Once you’ve got it, it doesn’t matter a tap whether they like you, or whether they respect you. They’ll convince themselves they do. And then they’ll do whatever you want from them.’”

Johnny teaches Trey the key to manipulating people to get what she wants from them. Trey realizes that Johnny uses his charismatic personality to control them. This contrasts with Trey’s natural tendency to be direct with people because she dislikes being unsure of what another person is thinking. Her lying and manipulation throughout the novel are the result of learning from her father’s actions.

“He doesn’t feel he’s in a position to judge them for that. He supposes what brought him to Ardnakelty could be described, from some angles, as a bad case of allurement. That got knocked out of him good and hard. The landscape still holds the power to bedazzle him, simply and wholly, but when it comes to everything else about the place, he sees too many of its layers for that. He and it maintained with care and a certain amount of caution on all sides. All the same, taking everything into account, he can’t bring himself to regret following where that allurement led him.”

Cal realizes that he moved to Ardnakelty because he had a romantic view of living in Ireland. He knows that the Ardnakelty people hate it when people romanticize their way of life because it ignores the difficulties that they face. Cal understands this allurement and how it causes the people to ostracize outsiders. It’s also why he has empathy for the Ardnakelty people wanting to believe in Johnny’s scam.

“‘Well, if you’re feeling technical,’ Mart acknowledges, ‘she’s not. And maybe it hasn’t. But in the lad’s minds, it has, and she’s having an effect. Isn’t that a turn-up for the books altogether? Who woulda thought a Reddy would ever have that much credit in this townland?’”

Mart’s regional dialect emphasizes the sense of setting and character, and the topic he discusses demonstrates how dialogue drives the narrative. Mart expresses the surprise that Ardnakelty feels over Trey’s ability to change people’s minds about the Reddy family. However, Mart’s words reveal the underlying discrimination that Trey faces because she must prove herself to Ardnakelty for them to think she is worthy of trust. They gossip about their feelings with each other, and this gossip is one of the main motivations for their bias against the family.

“The main talent Cal has discovered in himself, since coming to Ardnakelty, is a broad and restful capacity for letting things be. At first, this sat uneasily alongside his ingrained instinct to fix things, but over time they’ve fallen into a balance: he keeps the fixing instinct mainly turned toward solid objects, like his house and people’s furniture, and leaves other things the room to fix themselves. The Johnny Reddy situation isn’t something that he can leave be. It doesn’t feel like something that needs fixing, though, either. It feels both more delicate and more volatile than that: something that needs watching in case it catches and runs wild.”

This quote reveals that Cal turns to carpentry to give him an outlet for his desire to fix things. However, Johnny’s arrival makes Cal feel out of control, and he does not know if he will be able to fix the situation for Trey as he wants to. He respects Trey’s independence and acknowledges that this isn’t his business, but he intuits that Johnny’s presence will bring danger. The final line of this quote foreshadows Johnny catching fire and fleeing town.

“It takes her most of the walk up the mountain to get her head clear and understand what’s happening. All these people want something from her. They need her help, the same way her dad needed her help last night.”

Trey has trouble coming to terms with how people change their behaviors when they want something from a person. The only reason why Ardnakelty and Johnny treat Trey with respect is because they desire the wealth they could get from her and her father, which upsets her. She does not like having people manipulate her emotions, and their two-faced behavior spurs her to attempt to harm them later.

“Trey has always preferred straightforward things. Her first instinct was to reject this new situation but slowly, as she jolts the trolley behind her up the rocky path, it shifts in her mind. For one of the first times in her life, she has power.”

Trey rejects her urge to run away from a situation that does not feel straightforward to her. Her desire for revenge trumps her uneasiness when she realizes that she can manipulate Johnny and the Ardnakelty men for the way that they have hurt her family. The Consequences of Past Actions arise as the townspeople’s mistreatment of Trey and her family causes her to seek retribution against them.

“He’s seen these guys leprechaun up before, at innocent tourists who were proud of themselves for finding a quaint authentic Irish pub that wasn’t in any of the guidebooks. They convinced one earnest American student that the narrow window in the corner had been blessed up by Saint Leithreas and that if he could climb through it, he’d be sure to get to heaven.”

French uses the term “leprechaun up” to highlight the way tourists reduce Ireland to a mystical land, rather than seeing it authentically. Ardnakelty toys with tourists who pretend to be Irish or who delight in the “Irishness” of an area. Cal knows that Ardnakelty is capable of tricking people into believing things about Ardnakelty that are not real, which is why he knows they love the idea of tricking Rushborough into believing that there is gold in the river.

“Trey is not, by nature, one to go at people or things sideways. […] But she’s open to learning new skills when the necessity arises. She’s learning them from her dad. The part that surprises her isn’t how fast she’s picking this up—Cal always says she’s a quick study—but how easily her dad, who’s never gone at anything straight in his life, can be taken in.”

Trey quickly learns how to manipulate people, including Johnny, by mimicking Johnny’s manipulation tactics. This shows how easy it would be for Trey to become like Johnny, even though Cal has done everything he can to teach her how to face things authentically.

“Over time it’s eased. She can do things free of that weight, see things without that blackness blotting out part of her vision. Sometimes this makes her feel like a traitor. She’s thought of cutting Brendan’s name into her body, only that would be stupid. What she hopes to meet on the mountain is ghosts. She has no idea whether she believes in them or not, but if they exist, Brendan’s will be here. She doesn’t know what form he might take, but none of the possibilities are enough to deter her.”

Trey’s grief manifests itself in her desire to see Brendan’s ghost. Trey hates that grief is not something that people can see, which is why she feels the urge to cut his name on her body so that people will understand her sadness. Trey does not fear the possibility of seeing Brendan’s ghost; instead, she risks being harmed or haunted because she misses him so much.

“These lads around here, they’ve been hardworking men all their lives. Everything they’ve got, they earned. A man’s supposed to be proud of that, but the truth is, he can get awful weary of it. He gets to craving something he didn’t have to earn; something that fell into his hands, for no reason at all. That’s why people play the lottery. ’Tisn’t the money they want, even if they think it is; ‘tis that moment when they’d feel like they’re one of God’s own handpicked winners. These lads want to feel lucky, for once. They want to feel like God and the land are on their side.”

Johnny outlines The Pursuit of Greed for the Ardnakelty men. Even though Johnny plans to swindle them, he has empathy for them because he understands that their greed stems from a desire to feel worthy and seen. Johnny empathizes with the men feeling like they have nothing to show for all the pain that they have been through, which is why they look to the possibility of wealth to fix their circumstances.

“This was the part that startled him: the men’s spontaneous explosion of shouts and cheers when Rushborough held up the first glittering traces in the pan; the ring of genuine, wild amazement and delight, like they had all been holding their breath waiting to find out if anything was in there. The gold had taken on a reality outside themselves and their actions. They’re like believers exalted by the holy truth underlying a relic, even though they know the relic itself is a shard of chicken bone.”

Cal uses the imagery of people worshiping a relic to emphasize the spectacle of Rushborough discovering the gold in the river. Cal feels surprised when he sees the ease with which the Ardnakelty men lie to Rushborough about the gold. In this scenario, though, Johnny is the false prophet. Cal realizes that they have tied the promise of wealth to Johnny’s false charade, hoping that Rushborough will invest in their land.

“He has his own beef with these men, or some of them, but he remembers their faces in the pub when Rushborough brought out the ring: their stillness as their land transformed and ignited, blazing with fresh constellations and long-hidden messages from their own blood.”

Cal sympathizes with the Ardnakelty men, despite the problems that he has with them. He knows that their desire to trick Rushborough stems from The Pursuit of Greed; however, he also realizes that their scam allows them to dream of a better lifestyle. The belief in the gold gives the Ardnakelty men hope for the future and a connection to the land that they have not had since they were younger.

“Trey, like anyone from Ardnakelty, has a gut-deep understanding of the ferocious power of talk, but it’s the wrong kind of power for this: fluid, slippery, switch backing, forging twisting channels you can’t predict. She can see why her father went that way without a second thought. He’s all those things distilled; regardless of what either he or the townland might like to think, he’s Ardnakelty to the bone.”

This quote emphasizes the importance of dialogue, as well as the impact that gossip has on the narrative. Despite Ardnakelty’s desire to ostracize Johnny, Trey knows that his actions bear a resemblance to Ardnakelty because he keeps his intentions hidden like they do. This atmosphere enables Trey to lie about the gold and who might’ve killed Rushborough, exhibiting her understanding of the dangers of gossip and hearsay.

“Cal understands at last that Trey has never been her father’s minion in this; she’s playing a lone game and has been all along. When the opportunity came her way, she aimed Ardnakelty down a phantom path after imaginary gold. Now that things have shifted, she’s aiming Nealon, meticulously as a sniper, at the men who killed her brother. She gave Cal her word never to do anything about Brendan, but all this is just distant enough from Brendan that she can convince herself it doesn’t count. […] When he worried that Trey’s childhood had left cracks in her, he had it wrong. Those aren’t cracks; those are fault lines.”

Cal’s realization of Trey’s plan for revenge shows The Importance of Loyalty because he trusts her enough to make the right decision, even though he does not agree with her plan. Cal’s comparison of Trey’s history of abuse as a child to fault lines shows empathy for her situation, as well as the way that Cal feels responsible for not seeing the deep impact of Trey’s abuse.

“Nealon’s rhythms, in their familiarity, are distracting Cal so that he has to snap himself back to listen to the words. If he had thought about it, he would have expected an Irish detective to sound different from the ones he used to know. The accent is different, the slang and the sentence shapes, but under all that, the blunt, driving rhythms are the same.”

Cal has an out-of-body experience as he finds himself distracted by Nealon’s accent while he listens to his interview questions. The questions remind Cal of his past as a detective, which gives him a special perspective on Nealon’s reasoning as he interviews him.

“Lena is rocked by the strength of her urge to give Trey everything she has. For generations, this townland has been begging for someone to come along and defy it wholesale, blow all its endless, unbreakable, unspoken rules to smithereens and let everyone choke on the dust. If Trey has the spine and the will to do it, she deserves the chance. Lena only wishes she had got there herself, back when she was young enough and wild enough to throw everything else away.”

Lena understands Trey’s desire for revenge in a way that Cal does not. Since Lena has also experienced prejudice from Ardnakelty, she thinks that there is nothing wrong with Trey using her wit and power to punish them. However, she has the maturity to know that Trey will end up hurting herself or Cal in the process, so she recommends that Trey give up her plan for the time being.

“In the sunlight Sheila’s eyes are blue as flames. She doesn’t blink against it. ‘You’re my revenge,’ she says. ‘I won’t have you ruined.’”

Sheila’s words to Trey reveal her reasoning for murdering Rushborough. Rather than taking revenge on Ardnakelty or Johnny for his abuse, Sheila chooses to protect Trey from her vengeance and give her a life to live by killing Rushborough for her. This confession compels Trey to cover up the evidence in the shed because she does not want Sheila to experience punishment for protecting her.

“Trey looks up at the mountainside, where Brendan is lying and where she almost joined them. Her chance of finding him, a slim one from the start, is gone now. The fire will have taken any signs she could have spotted; if his ghost was ever there, now it’s a slip of flame, twisting upwards amid smoke and gone into the night sky. She finds, to her surprise, that she’s OK with this. She misses Brendan as much as ever, but the jagged need has gone out of it. With him, too, her footing has changed.”

Trey uses the experience of the fire burning the mountain to release her desire for revenge. She knows that she will never find Brendan’s grave, and she even has a superstitious belief that she will never see his ghost now that the mountain has burned. Trey’s grief has relented somewhat from the sharp pain that she felt at the beginning of the novel. She knows that she can move on with her life without the constant need for retribution.