Characters
Doggone it, C.K. Dexter Haven! Either I'm gonna sock you or you're gonna sock me.
— Connor • The Philadelphia Story
Behind the line May contain spoilers.
Our reading
An editorial interpretation.
The speaker, exasperated, tells a rival by name that a punch is coming one way or the other. Either they will hit him or he will hit them, so the mock-heroic ultimatum treats a fistfight as an unavoidable settling of accounts.
Context reviewed