feels a flush of remorse. He’s starting to think about what his friend told him and he is forced to confront the unpleasant reality of his situation. Sometimes being married is worse than being single in Dublin. In “Counterparts”, a man named Farrington is married and has five children. Unable to obtain an advance on his pay from the cashier, Farrington decides to pawn his watch in order to have money for drinking that night. He takes his six shillings and dives into a raucous evening with his friends but returns home angry and unhappy. He spent all his money and hadn't even gotten drunk. He goes into his house, and finds that his wife has gone to the chapel, and not left dinner for him. One of his sons, Tom, offers to fix him dinner, but Farrington is furious. He seizes a walking stick, and, ignoring his son's pleas, begins to beat him. He’s a fall down drunk and finds his life to be miserable. His desire for drunkenness or "thirst" as Farrington innocently thinks of it, can wreck a human life. In fact it can wreck more than one human life since Farrington's oafish brutality affects his children and his wife terribly. He doesn’t even seem to know his children’s names. His wife bullies him around when he is sober but when he is drunk she is always the one being bullied. His work is miserable, his home life is miserable and even his pleasures are shocking and disgraceful. Unlike the first two stories marriage has no impact on Farrington and his behavior Author James Joyce gave his view of marriage in the stories “The Boarding House”, “A Little Cloud”, and “Counterparts”. Marriage wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. In “The Boarding House” marriage was a necessity but some good would have come from it whereas in “A Little Cloud” marriage was thought to be stale because a married man cant have fun when he’s tied d...
