Analysis of An Encounter from The Dubliners by J. Joyce

An Encounter is the second story in the collection The Dubliners by J. Joyce. As the reader may think just reading the title, the story is about an encounter, even if no further information is given.

The narrator is a young schoolboy, whose name is unknown, who gets bored with his life, made only of school lessons and mock battles played during the afternoon. His desire to live a real adventure, and not just a fake one, pushes him to take a day-off from school, together with his friend Mahony, with the intention to go to a place called “the pigeon house”. The following day the two boys meet near the harbour and they spend some time watching at the ships and wandering around the nearby factories. After a short meal, they climb a low hill, and, since they are too tired to go on, they lay on the grass. After some time an old man climbs the hill too, and he sits near the two boys, talking to them. At first, he asks them if they read books, then he begins discussing about girls, making appreciations on their beautiful hands and hair. He also asks the two boys if they have any girlfriend; the protagonist answers he does not, Mahony answers he has three girlfriends.

Then, suddenly, the old man stands up and goes to the border of the field; the reader does not know what happens, but Mahony says the man is doing something indecent. It is generally believed the man is touching himself. Later on, the odd character comes back to the boys, but he shows a totally different countenance: he starts saying boys with girlfriends should be whipped, and he also describes how he would do that and the pleasure he would take from that. The protagonist, scared by this unpredictable behaviour, leaves the man saying it is time for him to go, but in reality he flees from the hill calling back his friend. The protagonist also says that he feels a little guilty, since he had always despised Mahony, thinking he was a bit stupid, but in that occasion the protagonist felt a lot more comfortable thanks to Mahony’s presence.

The story belongs to the first part of The Dubliners, where the centre of attention is a single person, shown and analyzed from an external point of view; in this case, the boy’s perspective. The story can be roughly divided into two parts, where the first one introduces the young schoolboy’s life, while the second one is centred on the meeting with the old man. The key to understand the story is the link between the protagonist and the old man, who are apparently different characters. In reality, they share a feeling of dissatisfaction, and they suffer because of the impossibility of fulfilling it. Indeed, the protagonist is bored with his life, since the fake battles fought during the afternoon are far from the great, superb adventures he imagines at school in the morning. So, he embarks on a real adventure leaving school for one day and going around with a friend. The sense of liberty and independence at first makes them happy, but then some unwanted events happen. First of all, they are unable to reach their destination (the pigeon house) since they are tired, and then the scaring encounter with the old man further contributes to turn what had to be a happy, memorable day, in a real nightmare.

A similar delusion can be found on the man’s side: the old man sadly remembers the days when he had lots of girls around him, and he clearly envies Mahony and the protagonist, who are still living their best years. Thus, his filthy act may be explained as a substitute for a real sexual intercourse, not so differently from the hill, which is a substitute for the “pigeon house” the boys tried in vain to reach. What’s more, the sudden change in personality may be interpreted as an example of the instability characterizing human beings: the feeling of sympathy towards the two boys is substituted by envy and hatred, probably because the old man, after his act, remembers his real condition, and so his new countenance is a rebellion, although pointless, against a sad truth (maybe impotence).

As in the previous story in the collection, the character who is at the centre of attention does not coincide with the narrator. We have no access to the odd man’s mind, and what makes him act like that is left to the reader to suppose; moreover, the schoolboy’s point of view is a very simple one, since there are neither judgements nor analyses, and he does not even look at what the man does, despite Mahony’s invitation to do so. Thus, the narrator knows nothing more than the reader does, and this also shows the impossibility of entering the human mind, where not only reason, but also instincts and irrational passions rule, and the certainty to know why a character behaves in a certain way is definitely forgotten.