Brooklyn

by

Colm Tóibín

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Brooklyn makes teaching easy.

Jim Farrell Character Analysis

A good friend of George Sheridan’s, Jim Farrell is a shy but initially abrasive young man who owns a pub in Enniscorthy. One of Eilis’s first encounters with Jim comes when she accompanies Nancy to the weekly dance so that Nancy can spend time with George Sheridan. Eilis stands awkwardly next to Jim while their two friends dance, and although she thinks he’s going to ask her to dance, he takes a step backward and merely looks at her, causing her to think that he disapproves of both her and Nancy. When she later returns to Ireland after two years in America, though, she realizes that Jim doesn’t dislike her. In fact, he finds her quite appealing, especially now that she has grown up and dresses in American styles. Not knowing that she’s married to Tony, he takes an interest in her and starts urging George and Nancy to set up double dates between the four of them. At first, Eilis resents having to spend time with Jim, but she soon begins to enjoy his presence, finding him kind and mannered. Soon enough, they develop a romantic relationship, and he even asks if she would entertain the idea of getting engaged before she returns to Brooklyn, though she avoids answering this question by kissing him. When she finally decides to go back to Brooklyn, she doesn’t say goodbye to Jim, instead slipping a note through his door and telling herself that he’ll soon not care so much about what they could have had.

Jim Farrell Quotes in Brooklyn

The Brooklyn quotes below are all either spoken by Jim Farrell or refer to Jim Farrell. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Time and Adaptability Theme Icon
).
Part Four Quotes

And two years ago, Eilis remembered, when Jim Farrell had been openly rude to her, she thought it was because she came from a family that did not own anything in the town. Now that she was back from America, she believed, she carried something with her, something close to glamour, which made all the differ­ence to her as she sat with Nancy watching the men talk.

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Tony, Nancy Byrne, George Sheridan, Jim Farrell
Page Number: 236
Explanation and Analysis:

Upstairs on the bed Eilis found two letters from Tony and she realized, almost with a start, that she had not written to him as she had intended. She looked at the two envelopes, at his handwriting, and she stood in the room with the door closed wondering how strange it was that everything about him seemed remote. And not only that, but everything else that had happened in Brooklyn seemed as though it had almost dissolved and was no longer richly present for her—her room in Mrs. Kehoe’s, for example, or her exams, or the trolley-car from Brooklyn College back home, or the dancehall, or the apartment where Tony lived with his parents and his three brothers, or the shop floor at Bartocci’s. She went through all of it as though she were trying to recover what had seemed so filled with detail, so solid, just a few weeks before.

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Tony, Jim Farrell, Mrs. Kehoe
Page Number: 240
Explanation and Analysis:

She could not stop herself from wondering, however, what would happen if she were to write to Tony to say that their mar­riage was a mistake. How easy would it be to divorce someone? Could she possibly tell Jim what she had done such a short while earlier in Brooklyn? The only divorced people anyone in the town knew were Elizabeth Taylor and perhaps some other film stars. It might be possible to explain to Jim how she had come to be married, but he was someone who had never lived outside the town. His innocence and his politeness, both of which made him nice to be with, would actually be, she thought, limitations, especially if something as unheard of and out of the question, as far from his experience as divorce, were raised. The best thing to do, she thought, was to put the whole thing out of her mind […].

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Tony, Nancy Byrne, George Sheridan, Jim Farrell
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:

“She has gone back to Brooklyn,” her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmine Bridge on its way towards Wex­ford, Eilis imagined the years ahead, when these words would come to mean less and less to the man who heard them and would come to mean more and more to herself. She almost smiled at the thought of it, then closed her eyes and tried to imagine nothing more.

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Eilis’s Mother (Mrs. Lacey), Tony, Miss Kelly, Jim Farrell
Page Number: 262
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Brooklyn LitChart as a printable PDF.
Brooklyn PDF

Jim Farrell Quotes in Brooklyn

The Brooklyn quotes below are all either spoken by Jim Farrell or refer to Jim Farrell. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Time and Adaptability Theme Icon
).
Part Four Quotes

And two years ago, Eilis remembered, when Jim Farrell had been openly rude to her, she thought it was because she came from a family that did not own anything in the town. Now that she was back from America, she believed, she carried something with her, something close to glamour, which made all the differ­ence to her as she sat with Nancy watching the men talk.

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Tony, Nancy Byrne, George Sheridan, Jim Farrell
Page Number: 236
Explanation and Analysis:

Upstairs on the bed Eilis found two letters from Tony and she realized, almost with a start, that she had not written to him as she had intended. She looked at the two envelopes, at his handwriting, and she stood in the room with the door closed wondering how strange it was that everything about him seemed remote. And not only that, but everything else that had happened in Brooklyn seemed as though it had almost dissolved and was no longer richly present for her—her room in Mrs. Kehoe’s, for example, or her exams, or the trolley-car from Brooklyn College back home, or the dancehall, or the apartment where Tony lived with his parents and his three brothers, or the shop floor at Bartocci’s. She went through all of it as though she were trying to recover what had seemed so filled with detail, so solid, just a few weeks before.

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Tony, Jim Farrell, Mrs. Kehoe
Page Number: 240
Explanation and Analysis:

She could not stop herself from wondering, however, what would happen if she were to write to Tony to say that their mar­riage was a mistake. How easy would it be to divorce someone? Could she possibly tell Jim what she had done such a short while earlier in Brooklyn? The only divorced people anyone in the town knew were Elizabeth Taylor and perhaps some other film stars. It might be possible to explain to Jim how she had come to be married, but he was someone who had never lived outside the town. His innocence and his politeness, both of which made him nice to be with, would actually be, she thought, limitations, especially if something as unheard of and out of the question, as far from his experience as divorce, were raised. The best thing to do, she thought, was to put the whole thing out of her mind […].

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Tony, Nancy Byrne, George Sheridan, Jim Farrell
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:

“She has gone back to Brooklyn,” her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmine Bridge on its way towards Wex­ford, Eilis imagined the years ahead, when these words would come to mean less and less to the man who heard them and would come to mean more and more to herself. She almost smiled at the thought of it, then closed her eyes and tried to imagine nothing more.

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Eilis’s Mother (Mrs. Lacey), Tony, Miss Kelly, Jim Farrell
Page Number: 262
Explanation and Analysis: