“They tell me he’s gotten worse. I can just see his face after he hears. And I can see your face too, after he hears your fault it was. I can see him plugging holes in it with a stick.”

Donny shows occasionally that he has a cruel streak, raising the question as to how Padraic’s upbringing might have affected who he became. He taunts Davey and accuses him of running over the cat, slyly drawing Davey into the drama by making him a scapegoat.

“Keeping our youngsters in a drugged-up and idle haze, when it’s out on the streets pegging bottles at coppers they should be.”

Padraic demonstrates his skewed sense of morality in which selling drugs is punishable by torture, but violence is encouraged. Paramilitary groups were notorious for enacting vigilante justice on petty criminals for stealing cars or dealing drugs, but they were only concerned with drug dealers who encroached on their territory since the INLA was profiting from drug sales, functioning much like organized crime syndicates.

“Sure, drug pushers are the same as anybody underneath.”

James sees a chance to appeal to Padraic’s elusive sense of humanity when he recognizes that Padraic has a soft spot for his cat. James claims that he has a cat that he loves. Padraic is genuinely surprised to learn that James is a person who might also love his pets, which shows the absurdity of the dehumanization required to torture someone.