An Encounter
by James Joyce

An Encounter: Situational Irony 1 key example

Situational Irony
Explanation and Analysis—The Narrator’s Adventure:

The situational irony at the heart of “An Encounter” is that the narrator craves—and creates the prime conditions for—adventure, only to end up running away from it. The following passage, from early in the story, establishes his deep desire for adventure:

[W]hen the restraining influence of the school was at a distance I began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the escape which those chronicles of disorder alone seemed to offer me. 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.