[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Severian

I liked the dumb guy. He was just a dumb normal guy trying to get by. And I don’t remember him becoming a bastard — maybe he was hardened by the donkey death but I don’t recall meanness.

it's funny to me how interpretations differ. here is how i read this character:

the dumb (definitely not-normal barn dweller) guy continues to press on with his approaches in spite of having received a warning the ex-friend would chop of his own fingers if he insists.

and after the warning, and after having seen the cut off finger (brutal), and after being warned repeatedly that the ex-friend will continue to chop off fingers... he presses on!

i don't know about you, but if someone doesn't want to see me anymore i just need to be told so. a self mutilation to prove that point would be absolutely final. insisting after that, what the fuck man, lol.

but no, fuck, he insists. he gets jealous, gives a fake message to some musician who has been around colm, that his father has died ("run over by a bread van" lmao) same way as the mother died. has no compunction! makes him feel powerful! then tells dominic proudly!

dominic who is an even bigger moron than him tells him that was too mean and he doesn't want to talk to him anymore. even the super-moron can see that the moron has become a bastard!

so when colm finds out about the fake news he cuts off all the other fingers. as he had warned! and as the dumb guy chose to keep ignoring. not out of stupidity but narcissism, for me.

then and only then the little donkey chokes on a finger (was he trying to eat it? lol), and so etc.

seriously, some people cannot take rejection and feel that justifies them. the dumb guy is the way bigger asshole by the end.

he also felt superior to dominic and constantly rejected him btw. dominic wants to hang out with him earlier he says no. and he says so in the conversations with the sister.

also there was no demonstrated fiddling of the boy. that was something the dumb guy said to insult the cop. might be his first aggressive lie when he stops "being nice". we know the boy said his dad would beat him up if he took his whiskey. we know the cop jerks off and gets drunk until he passes out. so we know he beats him up but we don't know if we can believe what padraic says.

this is the thing about it in general: there is ambiguity in the story, things are not black and white, and there is a lot of bad and stupid and cruel behavior, but there are no "goodies vs. baddies" in this story. there are a couple of innocents, dominic and the little donkey, but padráic is certainly not one, especially by the end, when he wants to carry on fighting in spite of all.