The Books: “Dubliners” – ‘An Encounter’ (James Joyce)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

DublinersJoyce.jpgDubliners – by James Joyce – excerpt from the second story in the collection: “An Encounter”.

A creepy little story that follows on the heels of the death-theme in ‘The Sisters’, the story before it. Only this one has to do with spiritual death. Although I suppose you can say that the priest in ‘The Sisters’ – who loses it (mentally) after breaking a chalice – also has to do with spiritual death. In ‘An Encounter’, we start to see Joyce’s feelings about Ireland – and what it has to offer to its young sons. The only opportunities are outside of Ireland. There’s that one letter Joyce wrote to Nora – before they de-camped forever – something about “nobody can touch each other here” … He didn’t just mean sexually, although that was part of his meaning. He felt that the rigidity of the morality in Ireland caused love and intimacy to become twisted and sick. And I suppose if you look at ‘An Encounter’ in that light (which I couldn’t help but doing – that letter Joyce wrote to Nora came into my mind immediately when I re-read the story last night) – it’s quite a tragic story. Because what are we here for, on this planet, except to love one another? The encounter that the two young boys playing hookie have in this story is incredibly creepy, and I suppose acts as some kind of warning to our young narrator. The man they meet in the field, his yellow teeth, his creepy monotonous voice, his twisted sexuality … perhaps it says to the young narrator: “One day, this could be you!”

The story begins with a game of wild Indians. Our narrator, a schoolboy, loves these games, but more than that – he loves what they signify. (Excerpt below).

But there’s a vague dissatisfaction in all of this – because he knows he will never have such adventures at home. You can feel the stifling atmosphere in the story. Not just of his house, or of Dublin – but of the whole damn country. He and a friend end up playing hookey one day – they want to cross the Liffey in a ferryboat, and go off to some destination where they can have an Indian war, and be completely wild. So. They meet up one morning and off they go. Along the quays, the narrator is struck by the boats lined up … one is a Norwegian vessel, which really strikes his fancy. (Let’s remember Joyce’s obsession with Ibsen.) He stares at the markings on the ship, and also scans the faces of all the sailors – looking for blue eyes, which somehow seems to mean something to him. However, he doesn’t see any blue eyes. Perhaps because the sailors, as is true with most ships, were of a multicultural variety … but our narrator doesn’t know that. He’s looking for true-blood “Norwegians” … who knows what they might have to tell him? Even just getting a glimpse of someone who came from so far away seems like it might be good luck … or it might change HIS life somehow.

The boys never reach their planned destination – and lie in a field, just lolling about. A man walks by. Then he turns, and walks by again. Finally, the man sits down with them. He starts to talk to them. The boys don’t really like him – he’s quizzing them about what books they have read – Have you read Thomas Moore? Lord Lytton? He tells them about his book collection (like the boys care) – and then starts to ask them if they have “sweethearts”. Our narrator says no – kind of surprised by the “liberalism” of the question – and the man says it is very important for boys to have at least one sweetheart. He then launches into a monologue about women, and their soft hair and skin – and how lovely they are – and blah blah – the way Joyce describes his voice and his manner of speaking makes you think that maybe he is trying to hypnotize the boys, lull them into a sleepy sort of state. He uses repetition, keeps saying the word “soft”, keeps circling back to the same images … Reading it, I want to say to him, “Get LOST, perv!” The man then says something about needing to be excused for a minute – and he walks off a little ways away. They’re in a field – where is the man going? Narrator’s friend Mahony exclaims, “Look what he’s doing!” We never see what “he’s doing” – but I assume he’s masturbating. The man comes back, sits down, and then starts to talk about how boys should be whipped – and he goes off rhapsodically into a monologue about the importance of whipping boys if they are bad … and you get the sense that he is more aroused by the thought of whipping little boys than he is by the thought of women’s soft hair and skin.

Thankfully, narrator and Mahony escape – without anything terrible happening … and they go off towards home again. Never having had their Indian war.

I don’t think it’s accidental, too, that Joyce makes a big deal about how the man has these green eyes – eyes that make you want to look away. Unlike the “blue eyes” of the Norwegian sailors that the narrator dreams about. Green to me signifies Ireland, emerald isle … so there’s an indictment of his country and its ignorant rigidity and superstition in the man they encounter in the field.

In order to live a full and free life, one MUST leave Ireland. That seems to be what the story is saying. I’ll excerpt from the beginning of the story – where the themes are set up. It’s almost like this predicts the ending of Portrait of the Artist … with the eventual exile, the necessary exile.

‘An Encounter’ is another step on the journey to maturity and adulthood – which is the trajectory of The Dubliners. The narrator in ‘The Sisters’ was a young boy, still suffocated by the world of adults around him. Here, we begin to see him (although he is a different boy) breaking away. Looking forward, outward. Also inward, too, I guess – since this IS Joyce we’re talking about!


Excerpt from Dubliners – by James Joyce “An Encounter”.

It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us. He had a little library made up of old numbers of The Union Jack, Pluck and The Halfpenny Marvel. 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. But he played too fiercely for us who were younger and more timid. He looked like some kind of an Indian when he capered round the garden, an old tea-cosy on his head, beating a tin with his fist and yelling:

— Ya! yaka, yaka, yaka!

Everyone was incredulous when it was reported that he had a vocation for the priesthood. Nevertheless it was true.

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. I liked better some American detective stories which were traversed from time to time by unkempt fierce and beautiful girls. Though there was nothing wrong in these stories and though their intention was sometimes literary they were circulated secretly at school. Oe day when Father Butler was hearing the four pages of Roman History clumsy Leo Dillon was discovered with a copy of The Halfpenny Marvel.

— This page or this page? This page? Now, Dillon, up! Hardly had the day … Go on! What day? Hardly had the day dawned … Have you studied it? What have you there in your pocket?

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.

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