27 pages • 54 minutes read
James JoyceAn Encounter
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1913A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Wild West
The opening words of a text, known as the incipit, are very important for establishing tone, setting, and point of view in a story. Joyce bestows the honor of this responsibility upon a line that seems at first to lead the story in a different direction than the one it ultimately follows: “It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us” (10). The story takes place in Dublin, not Deadwood, and Joe Dillon disappears completely after the third paragraph.
The sand-and-saddlebags reality of the Wild West isn’t nearly as important in “An Encounter” as what that time period represents: freedom; courage; individuality; the great unknown. The narrator explains early on: “The adventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from my nature but, at least, they opened doors of escape” (10). He longs to get away from the routine of his life and find some excitement. The narrator and Mahony carry their games along with them as they explore the streets of Dublin, but the clearest parallel between the actual Wild West and its spirit as represented in the story comes when the boys meet the old man. It is not by accident that they meet in an empty field, as opposed to the busy streets and wharfs the boys had passed through earlier. There is no one around to save the boys should the encounter turn dangerous.
Rivers & Bridges
In Dublin, as everywhere else, water is necessary for life. It is a requirement for sustaining a stable existence in one location, but it is also the primary enabler of travel and transport throughout most of human history. For all the narrator’s talk of the dusty Wild West, it is through the city’s rivers, bridges, and other waterways that Dublin is seen in “An Encounter.”
Fittingly, the first mention of an aquatic placename appears alongside the announcement of the narrator’s plan to skip school: “We were to meet at ten in the morning on the Canal Bridge” (11). There are many others. At the start of his adventure, the narrator hides his books near the canal bank. For much of the story, the boys travel along Wharf Road, which they reach by way of the North Strand Road. They walk along the Liffey until they reach the quays, and there’s a joyful moment when they cross the river on a ferryboat. All along the way the narrator describes the various barges and fishing vessels he sees.
Once the boys reach the field and meet the old man, however, the references dry up. It is almost as though they had left the safety of a watery womb and entered into the dry, cruel world for the first time.
Green Eyes
One of the subtler symbols that Joyce weaves into “An Encounter” is green eyes. There are two key moments where the narrator mentions green eyes. The first mention is at the height of the adventure, when the narrator is watching sailors discharge from a Norwegian ship: “I came back and examined the foreign sailors to see had any of them green eyes for I had some confused notion” (14). It isn’t entirely clear why the narrator thought that foreign sailors would have green eyes, but more importantly, he is out in the great big world, attempting to learn whether things that he has heard about it are true.
When he finally does encounter a pair of green eyes, the mood has shifted considerably. The old man, having returned from his inappropriate activities, has begun to talk animatedly about whipping young boys as a form of punishment: “I was surprised at this sentiment and involuntarily glanced up at his face. As I did so I met the gaze of a pair of bottle-green eyes peering at me from under a twitching forehead. I turned my eyes away again” (17). The narrator has found the green eyes that he has associated with adventure and Wanderlust in the character of the old man, but as a representation of the world at large, it isn’t what he expected.
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