James Joyce has a very intricate way of writing his short stories. 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.Farrington is the commonplace Dubliner with a pointless job and an everlasting need for a drink at the local bar. Reading the story, the reader can almost visualize this boring drunk moping around on the sad streets of Dublin. Farringtons job is one of repetition, being that he transcribes contracts all day, and his only excitement is the ten times a day he slips out of the office to run to the bar across the street. He cannot get motivated to do anything because he has no feeling of self worth. Farrington would probably rather be just a drunk who stays at the bar all day, but he needs the money to support his habit. Joyce describes several instances where Farrington is just sitting at his desk and cannot work which Joyce could be relating to either Farringtons stupidity or showing that Farrington is not doing what he wants because he is so conformant to society that he cannot figure out what to do with himself. In all of the Dubliners short stories, there is a struggle to succeed. The Dubliners seem to somehow always manage never to make any improvements in their lives and never succeed in anything that they do. Farrington wants to change but he cant because he does not have the means of doing it. The fact that the...
