Lesson Overview 

 Quiz

Would it be my class without a reading quiz?  Seriously, towards the end of the year the students have gotten so good about doing their reading (and wanting to get credit) that I will sometimes omit the actual quiz if we are pressed for time.  However, I also feel that these end-of-the-year lessons are SO important - I want to make sure that they are a part of them.  And, towards the end of the year - students are absent from class more and more (college visits, AP Tests, senior cut day, etc.) - so far from skipping the quiz, I will make it worth an inordinate number of points.  By doing that it eliminates unneccesary absences AND it makes sure that those students who are legitimately absent will be sure to make it up (by listening to the recording.)

The Discussion

You can find my Lesson Notes both in a transcribed, easy to follow version, and my original handwritten notes below.  Here is what we tried to do in the lesson:

James Joyce's "Counterparts," from Dubliners (1914), was another story I saved for the end of the year with my seniors. Farrington is a law copier in a Dublin office, bullied by his boss, Mr. Alleyne, and desperate for a drink. The lesson opens with the title. What are counterparts, and who are they in this story? Students soon build a chain: Alleyne over Farrington, Weathers over Farrington, Farrington over his wife and, finally, over his son Tommy. They also see a second meaning, since Farrington's job is literally making counterparts, copies of legal documents. Early questions look at the office itself. Students consider what Farrington is supposed to get done and why he doesn't, how Alleyne treats him, and the grudge that began when Farrington was overheard mocking Alleyne's North of Ireland accent. They also look at the darkness that runs through the story, and at Joyce's long, unbroken paragraphs, which leave a reader feeling as though Farrington is drowning.

The middle of the lesson follows Farrington out the door. He pawns his watch for drinking money, and students talk about what it means that he is out of money and out of time. Before he leaves, Alleyne humiliates him once more in front of a client, and Farrington finds his one great comeback: "I don't think, sir, that that's a fair question to put to me." At the pub, that story gets retold again and again, and each telling costs him another round. Students count his humiliations as the night wears on. A young woman brushes past him and never looks back. Weathers beats him twice at arm wrestling. He ends the night broke, sober, and watchless. A starred question links the story to Hemingway's "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" and asks whether there were counterparts there, too. Then Farrington comes home to a cold kitchen, and the questions turn to Tommy. Why is Farrington angry, is there a "real" reason, and what does beating his son have to do with the title?

The idea at the center of this lesson is projection and displacement. Farrington blames everyone but himself, and the anger he can't aim at his boss lands on the one person weaker than he is. That habit is something we are all guilty of, and I wanted my seniors to recognize it in themselves before they headed out into the world. To close the lesson, I played 10,000 Maniacs' "What's the Matter Here?" while students followed along on a lyric handout. The song is about a neighbor who hears a child being hurt and has to decide whether to speak up. After Tommy's pleading at the end of "Counterparts," it leaves the class with the question of who passes the cruelty down, and who notices and does something about it.

Group Work 

These two Group Works are so old because after 2002, I decided (wisely) that this story needed to be discussed together.  Not only for it's mature possible triggering content - but as it was an important discussion to have together at the end of the year - as we were getting ready for the class to end.  Again - I think the best way to do this story is with a discussion.  The 1989 "Group Work" is hilarious (to me) as it was my first year of teaching. Please see the actual handout for the questions.