Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses the novel’s treatment of death and grief, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and gun violence.

Dickie Barnes, the patriarch of the Barnes family, is a man with unfulfilled potential. Dickie is bookish and not athletic, which makes people in his community dislike him. He becomes a husband, a father, and a car dealership and garage owner because at a young age he acquiesces to guilt over his brother’s death and his own low sense of self-worth. Dickie’s life is characterized by loneliness, which stems largely from the fact that he hides that he is gay and represses his sexuality to live up to societal expectations and his family’s demands.

As a child and adolescent, Dickie is ignored in favor of his charismatic younger brother Frankie appreciated. Dickie hopes that his move to Dublin to attend the elite Trinity College will finally give him a community, but he is as out of place in Dublin as he is back home. When Dickie is beaten nearly to death by a man he has sex with, the physical assault becomes formative character development: Dickie grows terrified of being outed and sees the assault as yet another reminder of his vulnerability to bullying.