An interesting character in the novel Skippy Dies by Paul Murray is Father Jerome Green. He is the French teacher at Seabrook College in Ireland, where he is known for having an air of dread around him.
"Father Jerome Green: teacher of French, coordinator of Seabrook's charitable works, and by some stretch the school's most terrifying personage. Wherever he goes it is with two or three bodies' worth of empty space around him, as if he's accompanied by an invisible retinue of pitchfork-wielding goblins, ready to jab at anyone who happens to be harboring an impure thought. As he passes, Howard musters a weak smile; the priest glares back at him he same way he does at everyone, with a kind of ready, impersonal disapproval, so adept at looking into a man's soul and seeing sin, desire, ferment that he does it now like ticking a box." (p. 12-13)
Among the students, and even some faculty at Seabrook, Father Green is like the Grim Reaper: tall, thin, dressed in black, and having little to no kindness in him. He punishes students very severely and tries to scare them into being more devout. Paul Murray always uses very descriptive and metaphoric
language when writing about him, especially with his movement. He has been described as smoke, knife-like, a pen stroke, and other dark, harsh things. In his classes, he is like a time-bomb about to explode on any given student.
Overall, what Father Green wants is to teach people that God is not easy-going, and that lazy and spoiled people will be punished with eternal damnation.
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