Joe Logan is the main character in Shadows on our Skin, the story is not told in his point of view but he is in every single bit of the book. He is a teenager living in County Derry (London Derry) in Ireland in the 1970's during The Troubles with Northern Ireland and England. He writes a lot of poetry and makes up poetry in his head, sometimes words that are said to him by other people, inspire him to make up a poem about that word or words. He is the son of Mr and Mr.s Logan and the younger brother of Brenden Logan. Throughout the book, Joe learns the hard way of growing up in a rough, dangerous scary world and he is shown of how dangerous his jealousy is when that leads him to the destruction of innocence and the people he cares about, this is when his older brother Brenden meets Kathleen and Joe becomes jealous and angry and he ends up destroying Brenden, Kathleen & himself.
Joe & Kathleen Doherty
Joe meets Kathleen Doherty who is the young English School Teacher who says that she is not very good at her job and she is always has a cigarette in her mouth. The two of them become fast friends but not in a romantic way because Kathleen is a bit too old for Joe, there isn't a big age gap between the two of them, Kathleen would be in her early twenty's and Joe would be a teenager. They often met up and they once went out to Grinain. Joe hates it when his older brother Brenden meets Kathleen and they get friendly with each other because they are around the same age. Joe doesn't it like it because Kathleen is the only person who actually understands Joe and likes his poetry. When Joe is invited to go out with Brenden and Kathleen he gets annoyed with Brenden because he hates seeing them being friends and Joe grows angry and jealous. After Brenden told Kathleen about the gun he said that sometime after Brenden goes back to England Kathleen will also go to England and the two of them will probably get married. Joe taunts at Brenden by saying that she already as a boyfriend and they are going to get married and Joe also revealed that Kathleen's boyfriend was in the English Army which leads to the destruction of Kathleen. Brenden was a person thought fought for Ireland's freedom and when he found out that Kathleen had an English boyfriend, he and his friend who fought for Ireland went to her apartment and beat her up and cut her hair into a boys haircut. Kathleen was forced to leave Derry and she went to Dublin and that was the last time Joe ever saw Kathleen, the only reason he told Brenden about Kathleen's boyfriend was because he loved her.
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Joe & Miss McCabe
Joe and Miss McCabe have a very bad relationship, since Joe is always writing poetry in class, it is very easy for him to get into trouble when Miss McCabe is teaching him Maths, Miss McCabe would always be making fun of Joe in front of the whole class and after that she would either make him stay behind after school or give him extra homework, Kathleen does make fun of Joe when Miss McCabe is mean to him and Joe goes on and on about how mean Miss McCabe is to everyone he knows, the only time Miss McCabe is not mean to Joe is the day after Joe and Brenden had a fight over Kathleen.