The focus on the Wild West at the beginning of “An Encounter” frames the narrator’s ambivalence towards adventure and masculinity. With its stories about battles and exploration, the Wild West contains the mystery, adventure, action, and heroism that the narrator desires. But while Joe Dillon seems to embody the violent, athletic, individualist masculinity that the stories about the Wild West celebrate, the narrator just doesn’t enjoy Joe’s war games very much. While the narrator wants adventure and escape from his daily life, he doesn’t like the violence and chaos that seem to come with it. Indeed, when he and Mahony free themselves from the strictures of the school day by playing hooky, the narrator largely tries to avoid conflict. The potential danger that he and Mahony find themselves in when the green-eyed strange old man zeroes in on them is much more frightening than it is exciting, and the man’s sexual perversions dwarf the boys’ attempts at deviance from the social order, showing the dark side of violent, individualistic masculine sexuality.
Joe’s performance as a Native American in the after-school cowboys-and-Indians games also highlights the connection between the Irish and the Native Americans as colonized people. While indigenous people in the United States had largely lost their battle against colonizing forces by the late 19th century, Joe’s fighting spirit suggests that Irish people might still have a chance to resist their English oppressors—making his choice to go into the priesthood even more complex, since Joyce considered the Catholic Church another force that subjugated Irish people. Nonetheless, Joe’s repeated triumph as the Native American in their pretend war games suggests an effort to rewrite history, in which the colonized people, such as the Irish, win. That these victories are only pretend, though, also suggests the degree to which Irish independence was also something of a fantasy at the time.
The Wild West Quotes in An Encounter
It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us… Every evening after school we met in his back garden and arranged Indian battles. He and his fat young brother Leo, the idler, held the loft of the stable while we tried to carry it by storm; or we fought a pitched battle on the grass. But, however well we fought, we never won siege or battle and all our bouts ended with Joe Dillon’s war dance of victory.
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. The adventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from my nature but, at least, they opened doors of escape.
Everyone’s heart palpitated as Leo Dillon handed up the paper and everyone assumed an innocent face. Father Butler turned over the pages, frowning.
“What is this rubbish?” he said. “The Apache Chief! Is this what you read instead of studying your Roman History? Let me not find any more of this wretched stuff in this college. The man who wrote it, I suppose, was some wretched scribbler that writes these things for a drink. I’m surprised at boys like you, educated, reading such stuff. I could understand it if you were… National School boys. Now, Dillon, I advise you strongly, get at your work or…”
This rebuke during the sober hours of school paled much of the glory of the Wild West for me and the confused puffy face of Leo Dillon awakened one of my consciences.
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.
The Wild West Symbol Timeline in An Encounter
