An Encounter

“A spirit of unruliness diffused itself among us and, under its influence, differences of culture and constitution were waived. We banded ourselves together, some boldly, some in jest and some almost in fear: and of the number of these latter, the reluctant Indians who were afraid to seem studious or lacking in robustness, I was one.”

In a city of social and religious division, there were still things that could always bring kids together. As the boys leave the safety of their small world later in the story, the societal divisions that dominate the lives of adults become more and more apparent. With the narrator’s friends, however, these differences held no weight. Some boys joined in more enthusiastically than others, however, and the narrator points out his flaws perhaps to indicate motivation for his later actions.

“One day when Father Butler was hearing the four pages of Roman History clumsy Leo Dillon was discovered with a copy of The Halfpenny Marvel.”

This seemingly minor event is in fact the catalyst for everything that happens in the story. In direct but detailed prose, Joyce sets the scene within the classroom on this fateful day.

“The mimic warfare of the evening became at last as wearisome to me as the routine of school in the morning because I wanted real adventures to happen to myself.”

The narrator craves excitement, and this longing for adventure spurs him forward from this point on in the story. Whereas he was previously one of the “reluctant Indians,” now he finds himself seeking something more than the Wild West pantomime that the boys enact.

“The summer holidays were near at hand when I made up my mind to break out of the weariness of school-life for one day at least. With Leo Dillon and a boy named Mahony I planned a day's miching. Each of us saved up sixpence. We were to meet at ten in the morning on the Canal Bridge. Mahony's big sister was to write an excuse for him and Leo Dillon was to tell his brother to say he was sick. We arranged to go along the Wharf Road until we came to the ships, then to cross in the ferryboat and walk out to see the Pigeon House.”

Here, the narrator weaves together several elements that Joyce thought important to highlight in this story. His Wanderlust is clear: Summer is near, and he wants to escape his little world. He also introduces some of the vernacular that appears more and more later in the story as the boys go deeper into their adventure. The scene to come is preluded using language and placenames that showcase the importance of water to the city and the story, and the island of Ireland.

“The granite stone of the bridge was beginning to be warm and I began to pat it with my hands in time to an air in my head. I was very happy.”

The narrator is rarely so blunt in how he expresses his emotions. The reader is privy to much that goes on in the boy’s head, but little that goes on in his heart. The detached manner in which the boy’s happiness is related is a perfect example of Joyce’s use of naturalism throughout the story.

“We walked along the North Strand Road till we came to the Vitriol Works and then turned to the right along the Wharf Road. Mahony began to play the Indian as soon as we were out of public sight. He chased a crowd of ragged girls, brandishing his unloaded catapult and, when two ragged boys began, out of chivalry, to fling stones at us, he proposed that we should charge them. I objected that the boys were too small, and so we walked on, the ragged troop screaming after us: ‘Swaddlers! Swaddlers!’ thinking that we were Protestants because Mahony, who was dark-complexioned, wore the silver badge of a cricket club in his cap.”

This one paragraph ties together virtually all of the themes, devices, and symbols that Joyce uses in “An Encounter.” The narrator’s description of his walk is very direct, almost scientific, and includes several colorful and mostly aquatic placenames. Mahony carries on the boyish games that they had seemingly left behind at school, tying the Wild West play of the recent past to the unknown frontier of the immediate future. Along the way, the boys encounter a group of very poor children who assume that they must be Protestants, showcasing both prominent divisions of Dublin society simultaneously.

“We came then near the river. We spent a long time walking about the noisy streets flanked by high stone walls, watching the working of cranes and engines and often being shouted at for our immobility by the drivers of groaning carts. It was noon when we reached the quays and, as all the labourers seemed to be eating their lunches, we bought two big currant buns and sat down to eat them on some metal piping beside the river. We pleased ourselves with the spectacle of Dublin’s commerce—the barges signalled from far away by their curls of woolly smoke, the brown fishing fleet beyond Ringsend, the big white sailing-vessel which was being discharged on the opposite quay.”

Joyce takes a moment here to zoom in on a small part of Dublin city life. The reader is invited to see, hear, touch, smell, and even taste the Dublin that these boys are experiencing. For a moment, their adventure is a positive experience and their bravery seems to have paid off.

“Mahony said it would be right skit to run away to sea on one of those big ships and even I, looking at the high masts, saw, or imagined, the geography which had been scantily dosed to me at school gradually taking substance under my eyes. School and home seemed to recede from us and their influences upon us seemed to wane.”

Never is the narrator’s Wanderlust stronger than at this point in the story. One imagines that his adventures could go in almost any direction from this point, a fitting notion for a story set primarily around the city docks. It is after this height of excitement that reality comes crashing down in the form of the old man in the field.

“We crossed the Liffey in the ferryboat, paying our toll to be transported in the company of two labourers and a little Jew with a bag. We were serious to the point of solemnity, but once during the short voyage our eyes met and we laughed.”

Here, the reader witnesses the last of the boys’ innocence and youthful wonder, when they are still only pretending to interact with the broader world of the adults. Things quickly turn much more serious after they cross the river, when differences of Social Stratification and the unfamiliar come to a head.

“He seemed to be fairly old for his moustache was ashen-grey. When he passed at our feet he glanced up at us quickly and then continued his way. We followed him with our eyes and saw that when he had gone on for perhaps fifty paces he turned about and began to retrace his steps.”

The old man’s introduction seems innocuous enough at first, but he already begins to seem suspicious when he turns around and walks back toward the boys. His interest in the boys, as it is likely not for matters of small talk, radiates an eerie ambiguity.

“Then he asked us which of us had the most sweethearts. Mahony mentioned lightly that he had three totties. The man asked me how many I had. I answered that I had none. He did not believe me and said he was sure I must have one. I was silent.”

The old man begins to act and speak more inappropriately, and the reader gets the first inkling that the narrator is starting to get uncomfortable. In the middle of all this, Mahony finds room to introduce some more offensive language of the period, this time a sexist term with racist origins derived from the word “Hottentot.”

“He stood up slowly, saying that he had to leave us for a minute or so, a few minutes, and, without changing the direction of my gaze, I saw him walking slowly away from us towards the near end of the field.”

The reader is never told explicitly what the old man is doing when he steps away at this point, but it is heavily implied that he is masturbating. Joyce utilizes ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations and skirting potential censorship issues.

“He seemed to have forgotten his recent liberalism. He said that if ever he found a boy talking to girls or having a girl for a sweetheart he would whip him and whip him; and that would teach him not to be talking to girls. And if a boy had a girl for a sweetheart and told lies about it then he would give him such a whipping as no boy ever got in this world. He said that there was nothing in this world he would like so well as that. He described to me how he would whip such a boy as if he were unfolding some elaborate mystery. He would love that, he said, better than anything in this world; and his voice, as he led me monotonously through the mystery, grew almost affectionate and seemed to plead with me that I should understand him.”

The mood continues to change, and the old man seems more and more like a danger to the boys. What began as a playful adventure born out of the narrator’s wanderlust has grown into something significantly more sinister. The boys wanted to go out and see the world, and they’ve found something they were not prepared for in the least.