Counterparts by James Joyce

    Counterparts is a story about a man called Farrington, who works for Mr. Alleyne. Farrington is in charge of making copies of documents by hand, and he fails to do an important one on time. Mr. Alleyne tells Farrington that he has to have the document ready before closing time, but Farrington escapes the office because he had plans to meet his friends at a local pub.

Farrington returns to the office unnoticed by the chief clerk and he asks him to take a document to Mr. Alleyne’s office which was incomplete but he still delivers it in the hopes of not being caught.

Mr. Alleyne notices the missing letters and goes to Farrington’s office with a client called Miss Delacour. Farrington tells Mr. Alleyne that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and insults him. He then uses is pocket watch to get money and go drink with his friends who spend lots of money and Farrington gets irritated. He ends up arm wrestling with another man called Weathers and loses.

After being humiliated he goes home and looks for his wife, who is at church, so he tells one of his five sons to make him dinner, but he can’t because there’s no fire in the house so Farrington gets angry and starts beating his son Tom.

          I didn’t like this story because for me it has no sense. I mean, it starts in the office where Farrington has a problem with his boss, and then he goes to some pubs with his friends and then to his house and beats his child; but what I get, is that the anger built up throughout the day until he got home and well, his son was the one standing there so he got his anger out by beating him, but still, I don’t get what’s the meaning of this short story.