Farrell, James T. "Counting the Waves".

Summary

The protagonist is Avery M. Kent, aged 50, on the board of a ship for Europe. He contemplates his deteriorated marriage, wishes his wife to be dead, wishes a catastrophe to happen. Since he has retired, he feels depressed, discontent, and empty.

He had build up his business company out of nothing, became highly respectable and now he sold it to enjoy his retirement. While in his company and in the business world he meant much, he finds out that on the ship he is nobody. The fellow travellers build up groups and friendships, only he is excluded. He longs for a true friend or for a woman.

He gets interested in a Russian woman who travels with her daughter. He receives with suppressed interest the information which his wife gathers about the troubles of the fellow passengers. Envies Benson, an elderly man but in a great shape, who is a great entertainer and a favourite in the society. Daydreams of the ways of talking to the Russian woman. In the night he dreams of her getting out in Plymouth. Tries to make his wife cancel the booked hotel in Paris and leave in Plymouth, too, but is refused as foolish.

The couple gets out in Paris. Kent loses the sight of the Russian woman and becomes one the American tourists who are lead by their wives to Europe, the wives pretending that they fully enjoy the old European culture which is recommended to them by their Baedekers.

Analysis

- one of the few of author's stories not set in Chicago and not dealing with working class

- inner unfulfilment and emptiness of an ageing retired man

- professional success paid for by failure in human relationships

- once a powerful boss now incapable of approaching a woman he is interested in

- recurrent motifs: standing by the ship's rails and "counting waves", daydreaming of actions which are never performed