The narrator of “An Encounter,” an unnamed young boy, begins the story by describing the pretend, Wild-West-inspired “Indian battles” that he and his friends stage every day after school. But after a time, he gets bored of pretending and longs for a real adventure. He and two of his friends—Mahony and Leo Dillon—plan to skip school, cross the river, and seek out the true adventure he believes he could never get by staying home or at school. But despite his optimism, the plan quickly sours: Leo doesn’t show; the narrator and Mahony get too tired to reach their destination; and finally, they encounter a strange man who won’t stop talking about how much he loves to look at young girls and whip young boys. Faced with “real” adventure, the narrator finds himself more unsettled than emboldened by his brushes with danger and sexuality and feels a kind of churning disappointment as he fails to meet his own expectations of a hero. While “An Encounter” follows the typical structure of an adventure story, the gulf between the narrator’s expectations and reality force him to accept that the kind of adventure he wants may not exist.
Joyce models the narrator’s adventure across Dublin on the stereotypical hero’s journey. “An Encounter” follows many typical adventure-story tropes: the narrator breaks from his boring routine and ventures from what he knows into the unknown, mirroring the stories of adventure and exploration he likely would have read in Wild West stories, the “American detective stories” he likes, and in epics like The Odyssey. Furthermore, Joyce breaks the narrator’s journey into clear segments via multiple “threshold” crossings that move him from one phase of his journey to the next: first, his crossing of the Canal Bridge, next, his journey across the River Liffey by ferry, and finally his path through the alley and into the wide field where he and Mahony meet the strange old man. Numerous small challenges test the narrator and Mahony along the way both individually and as adventuring partners: first, they must contend with Leo’s absence; the ragged boys and girls throw stones at them and call them names; they face hunger and exhaustion; and finally, they realize that they have to abandon their hope of reaching their destination. These small challenges gear the boys up for contending with their biggest foe: the strange old man, who tests them more than anything else on their journey and ends up teaching them a lesson about adventure, routine, and the real world.
Throughout “An Encounter,” Joyce provides a trail of hints that the narrator’s expectations for his journey are much too high. First, the narrator’s ideas about adventure are informed mostly by fiction: the Wild West stories Joe Dillon likes, the “American detective stories” he likes, and, Joyce implies, The Odyssey. With these models in mind, the narrator gets the idea that he must go “abroad” to have a “real” adventure—and as a result, the journey he plans across Dublin is too long and ambitious for young boys. By describing the geographic details of the narrator’s journey—Canal Bridge to the Pigeon House and back, including multiple river-crossings—Joyce allows any reader familiar with Dublin to recognizes that the narrator proposed journey is too ambitious to pull off in the time allotted, particularly since he and Mahony dawdle along the way. The most concrete example of the narrator coming face to face with his disappointed expectations is when he and Mahony cross the Liffey: the narrator looks around hoping to spot a sailor who has “green eyes” like the Greek hero Odysseus does. Implicitly, Joyce suggests that the narrator is hoping that seeing an adventurer who matches the look of Odysseus will confirm that the narrator is on a “real” adventure. But, once again, the narrator is disappointed.
As the narrator’s fiction-inspired expectations clash with reality, his overall feelings of shame and disappointment at the end of his journey mark his acceptance that real-world adventures are nothing like those in stories. The narrator must come face to face with hard truths about his abilities as a hero. Rather than lead his group according to plan, the narrator sees that his companions are out of his control: Leo doesn’t even show up, and Mahony consistently sidetracks the duo by picking fights and chasing cats. And while the narrator wants to face his adventure with enthusiasm and bravery like the heroes in stories, he instead finds himself overwhelmed by the physical aspects of the journey and spends most of it tired and hungry. Although many of the stories the narrator reads about the Wild West involve exploring uncharted territory, his descriptions of industrialized Dublin reveal that there is actually no new territory to explore around him. Meanwhile, the threat that the narrator and Mahony face in the strange old man at the end of the story takes the narrator completely by surprise. He is almost taken in by the strange old man’s tone and does not react to danger until it is almost too late. That the old man does in fact have green eyes hammers home that actual adventure is not like the “pretty” adventures of glory and success that the narrator imagines. It is just as likely to be strange, frightening, or even perverted. Further, in the end the narrator needs Mahony to come rescue him from the old man. The “accent of forced bravery” in the narrator’s voice when he calls to Mahony characterizes the majority of his journey: when he tries to force adventure and act like his idea of a hero, he will only find disappointment.
Ultimately, the story ends with Mahony running to the narrator’s aid and the narrator feeling ashamed of the fact that he had always despised Mahony a bit. As Mahony comes running, the narrator realizes that even after their unsuccessful day, Mahony has a bit of a heroic instinct that the narrator himself lacks. Adventures aren’t what he imagined, and he is not the hero he hoped he might be.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Hero’s Journey and Disappointment ThemeTracker
The Hero’s Journey and Disappointment 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.
His parents went to eight-o’clock mass every morning in Gardiner Street and the peaceful odour of Mrs Dillon was prevalent in the hall of the house.
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.
But when 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. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.
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…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. Leo Dillon was afraid we might meet Father Butler or someone out of the college; but Mahony asked, very sensibly, what would Father Butler be doing out at the Pigeon House.
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.
When we landed we watched the discharging of the graceful threemaster which we had observed from the other quay. Some bystander said that she was a Norwegian vessel. I went to the stern and tried to decipher the legend upon it but, failing to do so, I came back and examined the foreign sailors to see had any of them green eyes for I had some confused notion….
We could find no dairy and so we went into a huckster’s shop and bought a bottle of raspberry lemonade each. Refreshed by this, Mahony chased a cat down a lane, but the cat escaped into a wide field. We both felt rather tired and when we reached the field we made at once for a sloping bank over the ridge of which we could see the Dodder.
It was too late and we were too tired to carry out our project of visiting the Pigeon House. We had to be home before four o’clock lest our adventure should be discovered.
While he expressed these sentiments which bored us a little we kept silent. Then he began to talk of school and of books. He asked us whether we had read the poetry of Thomas Moore or the works of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Lytton. I pretended that I had read every book he mentioned so that in the end he said:
“Ah, I can see you are a bookworm like myself. Now,” he added, pointing to Mahony who was regarding us with open eyes, “he is different; he goes in for games.”
He said he had all Sir Walter Scott’s works and all Lord Lytton’s works at home and never tired of reading them. “Of course,” he said, “there were some of Lord Lytton’s works which boys couldn’t read.”
In my heart I thought that what he said about boys and sweethearts was reasonable. But I disliked the words in his mouth and I wondered why he shivered once or twice as if he feared something or felt a sudden chill. As he proceeded I noticed that his accent was good. He began to speak to us about girls, saying what nice soft hair they had and how soft their hands were and how all girls were not so good as they seemed to be if one only knew. There was nothing he liked, he said, so much as looking at a nice young girl, at her nice white hands and her beautiful soft hair. He gave me the impression that he was repeating something which he had learned by heart or that, magnetised by some words of his own speech, his mind was slowly circling round and round in the same orbit.
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. We remained silent when he had gone. After a silence of a few minutes I heard Mahony exclaim:
“I say! Look what he’s doing!”
As I neither answered nor raised my eyes Mahony exclaimed again:
“I say…He’s a queer old josser!”
“In case he asks us for our names,” I said, “let you be Murphy and I’ll be Smith.”
After an interval the man spoke to me. He said that my friend was a very rough boy and asked did he get whipped often at school. I was going to reply indignantly that we were not National School boys to be whipped, as he called it; but I remained silent. He began to speak on the subject of chastising boys. His mind, as if magnetised again by his speech, seemed to circle slowly round and round its new centre. He said that when boys were that kind they ought to be whipped and well whipped…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.
I waited till his monologue paused again. Then I stood up abruptly. Lest I should betray my agitation I delayed a few moments pretending to fix my shoe properly and then, saying that I was obliged to go, I bade him good-day. I went up the slope calmly but my heart was beating quickly with fear that he would seize me by the ankles. When I reached the top of the slope I turned round and, without looking at him, called loudly across the field:
“Murphy!”
My voice had an accent of forced bravery in it and I was ashamed of my paltry stratagem. I had to call the name again before Mahony saw me and hallooed in answer. How my heart beat as he came running across the field to me! He ran as if to bring me aid. And I was penitent; for in my heart I had always despised him a little.
