The Secret Scripture

One of the novel’s central conflicts is if there is a singular truth. Barry uses his characters to explore the validity of memory, wondering if our accounts of personal and national histories are entirely factual or if they are the results of both fact and fantasy. Roseanne spends much of her life disguising the truth about her life and even does so in her personal testimony, in which her idealizations of the men whom she loved most, her father and her husband, Tom, leave the reader to wonder about her ability to be honest about her past. Roseanne’s testimony contrasts with Father Gaunt’s deposition. However, the validity of his account is also questionable because of his strong bias against women and his dislike of Roseanne. Nonetheless, Dr. Grene concludes that Father Gaunt had less reason to lie about the circumstances around Joe Clear’s death, which Roseanne revised into an innocent life lesson to cope with her trauma of witnessing it. She did this both to cope with the horror of witnessing her beloved father’s murder and to erase the notion that he, too, may have committed violence against others. The novel concludes with the notion that there is no singular way to tell a story, which is partly why Barry allows both Roseanne and Dr.