Saturday, June 30, 2012

(Rochon) Alcoholic tendencies


Alcohol is a heavy influence for people in
Dublin, in James Joyce’s eyes.  One story he voices this in is “Counterparts.” Mr. Farrington works at bank and is always on bad terms with his boss Mr. Alleyne because he does not get his work done.  Instead Mr. Farrington spends more time going to pubs and drinking than anything else.  His task this time is to simply make a copy of documents and bring them to Mr. Alleyne by the evening or risk being fired.  He begins to work on it, but slips off to O’Neill’s shop governed by his craving for boozes.  Joyce writes, “Could he ask the cashier privately for an advance? No, the cashier was no good, no damn good: he wouldn’t get an advance…He knew where he would meet the boys…the barometer of his emotional nature was set for a spell of riot.”



Alcohol drives Mr. Farrington to neglect his job even when it is a simple task to complete.  It causes him to not restrain his tongue when he needs to.  Boozes coax him into selling his watch just to buy more drinks instead of hanging on to that money.  He prefers to get drunk with friends instead of figuring out how to get another job.  He gets angry at losing a wrestling match and takes everything out on his son because there is no dinner waiting for him at home.  Mr. Farrington does all of these things because he is a slave to alcohol. He disregards everything that is important to him just for a few drinks.  He cannot even see the kind of ruin he’s putting himself and his family through nor does he care to see.  The only thing he cares for is alcohol. 

1 comment:

  1. I thought Mr. Farrington was a fascinating character although Joyce wrote him to be very cagey and vague. I wonder what you could figure out about his character after a dissection of the text.

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