Content Warning: The source material contains depictions of physical and sexual violence against minors. It also depicts suicide, drug abuse, acts of terrorism, violence, and murder.

The cellist’s gun appears at the start of the novel and comes to symbolize violence, redemption from violence, or both. Tom mentions that the cellist uses his gun to shoot distant seabirds for fun. This establishes a world in which actions by people with power wreak arbitrary destruction on those at their mercy, foreshadowing the larger themes of the novel in its examination of Systemic Violence in Institutions. The author, Sebastian Barry, is also a playwright, and the cellist’s gun leans into the narrative principle of Chekov’s gun, which is mostly used in theater. This is the idea that every element that appears in a story has to be necessary; so, once a gun has been seen onstage, it will be fired at some point in the play. Barry places the cellist’s gun in close proximity to Tom on the second page of the novel, and he also establishes Tom’s past as a sniper, heavily foreshadowing that Tom will fire the gun later in the novel.