James Joyce’s “Counterparts”, a psychologically acute story in Dubliners (1914), is a revenge tragedy that twists the kind message of Matthew 7:12 into “do unto others as they have done unto

you.” During a series of crises in Farrington’s depressing life, the bulky man responds verbally and then violently to his humiliation by two much smaller men. Enraged by the indignities he

must endure, the savage and revengeful Farrington wants to crush the fragile head of the boss he calls a manikin and dwarf, and is about to explode with rage. The title suggests his

contrasting life in the office, pubs and home, and his reversal from weakness to strength when he brutalises his nearest victim. The hopeless Catholic Farrington twice lifts up the counter

“counterpart”) on time. Mr. Alleyne shouts at him: “You have always some excuse or another for shirking work. Let me tell you that if the contract is not copied before this evening I’ll lay

the matter before [the senior partner] Mr. Crosbie.” When Farrington hastily delivers the contract, Mr. Alleyne discovers that two important letters are missing. Hoping to impress Miss

Delacour—whose French name suggests “of the heart”, who’s in his office and whom he’s “sweet on”—the boss unleashes a second tirade of abuse. Farrington makes things even worse by pleading

ignorance with a pathetic lie, “I know nothing about any other two letters.” The enraged boss then shouts: “ ‘You—know—nothing. Of course you know nothing. Tell me,’ he added, glancing first

for approval to the lady beside him, ‘do you take me for a fool? Do you think me for an utter fool?’ ” Inspired by a flash of self-destructive wit, Farrington replies as if on trial, “I

don’t think, sir, that that’s a fair question to put to me.” His incompetence, rudeness, unlicensed lunch hours, sneak-outs for drinks (as many as five times a day), ensure that he’ll

certainly be sacked. Joyce effectively employs musical repetition, leitmotifs and counterpoint (scarcely noticed on the first reading) as structural as well as stylistic devices to draw the

reader into the story and connect the three locales. The first sentence contains the adverb and adjective “furiously and “furious”; Farrington is anonymously called “a man” and “the man”

before he’s actually given a name; he exclaims “Blast him!” and “Blast it!” when he’s summoned and can’t complete the work. (“Blast” was considered a swear word in 1914.) The angry Mr.

Alleyne (always given a respectful title) twice reiterates, “Do you hear me now?” and the variant “Do you mind me now?” Though silently dismissed, Farrington pleads, “I was waiting to see,”

which provokes Mr. Alleyne’s “you needn’t wait to see.” Insulted by Farrington’s cheeky retort, the boss twice calls him “You impertinent ruffian!” The clerk’s “sharp sensation of thirst”

and need to “slake the thirst” increases with every insult. Instead of finishing the contract, he “furtively” slips out for a quick drink to ease the pain and reenters the office

“furtively”. Miss Delacour’s presence is marked on the stairs by “a moist pungent odour of perfumes” and in Mr. Alleyne’s office by “the moist pungent perfume.” In the “Lestrygonians”

chapter of Ulysses, Leopold Bloom in also seduced by a fragrance when “Perfume of embraces all him assailed.” Similarly, Farrington’s “heart swelled with fury” and “fury nearly choked him”

when he remembers the fascinating well-dressed woman who’d brushed against him in a pub, casually said “O Pardon!” in a London accent and completely ignored him. Like the second tap of a

hammer to drive a nail home or the click of a jewel box that snaps shut, Joyce’s repetitions suggest that Farrington is permanently trapped in his job, in the pubs and in his miserable

marriage. (The young Hemingway learned to use effective repetitions from Joyce, his old drinking companion, friend and mentor.) As Joyce subtly shifts locales, Farrington twice retreats to

pubs and, seeking the best drinks and most sympathetic companions, wanders between them. Joyce enlivens the pub scenes by using local expressions: “g.p.” is a glass of porter, the “curate”

is the ecclesiastical title awarded to the barkeep; “Apollinaris” is a German sparkling mineral water served with Irish whisky; “half-one,” “tincture,” “smahan” (Irish for “taste”) and even

“poisons” are euphemisms or antonyms for immoderately consumed alcohol. Joyce also evokes the atmosphere of the pub in the alliterative sight and sound, of “the glare of gas and the clatter

of glasses”. The pubs fail to provide the hoped-for solace. Unable to secure an advance from the office or borrow from friends, Farrington is forced to pawn his watch for six shillings. He

repeats his witty but reckless retort to Mr. Alleyne, which makes a splash at the pub. But he wastes all his money by lavishly treating his cronies, and even a stranger, to drinks. In

another repetition, he is twice defeated in an arm-wrestling test of strength by a mere stripling who’s been performing in the local music hall. Humiliated, discontented and smoldering with

anger on his reluctant way home, Farrington recalls his dismal calvary: “He cursed everything. He had done for himself at the office, pawned his watch, spent all his money; and he had not

even got drunk.” The effective repetitions continue at home. Like his boss, he summons his wife by twice calling out “Ada! Ada!” In a nicely-balanced sentence, she is “a little sharp-faced

woman who bullied her husband when he was sober and was bullied by him when he was drunk”. But she’s now away at church and can’t protect her son from his father’s anger. Slightly drunk, the

father cannot identify one of his five children and mistakes Tom for Charlie. As the little boy is about to cook the dinner left by his mother, the insulted and injured Farrington,

“furiously” like Mr. Alleyne, turns on the closest victim. In a moment of displaced aggression and to compensate for all the humiliations he’s suffered, he blames the boy for allowing the

fire to go out and severely punishes him for this minor infraction. In a perverse test of strength he seizes a walking-stick, beats the helpless child and cuts into his thigh. He calls him a

“whelp” or puppy, which makes his mother a bitch. Just as the brute force of the clerk corresponds to the oppressive authority of the boss, so the desperate boy tries in vain to appease

him. He thrice repeats “I’ll say a Hail Mary for you,” as if he were actually praying, but his plea does no more good than his mother’s prayers in church. Samuel Johnson defended the use of

physical punishment to encourage schoolboys to work hard and do their duty: “My master whipt me very well. Without that, Sir, I should have done nothing. . . . A child is afraid of being

whipped, and gets his task.” Jonathan Swift better understood the meaning of such beatings and foreshadowed the cruel theme of “Counterparts” in “A Proposal for the Use of Irish Manufacture”

(1720): “when my Betters give me a Kick, I am apt to revenge it with six upon my Footman.” A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle.

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