The Gold Coin Symbol Analysis

The gold coin represents the transactional nature of relations in “Two Gallants.” Corley, for instance, does not associate with women out of a desire for love or even pleasure, but for what these women can do for him financially. He brags about the things women buy him––tram tickets, cigars, cigarettes. Corley’s relationships are based purely on goods and services, give and take. The story makes a joke of Corley’s fundamentally transactional nature in matters of love by having him affectedly pronounce his name in a lisping way, “after the manner of the Florentines”—this means that he calls himself “Whorley” rather than Corley, which of course is also a commentary on the fact that his goal in his date with the unnamed maid is not love or sex, but money. And Corley is not alone. From the woman Corley once knew who herself ended up a prostitute, to Lenehan’s talent for insinuating himself into a group at a bar such that he gets included when someone buys the next round of drinks, to the harpist playing for money on the street, to Lenehan’s friends who talk about another friend who won a bit of money at pool, basically every relationship in “Two Gallants” is transactional, is focused on making money or getting something for free.

The story is organized, largely, around Lenehan’s repeated question to Corley: can Corley pull “it” off—whatever “it” is. While readers might initially imagine that Corley is preparing to ask his lover to marry him, have sex with him, or pull off some romantic surprise, by its end the story makes clear that Corley’s goal is to convince the maid to bring him a “small gold coin.” Whether he is convincing her to give it to him out of her own savings or, more likely, stealing it from her employers, is never made entirely clear, and isn’t necessarily important. What is important is that is that the story ends with both its most important event––one it has been leading up to for the entire tale––and an entirely meaningless event. Corley and Lenehan now a bit more money, a circle of medal, but no meaningful human relations. The coin itself stands in place of any human connection the men could have forged. The coin symbolizes the reduction of everything to money and transaction in early-20th-century Ireland, and the loss that results from that reduction.