Summary and Analysis Counterparts

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Summary
Humiliated by his boss(Mr. Alleyne) at the law firm in which he works, a copy clerk
namedFarrington pawns his watch and spends the money on a night of drinking in Dublin pubs.
Afterward, he goes to his house in the suburbs, where he vents his rage by beating one of his five
children (Tom).
Analysis
The line "He had done for himself in the office, pawned his watch, spent all his money; and he had
not even got drunk" sums up Farrington's pervasive impotence. The beating of his young son in the
story's final scene dramatizes his relationship to his children and, probably, his wife. Like "Eveline,"
this story shows how intractable Irish paralysis seemed to Joyce impossible to ameliorate, much
less escape altogether.
As ever, the author subtly holds the English and the Roman Catholic Church accountable.
Farrington's coworkers at the law firm of Crosbie and Alleyne all have English or at least non-Irish
names (Parker, Higgins, Shelley, Delacour), the woman who snubs him in the back room at
O'Halloran's says "Pardon!" with a London accent, and just before arriving at home in Sandymount,
Farrington passes the barracks where English soldiers live. More than in any Dublinersstory yet,
Ireland seems here to be a country under extended occupation by foreigners.
In the last scene of "Counterparts," Farrington's son reports that Mrs. Farrington is "out at the chapel."
When Farrington begins to beat him, the boy desperately offers "I'll say a Hail Mary for you . . . " If not
precisely to blame for Ireland's misery, the church certainly appears powerless against the forces
paralyzing the culture.
Glossary
the tube a machine for communicating within a building.
an order on the cashier official permission for an advance on wages.
snug a small private room or booth in a public house.
g.p. a glass (half-pint) of porter.
caraway a white-flowered biennial herb of the umbel familiy, with spicey, strong-smelling seeds. The
seeds, when chewed, were thought to hide the smell of alcohol, and thus were offered to customers
by turn-of-the-century Dublin bars.
manikin a little man; dwarf.
instanter without delay; immediately.
the dart the solution.
stood . . . a half-one bought a half measure of alcohol.
the eclogues short pastoral poems, often in the form of a dialogue between two shepherds; the most
famous are by the Latin poet Virgil.
my nabs (slang) my friend or acquaintance.
Ballast Offices the location of the Dublin Port and Docks Board, where the father of Gabriel Conroy
(protagonist of "The Dead") is said to have worked.
Irish and Apollinaris whiskey and soda.
too Irish (slang) exceedingly generous.
chaffed teased good naturedly.
tincture a trace; a smattering.

small hot specials whiskey mixed with water and sugar.

bitter bitter, strongly hopped ale.
stood to bought for.
smahan a smattering; a smidgin.
barracks buildings on Shelbourne Road for housing British soldiers.
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/d/dubliners/summary-and-analysis/counterparts

Dubliners Summary and Analysis of Counterparts

Summary:
Farrington, a scrivener in a legal office, is called to see his tyrannical boss, Mr.
Alleyne. After a few solid minutes of abuse, he is allowed to return to work with a strict
deadline for copying a contract. Farrington returns to work, but as soon as he sits down
the tedium of his job gets to him. He goes out for a drink. He goes down the street into
dark, comfy O'Neill's shop. He takes a glass of plain porter. The respite is short, however,
because Farrington has to return to work. On his way in he notices the smell of the
perfume of one of the clients, Miss Delacour. The chief clerk tells him sharply that Mr.
Alleyne has been looking for him. The copy of the correspondence for the Delacour case
is needed. Farrington gets the correspondence, hoping that Mr. Alleyne won't notice that
the last two letters are missing. Miss Delacour is a wealthy middle-aged woman, and Mr.
Alleyne is said to be sweet "on her or her money."
Farrington drops off the correspondence and returns to work. Glumly, he realizes that he
will not be able to meet his deadline for the contract he's currently copying. He begins to
think longingly of a night of drink. His pleasant dreams are interrupted by a furious Mr.
Alleyne. With Miss Delacour standing by, Mr. Alleyne abuses Farrington about the missing
letters. Farrington plays dumb. Mr. Alleyne asks rhetorically, "Do you think me an utter
fool?", to which Farrington replies, " I don't think, sir . . . that that's a fair question to put
to me" (87). Miss Delacour smiles. Mr. Alleyne goes bezerk, demanding an apology.
Later, Farrington waits around a corner hoping to get the cashier alone, so that he can
ask to borrow some money. But when the cashier exits the office, he's with the chief
clerk. Now, there's no hope in getting a bit of cash. The situation is grim: he had to
apologize abjectly in private to Mr. Alleyne, and now the office will be a treacherous
place for him.
It dawns on Farrington that he can pawn his watch. He gets six shillings and goes out
drinking with his friends. He tells them the story of his triumph over Mr. Allyene, leaving
out his abject apology. He repeats the story to various friends as they come in. First
Nosey Flynn, sitting in his usual corner of Davy Byrne's, and then O' Halloran and Paddy
Leonard come in. The men are buying each other drink after drink. Higgins, one of
Farrington's colleagues at work, comes in, and does his own rendition of the tale, making
Farrington's feat seem even greater. The men leave the bar to go to another
establishment called the Scotch House. Leonard introduces them to a young fellow
named Weathers, who's an acrobat and an artiste. More drinks are shared. When the
Scotch House closes, they go to Mulligan's. One of the women catches Farrington's eye,
but when she leaves she does not look back. He curses his poverty and all the drinks
he's bought. He particularly thinks that Weathers has been drinking more than he's been
buying.
The men are talking about strength; Weathers is showing off his biceps. Farrington shows
off his, and then the two men arm wrestle. Weathers beats Farrington. Farrington is
angry, and accuses Weathers of having put the weight of his body behind it. They decide
to go two out of three, and Weathers, after a struggle of respectable duration, beats him
again. The curate, who was watching, expresses his admiration and Farrington snaps out
of him. O'Halloran notices the anger in Farrington's face and wisely intercedes. He
changes the subject and calls for another drink.
Waiting for his tram home, Farrington is full of fury. He's not even drunk, and he's spent
almost all of the money from his pawned watch. He's lost his reputation as a strong man,

having been beaten in arm wrestling by young Weathers. As he goes home, his anger
mounts.
He comes home to find the kitchen empty with the fire nearly out. His small son Tom,
one of five children, comes to greet him. His wife is out at church. Farrington orders the
boy around, telling him to cook up the dinner his wife left for him. The boy obediently
gets to work. Then Farrington sees that the fire has gone out. He chases the boy with a
walking stick and begins to beat him brutally, despite the child's pleas for mercy.
Analysis:
This story, like "The Dead," is difficult to summarize because of Joyce's amazingly
concise group scenes. Among authors, Joyce is among the best for conveying the
atmosphere of boisterous social gatherings with clarity and charm.
The themes of imprisonment, powerlessness, and resentment are all weaved together in
this well-wrought story. Farrington spends a good part of the tale simply trying to scrape
together enough money for a night of drink. It becomes clear rather quickly that he is an
alcoholic, and that each day must be spent seeking out a way to get drunk.
His powerlessness comes through in his great confrontation with Mr. Alleyne. Farrington
is allowed his moment of triumph, but it is followed by a forced abject apology. He
endures humiliation in the end, with the assurance that if life at work was already hell, it
is bound to become even worse.
Farrington is not allowed to triumph anywhere. At work, his boss forces him into
submission. At the bar, the woman who catches his eye ignores him. He is bested by the
young Weathers in a contest of strength. Emasculated at work, he is further emasculated
by the woman and among his friends. He excels in no arena of masculinity.
He does not even succeed in his original aim, which was to get drunk. After the
considerable quantity of alcohol he has consumed, we can only see his increased
tolerance as another sign of his alcoholism. He refers to his desire for alcohol as "thirst"
throughout the whole story.
As Little Chandler does in the previous story, Farrington takes out his anger on the
nearest helpless target: his son. The beating scene is awful, especially as the boy has
been touchingly attentive to his father's needs. We are left with the impression that this
day is unfortunately typical in Farrington's life.
http://www.gradesaver.com/dubliners/study-guide/summary-counterparts

DUBLINERS James Joyce Counterparts Summary

In a busy law firm, one of the partners, Mr. Alleyne, angrily orders the secretary to send
Farrington to his office. Farrington is a copy clerk in the firm, responsible for making copies of
legal documents by hand, and he has failed to produce an important document on time. Mr.
Alleyne taunts Farrington and says harshly that if he does not copy the material by closing
time his incompetence will be reported to the other partner. This meeting angers Farrington,
who mentally makes evening plans to drink with his friends as a respite. Farrington returns to
his desk but is unable to focus on work. He skirts past the chief clerk to sneak out to the local
pub where he quickly drinks a beer.
Two clients are speaking with the chief clerk when Farrington returns to the office, making his
absence apparent. The clerk asks him to take a file to Mr. Alleyne, who is also with a client.
Farrington realizes that the needed file is incomplete because he has failed to copy two
letters as requested. Hoping that Mr. Alleyne will not notice, Farrington delivers the
incomplete file and returns to his desk to work on his project. Again unable to concentrate,
Farrington dreams of hot drinks and crowded pubs, only to realize, with increasing rage, that
completing the task is impossible and that he has no hope of getting an advance on his
paycheck to fund his thirst. Meanwhile, Mr. Alleyne, having noticed the missing letters, has
come to Farringtons desk with his client, the jovial Miss Delacour, and started another
abusive critique of Farringtons work. Farrington claims ignorance and wittily insults Mr.
Alleyne to the amusement of Miss Delacour and his fellow clerks.

Forced to apologize to Mr. Alleyne, Farrington leaves work without completing his project and
dreading the sure backlash at the office. More determined than ever to go to the pub,
Farrington pawns his pocket watch for drinking money. At his first stop he meets his friends
Nosey Flynn, OHalloran, and Paddy Leonard, and tells them of his shining moment insulting
his boss. Another clerk from the office arrives and joins them, repeating the story. Soon the
men leave the pub, and OHalloran, Leonard, and Farrington move on to another place.
There Leonard introduces the men to an acrobat named Weathers, who happily accepts the
drinks the other men buy for him. Farrington becomes irritated at the amount of money he
spends, but the men keep drinking and move to yet another pub. Weathers meets the men
there and Farrington begrudgingly buys him another drink out of courtesy. Farringtons
frustrations build as he flirts with an elegant woman sitting nearby who ultimately ignores his
advances. Leonard and OHalloran then convince Farrington to arm wrestle with Weathers,
who has been boasting about his strength to the men. After two attempts, Farrington loses.
Filled with rage and humiliation, Farrington travels home to Shelbourne Road, a lower-middleclass area southeast of the city center. Entering his dark house, he calls to his wife Ada but is
met by one of his five children, his son Tom. When Tom informs him that Ada is at church,
Farrington orders Tom to light up the house and prepare dinner for him. He then realizes that
the house fire has been left to burn out, which means his dinner will be long in coming. With
his anger at boiling point, Farrington begins to beat Tom, who plaintively promises to say a
Hail Mary for Farrington if he stops.
Analysis
While many characters in Dubliners desire something, face obstacles that frustrate them, and
ultimately forfeit their desires in paralysis, Farrington sees everything in the world as an
obstacle to his comfort and never relents in his vitriol. The tedium of work irritates Farrington
first, but so does everything he encounters in the story. The root of Farringtons violent and
explosive behavior is the circular experience of routine and repetition that defines his life.
Farringtons job is based on duplicationhe copies documents for a demanding boss. His
job, in other words, is to produce replications of other things, and the monotony of this job
enrages him. Farrington envisions release from such deadening activity in the warmth and
drink of public houses, but his experiences there only beget further routine. He repeats the
story of the confrontation with Mr. Alleyne to his friends, who then also repeat it. Following the
round tradition in which each person in a group takes turns buying drinks for all companions
present, he continually spends money and consumes more alcohol. The presence of
Weathers, who takes advantage of this system, makes Farrington realize how such tradition
and repetition literally rob him. His anger mounts throughout the story.
Farrington hurtles forward in the story without pausing to think about his actions or why he
feels such discontent. As a result, his circular activities become more and more brutal. When
he loses two arm wrestling matches to Weathers, a mere boy, he goes home only to beat
his own boy. What begins as mundane copying, the story hints, spins out of control into a
cycle of brutal abuse. While other characters in the collection acknowledge their routine lives,
struggle, then accept their fate passively, Farrington is unaware and unrelenting. The title,
Counterparts, refers to a copy or duplicate of a legal paper, the stuff of Farringtons career,
but also to things that are similar or equal to each other. Farrington lives a life of counterparts,
to dangerous ends. His pawning of his watch may symbolically release him from the shackles
of schedules and time demands, but the frustrations of work only take on new and more
extreme forms at the pub and at home. For Farrington, life repeats itself: work is like the pub
is like home. As Counterparts illustrates, this bleeding between different areas of life
inevitably exists. When maddening routine and repetition form the backbone of experience,
passivity may result, but so too might volatile frustration.
The abuse that other stories in Dubliners allude to becomes explicit in Counterparts, and the
consistent emotional theme of anger underpins every event in the story. Joyce uses
adjectives like heavy,dark, and dirty to describe Farringtonhe is quite literally worn out by

frustration and anger. Not even the desperate servitude and piety of his son touch him,
signaling that spirituality fails to save and protect. Farrington is unable to realize that his own
actions are far worse than the mocking cruelty of his boss. Joyce refers to Farrington both by
his name and as the man throughout the story. In one sentence he is the familiar character
of Farrington that the reader follows throughout the story, yet in another he is the man on
the street, on the train, in an office. Farrington, in a sense, acts as an exchangeable or
general type, both a specific man and everyman. Joyces fluid way of addressing him thus
serves to weave Farrington into the Dublin streetscape and suggest that his brutality is
nothing unusual.

DUBLINERS James Joyce Context

James Joyce was born into a middle-class, Catholic family in Rathgar, a suburb of Dublin, on
February 2, 1882. The familys prosperity dwindled soon after Joyces birth, forcing them to
move from their comfortable home to the unfashionable and impoverished area of North
Dublin. Nonetheless, Joyce attended a prestigious Jesuit school and went on to study
philosophy and languages at University College, Dublin. He moved to Paris after graduation
in 1902 to pursue medical school, but instead he turned his attention to writing. In 1903 he
returned to Dublin, where he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle, the following year. From then
on, Joyce made his home in other countries. From 1905 to 1915 he and Nora lived in Rome
and Trieste, Italy, and from 1915 to 1919 they lived in Zurich, Switzerland. Between World
War I and World War II, they lived in Paris. They returned to Zurich in 1940, where Joyce died
in 1941.
In 1907, at the age of twenty-five, Joyce published Chamber Music, a collection of poetry.
Previously, hed also written a short-story collection, Dubliners, which was published in 1914.
Though Joyce had written the book years earlier, the stories contained characters and events
that were alarmingly similar to real people and places, raising concerns about libel. Joyce
indeed based many of the characters inDubliners on real people, and such suggestive
details, coupled with the books historical and geographical precision and piercing
examination of relationships, flustered anxious publishers. Joyces autobiographical novel A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Manfollowed Dubliners in 1916, and a play, Exiles, followed in
1918. Joyce is most famous for his later experimental novels, Ulysses (1922), which maps
the Dublin wanderings of its protagonist in a single day, and Finnegans Wake (1939). These
two works emblematize his signature stream-of-consciousness prose style, which mirrors
characters thoughts without the limitations of traditional narrative, a style he didnt use
in Dubliners.
Ireland permeates all of Joyces writing, especially Ireland during the tumultuous early
twentieth century. The political scene at that time was uncertain but hopeful, as Ireland
sought independence from Great Britain. The nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell, who
became active in the 1870s, had reinvigorated Irish politics with his proposed Home Rule Bill,
which aimed to give Ireland a greater voice in British government. Parnell, dubbed the
Uncrowned King of Ireland, was hugely popular in Ireland, both for his anti-English views
and his support of land ownership for farmers. In 1889, however, his political career collapsed
when his adulterous affair with the married Kitty OShea was made public. Kittys husband
had known for years about the affair, but instead of making it public, he attempted to use it to
his political and financial advantage. He waited until he filed for divorce to expose the affair.
Both Ireland and England were scandalized, Parnell refused to resign, and his career never
recovered. Parnell died in 1 8 9 1 , when Joyce was nine years old.
In the last part of the nineteenth century, after Parnells death, Ireland underwent a dramatic
cultural revival. Irish citizens struggled to define what it meant to be Irish, and a movement
began to reinvigorate Irish language and culture. The movement celebrated Irish literature
and encouraged people to learn the Irish language, which many people were forgoing in favor
of the more modern English language. Ultimately, the cultural revival of the late nineteenth
century gave the Irish a greater sense of pride in their identity.

Despite the cultural revival, the bitter publicity surrounding Parnells affair, and later his death,
dashed all hopes of Irish independence and unity. Ireland splintered into factions of
Protestants and Catholics, Conservatives and Nationalists. Such social forces form a
complex context for Joyces writing, which repeatedly taps into political and religious matters.
Since Joyce spent little of his later life in Ireland, he did not witness such debates firsthand.
However, despite living on the continent, Joyce retained his artistic interest in the city and
country of his birth and ably articulated the Irish experience in his writings.
Dubliners contains fifteen portraits of life in the Irish capital. Joyce focuses on children and
adults who skirt the middle class, such as housemaids, office clerks, music teachers,
students, shop girls, swindlers, and out-of-luck businessmen. Joyce envisioned his collection
as a looking glass with which the Irish could observe and study themselves. In most of the
stories, Joyce uses a detached but highly perceptive narrative voice that displays these lives
to the reader in precise detail. Rather than present intricate dramas with complex plots, these
stories sketch daily situations in which not much seems to happena boy visits a bazaar, a
woman buys sweets for holiday festivities, a man reunites with an old friend over a few drinks.
Though these events may not appear profound, the characters intensely personal and often
tragic revelations certainly are. The stories in Dubliners peer into the homes, hearts, and
minds of people whose lives connect and intermingle through the shared space and spirit of
Dublin. A character from one story will mention the name of a character in another story, and
stories often have settings that appear in other stories. Such subtle connections create a
sense of shared experience and evoke a map of Dublin life that Joyce would return to again
and again in his later works.
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dubliners/section9/page/2/
DUBLINERS COUNTERPARTS SUMMARY

The boss, Mr Alleyne, angrily calls Farrington up to his office and yells at him for avoiding work
and taking really, really long lunch breaks.

Mr Alleyne tells him he better finish copying out a contract by the end of the day or he'll be in
really hot water.

Farrington gets super angry and decides "that he must have a good night's drinking"
(Counterparts.15). Yeah, because that's a good solution to all your work-related problems.

When he gets back to his desk, he's not excited about doing any work, and counts the pages
he has left and then stares blankly at the line he has to write, "In no case shall the said
Bernard Bodley be." (Counterparts.20)

He decides he needs a drink before he can do any work, so he tricks the chief clerk into
thinking he's going somewhere inside the office, and goes to O'Neill's, a bar just down the
street (which was an actual bar in Dublin's Henry Street).

Farrington chugs a beer at O'Neill's and goes back to the office.

The chief clerk has figured out his trick and laughs at how many times a day Farrington slips
out to get a drink.

As it turns out, Miss Delacour, an important client who might also be having an affair with Mr
Alleyne, has come in while Farrington was drinking. Farrington is supposed to have copied out
an important document for her case, so it's not exactly a good situation.

Now he really has to finish his work, but all he wants is to be back in the bars. He picks up the
Delacour documents and takes them up to Mr Alleyne's office, hoping he won't notice that they
aren't done.

Back downstairs, he tries to get back to work but he's still way too distracted. He makes a typo
on the "Bernard Bodley" line, and since he's writing by hand, he has to start on a whole new
page.

This really frustrates him and imagines clearing the whole office: "His body ached to do
something, to rush out and revel in violence" (Counterparts.32).

There's one thing stopping him from a night of boozing, though: he's completely broke.

While he's thinking about this, he doesn't even hear the boss calling his name. Just like the
friend at the end of "An Encounter," "his name was called twice before he answered"
(Counterparts.33).

The boss catches the fact that Farrington didn't finish the Delacour documents, and he starts
screaming at the guy. He yells and yells and yells for so long that Farrington finds himself
wanting to react violently.

Farrington makes an unintentional joke. Here's how it goes: the boss asks him, "Do you think
me an utter fool?" and Farrington responds, "I don't think, sir [] that that's a fair question to
put to me" (Counterparts.35, 37). It's like saying, "I plead the fifth!" or "Do you really want me
to give you an honest answer? I don't think so."

Everyone goes silent and "everyone was astounded" that Farrington has been so bold
(Counterparts.38). Miss Delacour thinks the joke is funny, though, which makes Mr Alleyne
really mad, so he forces Farrington to apologize.

The scene cuts to Farrington walking after work.

Desperate for cash, he decides to pawn his watch.

He gets six shillings for the thing and leaves the pawnshop pumped for the night ahead: it's
going to be enough to buy drinks.

Farrington's especially proud now of his little joke, and starts thinking about how he'll tell his
drinking buddies.

One version that he thinks up goes like this: "So, I just looked at himcoolly, you know, and
looked at her. Then I looked back at him againtaking my time, you know. I don't think that's a
fair question to put to me, says I" (Counterparts.43).

He arrives at the bar and starts drinking and telling the story as everyone arrives. Farrington
buys another round after everyone trades stories.

The whole crowd switches bars and trades more stories and keeps drinking. We find out
Farrington's married, and his friends tease him.

On to bar number three. Here, Farrington starts eyeing a woman who has "something striking
in her appearance" (Counterparts.47).

They exchange glances but she leaves without looking at him, and he's upset that he has so
little money and has been buying everyone else's drinks.

Then it's time for arm-wrestling, and Farrington loses twice to a younger, smaller man. When
the bartender reacts to Weathers' victory, Farrington yells, "What the hell do you know about
it?" (Counterparts.55).

The story breaks off and we cut to Farrington waiting for a tram ride home to Sandymount (it's
not far from the part of town where the boys in "An Encounter" end up, on the east end of
town). Farrington's nearly broke, not even drunk, and very, very mad (surprise, surprise,
right?).

Farrington gets home and calls for his wife, but she's out at chapel. She's the kind of woman
who "bullied her husband when he was sober and was bullied by him when he was drunk"
(Counterparts.60).

"They had five children." One of his sons meets him at the bottom of the stairs and plans to
warm up his dinner (Counterparts.60).

Farrington yells at the kid for letting the fire go out, and then chases him around the room to hit
him with a walking stick.

The boy "uttered a squeal of pain" and repeats his pleas or Farrington to stop beating him, "I'll
say a Hail Mary for you" (Counterparts.80).