James Joyce was an

Irish writer. In his early

years his family was

drowned in poverty,

reason why he moved

from Rathgar in Dublin ,

where he was born, to

Bray. His first aspiration

was to be a Doctor,

even though he

attended, in 1898,

Dublin University

College where he

studied French , English

and Italian until 1902.

The artist task

flourished, writing

poems and prose.

During many years he

moved from Italy to

Zurich, where he finally

dies.

This Dubliner, extravagant by heritance and alcoholic by

choice but equally a polished author knew how to capture a

whole experience of life in few lines. In his Dubliners, a

short story collection, the Dubliner condenses the whole

Irish culture and feelings. He evokes real and very human

situations, he details the setting where the story takes

place in order to make it realistic and emotive, and his

main objective is to hold the whole nature of an experience.

With him, 20the century encounters a story teller par

excellence, he condenses ecstasy, despair, desire and

ambition with great intensity and he shows his expertise

and creativity when narrating, his words seem to be coming

out of his brain right forward the paper and so it shines his

narrative and invention.

In which once again he narrates with

master ability an everyday situation in

which a man described as heavy, dark

and dirty is sick of his daily routine,

especially of his job in which he has to

copy legal documents by hand. Tired of

the tedium of work, he only thinks about

going out to drink some beers with his

friends. Throughout the story this man,

who could be any man on the street, in

an office, sees everything as an obstacle

to his comfort, what increases his anger

to the point of brutal abuse toward his

son who prays his father to stop.

Title: Why “Counterparts“? Counterparts by definition are

duplications. He duplicates documents as part of his job.

But documents is not the only thing he duplicates. His life

seems to be a replication of the day before, and the day

before a replication of the previous one and these

counterparts is what precisely enrages him.

Main character: Farrington is described as a heavy dark

man who throughout the whole story never stops to think

about his actions and his thoughts and why he feels so

angry. This could be explained by the fact he is accustomed

to duplication instead of thinking. The combination of this

lack of reflection about his own actions, the humiliation

and frustration and the effects of alcohol is what takes this

man to brutal abuse towards his own son. 

Main facts: in order to get a better comprehension about

what the story presents, here there is a video which shows

the main facts of this extraordinary story…