Modern Man’s Predicament in James Joyce’s “Counterparts”Jeevan Thapa

Associate ProfessorTribhuvan Multiple Campus

Tansen, PalpaWith the dawn of the twentieth century, an increasing sense that life is overwhelmingly

confusing and complicated developed. In late nineteenth and twentieth century literature, we find a strong feeling that the world has become so baffling that it is impossible to make sense of it, particularly as the decline and in many cases the total eclipse of religious faith and moral value. Rapid social change, an alteration in the whole structure of society, almost always stimulates the production of great art. The same thing happens in the twentieth century. The disillusionment caused by the great devastating world wars, loneliness and alienation felt due to dominance of science and technology and unfair competition to satisfy insatiable thirst for money and power and frustration resulted from failure to achieve expected goals proved to be helpful for the production of excellent works of art. That’s why the twentieth century is regarded as the most fertile period for literature.

Literature after the First World War belongs to modernism which is widely used to identify new and distinctive features in the subjects, forms, concepts and styles not only of literature but also of other arts. In wider sense, it covers the whole twentieth century. The catastrophes of the war had shaken faith in the moral bases, coherence, and durability of western civilization and raised doubts about the adequacy of traditional literary modes to represent the harsh and dissonant realism of post war period.

James Joyce who was born in Ireland in 1882 belongs to modernism, a period of scientific domination, loss of faith on moral values and religion and bafflement and confusion. Modernism is an umbrella term for so many “-isms” like symbolism, imagism, Dadaism, expressionism, and surrealism that emerged with the turn of the century and, since then , have contributed building effectually all areas of artistic and intellectual ventures. The modern age witnessed a radical and deliberate break with traditional western culture and art. The primary signs of this age were fragmentation, moral confusion, and cultural crisis. The disillusioned kind of life gets reflected in the literary writings of the early twentieth century. In the field of literature, the modernists like James Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Lewis, Woolf set out to come up with a new form of artistic expressions. James Joyce earned fame from his novels like The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses but here attempts have been made to bring off his brilliant skill of exposing modern man’s predicaments especially in the case of his story “Counterparts”. His way of solving the modern problem was to be objective to adopt the peculiar microcosmic view. He managed to get his book of short stories, Dubliners, published in 1914. Harry Blamires has rightly defined the stories of Dubliners as “The stories are written with deceptive simplicity and deal successively with events of childhood, youth and adulthood. Some show the nullifying effect of the Dublin social and mental environment on characters whose dreams, hopes and are pathetically or tragically unfulfilled”(451).

These lines of Blamires show that Joyce wrote about modern men who are compelled to live frustrated life full of disillusionment, depression and failures. Each story of Dubliners describes a small but important moment of crisis of revelation in the life of a particular Dubliner.Commenting on Dubliners, David Daiches says:

Joyce began, in the collection of short stories he called Dubliners (1914), with carefully etched pictures of Dublin life which are metriculousley realistic in detail and atmosphere and at the same time were so organized that each detail became symbolic relation to Other stories, the whole constituting not only picture of “the center of the paralysis “ bu a projection of the basic crises of human experience and the archetypal rituals with which Men confronted them .(1162)

From these lines it is obvious that Dublin at that time was the city of the dwellers who were mentally depressed and frustrated. In all of the short stories of Dubliners, the characters cannot escape from either their actions or their environment. It seems that there is a definite order in the classes of Dublin and although some are better off than others, even the higher classes cannot find happiness in their lives and thrive on making the lower classes lives even worse than they already are. Joyce seems to be trying to get the reader to understand that Dublin is a horrible place and its inhabitants are overshadowed by its horrific existence.

Dubliners is a book of short stories revolving around several totally different people from the city of Dublin, Ireland. Joyce puts these characters through a number of situations in order to show the moral characteristics of Dubliners. These situations inhibit many forms of human disturbances including: sexual frustration, escapism, self-identification, human unfullfillment, the struggle between the classes, and toiling with the characters sense of belonging. In the story “Counterparts”, Joyce uses a combination a psychologically challenging lifestyle and everyday sexual frustration to drive the main character, Farrington, to his breaking point. One of the stories included in Dubliners is “Counterparts” which like all other stories of this collection has presented the basic crisis of human experience. In this story Joyce has constructed his fictional world, “an enormous interrelalating, punning kaleidoscopic verbal universe which presents everything” (1162).

The central character of the fiction “Counterparts” is Farrington.He is a commonplace Dubliners with a pointless job and ever lasting need for a drink at the local bar. He belongs to a working class man. His job is one of repetition. He slips out of the office to run across the street with the aim of secretly having a drink. .Being quite unsuccessful in life, he goes to bar where he gets temporary happiness or solace. He is a midlevel bureaucrat at a Dublin law office. His duty is to copy the documents for his senior workers and lawyers. Mr. Alleyne is his senior worker who has always a lot of complaints like the pile of documents against Farrington.The story begins with the sentence “The bell rang furiously.”(330) Even the sound of the bell is harsh or furious. This indicates uncongenial atmosphere of the office in which the workers are not motivated rather frustrated. They are not eager to do their works .They lack enthusiasm and vigor in their career. This is the true picture modern working class man.

Farrington is a man with modern spirit. Talking about troublesome matter of “modern spirit”, Herbert writes: On all sides one hears that never was an age more harassed and perplexed, more restless, and queasy, than ours. On all sides one is met by a feverish quest of salvation – salvation, curiously enough, of a soul of whose existence we profess to be skeptical. We are, it appears, a rootless generation. We have torn down the old signposts and now wander in a reckless waste. We remain ethical animals, but we can find no authority and no adequate symbols for such values as we wish to cling to. And so we become distrustful of our aims, wearied of our efforts sickened of our rewards. (3-4)

These statements are the true reflections of modern spirit. These show how disillusioned, perplexed and confused a modern man is.When Farrington is called by the boss, he muttered “Blast him” This is Farrington’s rebel or protest against his tyrannical boss. He is unable to express his dissatisfaction due to the fear that his master may dismiss him from his job.

Mr. Farrington, a man with few prospects and no ambitions, is berated by his dominating boss when he is unsuccessful to complete the assigned task of copying the documents of contracts between Bodley and Kirwin on deadline. This threat makes Farrington feel thirsty and plan for “night drinking” to lighten his overburdened mind. As he has repeatedly been asked to complete the given task within the given time, he hastily goes to the desk and desperately attempts to finish the work. He is so crazy to drink that he secretly goes to O Neil’ shop, drinks wine paying his penny left to him and hurriedly returns to office with the vain hope of performing the task. Out of his nervousness he makes mistakes in the works. Consequently he is threatened to be dismissed from his job. After a particularly nasty row with his boss, Farrington heads out for a night of drinking at his favorite taverns. Penniless until his payday, he pawns his watch for drinking.

Farrington has been presented as frustrated modern man who is living a suffocated life lacking money and time to enjoy and burdened with the responsibility of supporting large family with seven members and doing overworks in unfriendly environments. Being helpless he tries to retreat himself visiting pubs and spending time with bar girl. Even in the game of “feats of strength” he loses. He finds everywhere defeated. He goes everyday of his life without ever doing something worthwhile or meaningful. After being defeated in the game of “feats of strength” and getting no favorable attention from the bar girl, his condition is very pathetic. A very sullen faced man stood at the corner of O’Connell Bridge waiting for the little Sandy mount tram to take him home. He was full of smouldering anger and revengefulness. He felt humiliated and discontented; he did not even feel drunk; and he had only two pence in his pocket. He cursed everything. He had done for himself in the office, pawned watch, spent all his money; and he had not even got drunk. (337) Filled with rage and humiliation, he comes back home where his youngest son Tom tries to lit fire to cook food for him because the mother is out for chapel. It is said that one who is exploited and tortured by stronger takes revenge on those who are weaker than him. His rage and humiliation fueled by drink is unjustly poured on his innocent son. He mercilessly beats his innocent son with heavy strokes of a stick in order to take revenge of all his humiliations and frustrations.

Farrington is the victim of his time governed by modern capitalism. In the beginning of the story, Farrington deserves our pity and sympathy. Gradually the pity we once had for him seems wasted on him. He represents every modern man who is filled with defeat and humiliation imposed by the modern commercial social and economic forces. Farrington cannot get success anywhere. At work, his boss forces him into submission. At the bar the woman who catches his eye ignores him. He is defeated by the young Weathers in a contest of strength. The pervasive defeat is the experience of every modern man. The complexities, predicaments, bafflements, confusions and dilemmas that Farrington faced have been faced by almost all modern men. So, he is a representative of modern man who is living a frustrated and meaningless life. The themes of imprisonment, powerlessness and resentment are all weaved together in this well-wrought work. James Joyce’s masterly ingenuity of revealing plight of a modern man through skilful characterization of Farrington in his story “Counterparts” is really praiseworthy.

Works cited:Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed. New Delhi: Harcourt, 2007.Blamires, Harry .A Short History of English Literature. Metheun and Co Ltd., 1979.Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Literature. Martin and Warburg Ltd.1960.Joyce, James. “ Counterparts.” Elements of Literature. Ed. Robert Scholes and Carl H. Klaus.

Calcutta: OUP, 1997.Muller J. Herbert .”The modern Spirit.” Modern Fiction A Study of values. USA: McGraw-Hill, 1937.