Julia Schwartz

April 14, 2004

Dubliners -- “An Encounter”

            In James Joyce’s “An Encounter,” the main character ultimately finds a different reality than do his friends, Leo Dillon and Mahony. While Leo Dillion doesn’t show up for the daytime rendezvous in town as the boys skip school, and Mahony acts like the prototypical boy-child, the narrator has his discussion with the stranger, and, though he finds the stranger incredibly bizarre and even has a mellow hatred or resentment for him, realizes that indeed, his life is not what he thought it was – a rather astute realization for what seems like a young schoolboy.

            When the narrator sets off for his trip on the day of the story, he is excited about skipping school and not at all concerned with the responsibility to himself and his future that he is ostensibly skipping by bypassing class in favor of raspberry lemonade and catapulting stones at innocent young(er) children. While the stone-catapulting was actually his friend, Mahony, it’s not as though the narrator did anything to stop him from doing what he was doing.

            The narrator emphasizes boyish tricks and hobbies like the catapult right from the beginning of the story to emphasize the childish nature of the narrator before his encounter. The elaborate depiction of the scenes with the “Wild West” comic books and the debacle concerning the aforementioned and the two Dillon brothers – Joe and Leo – is standard nineteenth century schoolboy fare, as is skipping class, saving money only to spend it, and spending the day buying food and playing tricks.

            The encounter with a strange man in a field is not.

            This encounter, the name sake for the story, is clearly the focus, and perhaps the turning point of, the story. Its role as the title of the story points out its importance before anything else. Clearly, after what seems like a meaningless chat with an older man, the narrator realizes that perhaps his perception of meaning is skewed. He realizes that the discussion he had with that bizarre man about literature and himself – a rather one-sided discussion and not commandeered by the narrator – was perhaps something, and the childish antics of him and friends were meaningless.

            At the beginning of the story, he condemned Dillon for not having the gumption to skip school with him and Mahony to go waste the day in town. At the end, he probably wishes he had done the same, so that he would know about literature, and not have to pretend he was learned. Mahony has no interest in such pursuits, and the narrators subtle hatred – a sort of resentment of – Mahony is clearly a resentment of Mahony’s way of life, a life representative of laziness and without any real meaning.

            The conversation the narrator has with the stranger about whipping – especially in the case of Mahony – is a key point to the turn in the narrator’s outlook. With the realization that Mahony and his policies could be fallible (until this point Mahony was the desire, the goal – the role model), the narrator sees his friend’s flaws.

            Oddly enough, however, the narrator never appreciates the stranger for what he showed him. Instead, he resents him as well, despises his filth and his hypocrisy – his wavering opinions that first hope for news of girls and then later condemn that pursuit. All in all, the encounter, as referred to by the title, was very bizarre. However, bizarre as it might be, it was a highly worthwhile event in the life of the narrator, for it showed him the truth of his life – took away the sparkling glass of naivety, so to speak – and provided him with the desire to be better than the identity he presently occupies.