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Mr. Duffy is considered one of the most tragic protagonists of Dubliners. He is an antisocial, pessimistic, and obsessive man who is disdainful of excess and tightly self-regulated. Joyce’s choice of symbolic names in “A Painful Case” articulates the story’s somber subject of thwarted love and loneliness. Duffy derives from the Irish word for dark, suggesting the grim, solemn mood in which the story unfolds and in which Mr. Duffy lives. For Mr. Duffy, the world is a never-ending cycle of dissatisfaction. He has a good job at a bank but he never spends any of his money. He has a penchant for writing but he almost never opens his desk. He is interested in politics but he quickly abandoned the Irish Socialist Party meetings that he used to attend. He is bored and unhappy but he never does anything to change this. He is essentially a man trapped in a prison of his own design. He is so hesitant to step outside of his comfort zone that he resigns himself to a life of solitude. Salvation arrives in the form of Mrs. Sinico and, for the first time, Mr. Duffy knows what it is like to have a companion to share his thoughts and ideas with. However, Mr. Duffy is so used to being alone and so accustomed to his rigid ways that when their relationship evolves beyond his comfort level, he squelches it. It takes Mrs. Sinico’s untimely death for Mr. Duffy to realize that his pursuit of order and control has led only to loneliness and regret.
