A racing car goes nowhere, of course, and though Jimmy boards a yacht near the story's conclusion, the boat remains at anchor — paralyzed. He feels as though he is accomplishing much on the night after the race, but like Dublin itself, which "wore the mask of a capital" though not really a capital, Jimmy's accomplishments are an illusion. In fact, he is worse off at the end of "After the Race" than he was at the beginning, having lost all his money at cards. Because it was this money that made him acceptable to the team in the first place, his flirtation with Continental glamour is probably near its end.
The French driver has "a line of shining white teeth" in contrast to the yellow or brown teeth seen on Irish characters to date (yellow and brown being Joyce's colors of decay and paralysis). Also, Jimmy's luck begins to change when the Englishman, Routh, joins the group; Jimmy himself was educated in England and at Protestant, Anglocentric Trinity College in Dublin. As in earlier stories, Joyce blames the English for Irish paralysis when he can.
