Arm-Wrestling Symbol Analysis

In “Counterparts,” Farrington loses an arm-wrestling match—twice—to an Englishman named Weathers, a contest that has several layers of symbolic significance. On the surface, the arm-wrestling match symbolizes a sort of measure or test of the men’s masculinity, something that their society defines narrowly in terms of physical strength and dominance over others. Just before the match takes place, Weathers is “showing [off] his biceps muscle” to everyone in the pub and “boasting” about his “feats of strength,” essentially touting his worth as a man and inviting someone to challenge him. At this, two of Farrington’s friends—O’Halloran and Paddy Leonard—call Farrington over. Both men’s biceps are “examined and compared and finally it was agreed to have a trial of strength,” meaning an arm-wrestling competition. That both men’s muscles are carefully examined and then put to the test emphasizes that masculinity in their circle hinges on a dynamic of victory or defeat. Weathers and Farrington can’t be considered equally masculine; someone has to be the winner and someone has to be the loser. Given arm-wrestling’s connection to performative masculinity, when Farrington loses the match (twice), it indicates his failure as a man. After this loss, Farrington’s inflated self-conception as a strong, proud, and successful man comes crashing down. Thoroughly emasculated, he flushes a deep red, overcoming by “anger and humiliation at having been defeated by such a stripling [young man].”

There’s also a political layer to the match, as it symbolizes what at this point in time was Ireland’s fruitless struggle for power against the domineering British. Joyce penned “Counterparts” around 1904, when Ireland was still firmly under Great Britain’s colonial grip. It’s fitting, then, that Farrington is an Irishman and Weathers is an Englishman; Farrington is literally crushed by Weathers’ stronger grip, and even trying to rise up against him again—in the form of a rematch—is useless. O’Halloran and Paddy Leonard even explicitly frame the match as being about “national honour”; in losing to Weathers and feeling so humiliated over the whole thing, Farrington represents Ireland’s disgrace and indignity at the hands of the British.