A Consideration Of Farrington In James Joyce

& # 8217 ; s & # 8220 ; Counterparts & # 8221 ; Essay, Research Paper

2. See the character Farrington in & # 8220 ; Counterparts & # 8221 ; and elaborate upon his character and the societal conditions that helped to make him.

While it may be difficult to wish the characters that Joyce gives us in & # 8220 ; The Dubliners & # 8221 ; , I believe you must see these characters with an oculus focused upon the subjugation of the Irish people and the subjection of their civilization and society by the governing category of England. The Irish people have a long tradition of rebellion against their alleged English Masterss and the psychological effects of changeless subjugation and ageless rebellion would clearly weigh to a great extent upon the Black Marias and heads of the people. Irish rebellion and patriotism were good founded before Joyce. The generation of the motion seems to be the thoughts of the United Irishmen and the failed rebellion of 1798.

The times in which Joyce lived were genuinely helter-skelter in his fatherland. The Irish state of affairs was deteriorating quickly, the twelvemonth 1913 saw the initiation of the Labour Party in Ireland. 1913 besides saw & # 8220 ; The Great Lockout & # 8221 ; of workers that crippled the common adult male and galvanized the Irish Labour motion. The Irish Citizen Army was besides founded in Dublin. Joyce was to witness four major patriot parties in Ireland, the Irish Parliamentary Party, Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Such celebrated historical figures as James Connolly, and James Larkin organized the Irish in their opposition to English Imperialism. This is the het environment that James Joyce was to witness, and he was to be moved by these and anterior events to seek to rouse the public to the development that was impeding the rational and chauvinistic growing of the land. Not merely were the people being hindered by the British, but besides by the Catholic church. The church seemed to lenify the people and squelch their desire to seek power. Insistence upon other secular justness leads to a pacificism that stops the rebellious spirit. This is what Joyce sought to stop. His characters represent the volatility, weakness, and poorness of the clip, as they struggle to get the better of the agents of subjugation that dominated their universe.

One improbable image of the battle against dictatorship is Farrington in & # 8220 ; Counterparts & # 8221 ; . Farrington has evidently slaved his full life for those who have non rewarded or appreciated his labours. Mr. Alleyne is a symbol for the foreign carpetbaggers that descended upon Ireland like so many vultures to seek their lucks from the perspiration of the Irish working category. But Farrington has nobly continued on, he has lived his full life in the service of others and has nil to demo for it other than his age and a pocket ticker that he will pawn to buy the whisky that helps to relieve his mental torment. His heartless foreman, Mr. Alleyne, insults him to affect a bourgeois adult females that is hanging upon his well appareled arm, merely to be rapidly, and wittily, rebuffed by the weary Farrington. & # 8220 ; Do you believe me an arrant sap? & # 8221 ; Alleyne queries pompously. Made a sap of by Farringtons good known response, all Alleyne can make is endanger to end the employment of our hapless anti-hero. Farrington in low spirits takes to the streets to seek his comfort in the lone beginning that he can believe of ; intoxicant.

While intoxicant is non presently accepted as a solution to jobs, in the 19th and early twentieth century it was considered absolutely all right. The unhappiness of Farringtons status is advanced farther by the fact that he pawns his ticker and concatenation for six shillings. With coins in manus, Farrington moves away into the dark to seek his comfort. Here in the saloon, Farrington briefly regains his award and his position while his narrative is told throughout the dark. Farrington began to purchase drinks for his friends and was now an esteemed adult male. This is unhappily the traditional function of the working adult male in an unappreciative society. Farrington is merely a replaceable cog in a elephantine machine while he

is at work, but here in the saloon he is a adult male of fame. Narratives were exchanged and Farrington was once more a hero, if but merely for a short clip.

Subsequently at the saloon Farrington was to lose an arm wrestle competition to a immature Englishman named Weathers, who merely so happens to be an acrobat and artiste. I do non believe it to be to far of a stretch to see the conflict between Farrington and Weathers to be full of symbolism. The old versus the immature. The Irish versus those who oppress them. The hapless on the job category versus the middle class. In this blink of an eye, Farrington had lost in his defence of the national award and besides been humiliated as an old adult male. Again Joyce picks a alien to be the ruin of our Irish anti-hero. To add abuse to injury, Farrington has spent all of his money and his imbibing brothers desert him. Now Farrington is left to see his licking at the custodies of the Englishman and his conflict with the undefeatable opposition that is clip. He is turning old in a immature adult males universe. He is a 2nd category citizen in his ain land. This is the point that Farrington takes his concluding sad measure in his descent.

Farrington arrives place and brutally lashes his immature boy with a stick, apparently for leting the fire to travel out. This is Farringtons merely mercantile establishment for his choler and his unhappiness. All of the choler, subjugation and bias that he has been a victim to is redirected at his guiltless boy. The circle of subjugation will constantly go on as the boy grows to detest his male parent and besides to come in the universe that has so damaged his male parent. As the boy begs for his male parents mercy he says he will pray for his male parent. This is a mark that the male child has accepted the church as his defender, but to no help.

Farrington may non be a hero, but he is a potent and tragic symbol of the devolution of a adult male when forced to populate in a system that offers him no justness. It is non difficult to conceive of that Farrington was one time a immature kid, much like his boy, with a apparently bright hereafter in front. Through old ages of difficult labour and no chance he has fallen to his current province, but at times his spirit radiances as a beacon and his humor humbles his oppressor. Knowing a small about Irish history, it is sad to state that Farringtons status did non likely better nor did that of his boy. The subjugation that destroyed so many proud Irishmen continues on today to some extent and the current economic roar is once more being carved upon by foreign carpetbaggers. The quest for Irish freedom is a go oning battle, and Farrington was simply another baronial victim of the battle. James Connolly one time wrote, & # 8220 ; The on the job category are the exclusive incorruptible heirs of the battle for Irish freedom. & # 8221 ; Unfortunately, In Farringtons clip the battle was non to be won.

The English continue to busy Ireland, and a incorporate Ireland does non look to be on the skyline. The battle is timeless as the undermentioned quotation mark attests:

& # 8220 ; We have seen with choler in our Black Marias and the flower of shame on our cheeks English alms dumped on the quays of Dublin ; we have had to listen to the prevarication and hypocritical English imperativeness as it shouted the intelligence of the starvation and imploring Irish to the terminals of the Earth ; we have heard Englishmen bawling on the streets of Dublin the prevarication that we are the sisters and brothers of the English? and the greatest shame of all, we have seen Irishmen give their blessing to all these abuses? God grant that such things adult male ne’er go on in our land again. & # 8221 ;

Equally current as that quotation mark sounds, it is from Irish Freedom, December 27th 1913. With the atrociousnesss and condemnable behaviour of the British in head, it is easier to come to a more sympathetic position of Farrington. Farrington is non the cold hearted, bibulous kid beater that he at first appears, but instead the victim of a society that has doomed him to his sad destiny. We must see that he continues to fight on despite the odds and that his batch has been shared by an full state for coevalss.