James Joyce's Dubliners

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Dubliners

In Dubliners, written by James Joyce, the characters are faced with critical decisions, which lead to their escaping society. In Ireland at the time, society was going through many problems such as alcoholism, poverty and depression. Joyce wrote this book to explain what types of problems people were going through in Ireland. It seemed as if he also wanted to imply, that change was a good thing. The characters in each of these stories are caught up in the moment, they need to leave their problems behind and look into the future. In result in them not doing so led to loneliness and misery.

In the story “Counterparts”, Farrington escapes his job through alcohol. Farrington often took rather long lunch breaks, and instead of eating, he went to the bars to drink. Once Farrington’s boss found out about this he replies “Understand once and for all that you get a half an hour for your lunch and not an hour and a half” (83). Farrington hated his life and needed to escape his problems and according to him, going to the bar was the only way to do so. Farrington was a clerk in a law firm and he copied legal documents in long-hand this was extremely painful and tedious work which could have led to depression. Farrington was extremely irresponsible and almost never did his work and when he did do his work he never did a thorough job. “Farrington hoped Mr. Alleyne would not discover that the two letters were missing”(85). These letters were supposed to be done before he left work. Instead of doing these letters he just left work early to go to the bars with his friends. This is irresponsible and proves that Farrington needs to escape his job due to alcoholism.

When Mr. Farrington went out with his friends he ended up being ashamed that he lost in an arm wrestling match. It seemed as if Farrington’s life couldn’t get any worse he desperately needed to escape society because society was dragging him down. He got so frustrated trying to escape society that he took it out on his family, when they simply forgot to light the fire and fix dinner. In Farrington’s drunken state of mind he said, “Now, you’ll let the fire out next time! Said the man, striking at him viciously with the stick.

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