SOURCE: Malenich, John. “Creating the Stereotype: The Colonial Origins of Savagery and Intemperance in Joyce's ‘Counterparts.’” Notes on Modern Irish Literature 12 (2000): 57-61.

In the following essay, Malenich speculates on the influences of British colonialism on the Irish societal temperament as exemplified by the brutality of the character Farrington in Joyce's “Counterparts.”

Although its geographic location and its seemingly European or Western culture often can conceal what should be obvious, Ireland must undoubtedly be viewed as a post-colonial nation due to the “subaltern” position its culture occupied throughout the centuries of British hegemony; hence, a post-colonial approach quite often needs to be called upon to illuminate this nation's literature. Frantz Fanon notes that typically within such colonial power structures, “the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil … the native is declared insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but also the...