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Counterfeit Goods in FlannO'Brien's JOHN DUFFY'SBROTHERShannon Tivnan aa University of South FloridaPublished online: 17 Dec 2010.

To cite this article: Shannon Tivnan (2010) Counterfeit Goods in FlannO'Brien's JOHN DUFFY'S BROTHER, The Explicator, 68:4, 270-273, DOI:10.1080/00144940.2010.535478

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The Explicator, Vol. 68, No. 4, 270–273, 2010Copyright C© Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0014-4940 print / 1939-926X onlineDOI: 10.1080/00144940.2010.535478

SHANNON TIVNAN

University of South Florida

Counterfeit Goods in Flann O’Brien’sJOHN DUFFY’S BROTHER

Keywords: counterfeit, “John Duffy’s Brother,” Flann O’Brien, Eamon de Valera

Much of the discussion of Flann O’Brien’s “John Duffy’s Brother” usuallybegins with a preliminary examination of the parallels between O’Brien’s storyand James Joyce’s “A Painful Case” in Dubliners. Though there are some obviouspoints of comparison, not the least of which is that both center around a characterwith the surname of Duffy, “John Duffy’s Brother” is more of a commentary oncertain contemporary Irish themes and events that O’Brien found disquieting thana response to Joyce’s earlier story.

O’Brien’s story relates the tale of a man, the brother of a John Duffy, whocomes under the unique impression that he is a train one morning after preparinghis “frugal breakfast” (O’Brien 66). As our transformed protagonist goes throughhis day, going to work in the “office of Messrs. Polter and Polter, Solicitors,Commissioners for Oaths” (67), his novel experience persists until he returnshome for his lunch. At this time, his mind clears, “clean light flooding a placewhich had been dark” (68). The reason for this occurrence is never fully explained,but it seems to be connected to the very specific date O’Brien gives for this singulartransformation, as well as to the name “Duffy” itself.

John Duffy’s brother becomes convinced he is a train on the morning ofMarch 9, 1932. Perhaps not coincidentally, this is the same day that Eamon deValera took his place as president of the Executive Council and head of the rulingFianna Fail party as a result of the general election in February of that sameyear (Dunphy 145). Fianna Fail defeated the Cumann na nGaedheal party ona platform that promised government support for Irish businesses and pledged“frugality and meritocracy” in response to the accused excesses of Cumann na

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Counterfeit Goods in Flann O’Brien’s JOHN DUFFY’S BROTHER 271

nGaedheal. The significance of both the date of John Duffy brother’s experienceas a train and the frugal meal he enjoys immediately before the experience appearto be connected to the official rise of Eamon de Valera and the Fianna Fail party topower.

The importance of this connection becomes clear when one considers theunderlying theme of the story itself, as reflected primarily in the name “Duffy.”Up until the mid-nineteenth century, “duffing” was slang for an “inferior or coun-terfeit” good or the “person selling such goods” (see “Duffing”). This idea ofcounterfeiting also appears in the character of Mrs. Goggins’s cousin, whom thereader is told was imprisoned in 1924 for “the manufacture of spurious currency”(O’Brien 66). In addition, the story itself admits to being an accurate account ofan event that has never been told to anyone: that it is a “spurious” tale is admittedfrom the beginning by the improbable circumstances of its telling.

The importance of March 9, 1932, in the history of the Irish Free State, com-bined with the implications of the name “Duffy,” point to a very particular attackon the state of the Irish government at the time that O’Brien completed the storyin 1938. Fianna Fail rose to prominence on a nationalist platform that supportedIrish self-sufficiency fed by the growth of national industry and agriculture. As aresult, between 1931 and 1937, the goods that were subject to import tariffs bythe government rose from 68 to 288 (Jackson 291). Many of these goods wereraw materials, including coal for the Irish railways, which were imported fromBritain. By this time, Ireland was entering a period of “economic stagnation ac-companied by stagnation of ideas at the level of political leadership” (Dunphy215). Though there was development in Irish industry during the 1930s, includinga rise in factories that could supply much needed manufacturing materials—aswell as railway lines to transport those materials—the economic growth for themajority of the Irish working class had not been what was promised in the elec-tion of 1932. By 1938, when O’Brien was completing work on “John Duffy’sBrother,” “Fianna Fail’s quest for a thoroughgoing autarky had ended . . . amidstthe shambles of high prices (especially for vital raw materials)” (Jackson 291).Thus, when O’Brien’s unnamed protagonist informs his clerk Mr. Hodge that, asa train, he uses “half a ton [of coal] per thirty miles,” the irony of this considerableconsumption would not be lost on working-class Irish, who not only dependedon the Irish railways for transportation, but also bore the brunt of the economicimpact of higher import tariffs on raw materials that characterized the 1930s. Ittherefore seems particularly appropriate that a train is at the heart of O’Brien’sstory, since the railway itself, as a major force in industrial development, be-comes a symbol for the paradox that is the Irish Free State: industry is encouragedand even protected by the government but the supply of raw materials that must

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272 The Explicator

necessarily feed any national industrial growth has become increasingly problem-atic due to those same protectionist policies.

The radicalism that seemed to characterize Fianna Fail’s initial rise to powerhad clearly waned by the time that O’Brien was writing “John Duffy’s Brother,”and the period following the 1938 general election only reinforced the party’sconservative turn and resulted in an increasing insularity that frustrated manycontemporary artists. The 1930s and ‘40s proved to be a time when Irish writers“revealed a mediocre, disheveled, often neurotic and depressed petit-bourgeoissociety atrophied for want of a liberating idea”—in contrast to the Irish Catholicvision promoted by de Valera, which celebrated the Gaelic language, orthodoxCatholicism, and protectionist policies for Irish industry (Brown 122). Such analternative vision of Irish reality is what O’Brien offers in “John Duffy’s Brother.”The story suggests that the main character’s confusion (and so the reader’s con-fusion as well) over what is real and what is counterfeit is related to the Irishgovernment’s attempts to push a spurious Irish nationalism that would only suc-ceed in offering a limited definition, both economically and socially, for the newcountry.

The end of the confusion and the realization of John Duffy’s brother at theend of his experience are characterized by both discovery and fear. The finalallusion at the end of the story to Keats’s “On First Looking Into Chapman’sHomer”—through reference to the “peak in Darien” (O’Brien 68)—implies theliberating quality of the main character’s time as a train and the change in per-spective that it brings, as Thomas F. Shea points out in “Flann O’Brien and JohnKeats: ‘John Duffy’s Brother’ and Train Allusions,” his examination of the story inrelation to Keats’s poem. It is this new perspective on the limited routine of his life,as represented by the mechanical routine of the train that John Duffy’s brother be-comes, and the awareness of the illusory nature of the transformation that ends thestory. O’Brien proposes both the potential advantages and detrimental effects ofsuch a radical re-definition of identity as experienced by the main character. In theend, it is the various possibilities for defining the “reality” of John Duffy’s brother,and by implication, Ireland itself, that must be realized and acknowledged beforethe totalizing and restrictive characterization of Irish economic and social identityoffered by de Valera and Fianna Fail can be exposed as simply another counterfeit.

Works Cited

Brown, Terrence. Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922 to the Present. Ithaca: Cornell UP,1985. Print.

“Duffing.” A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. 7th ed. New York: Macmillan, 1970.247. Print.

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Counterfeit Goods in Flann O’Brien’s JOHN DUFFY’S BROTHER 273

Dunphy, Richard. The Making of Fianna Fail Power in Ireland: 1923–1948. Oxford: Clarendon Press,1995. Print.

Jackson, Alvin. Ireland 1798–1998: Politics and War. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. Print.O’Brien, Flann. “John Duffy’s Brother.” Story 19.90 (1941): 65–68. Print.Shea, Thomas F. “Flann O’Brien’s and John Keats: ‘John Duffy’s Brother’ and Train Allusions.”

Eire-Ireland 24.2 (1989): 109–20. Print.

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