An Encounter by James Joyce

An Encounter is about a group of schoolboys that imagine they’re in the Wild West and an unnamed narrator explains that Joe Dillon, a boy that always wins end his victory with a dance. This kind of games bond the group of boys really close.

After telling a story about Leo Dillon, they narrator organizes a plan to skip school one day with Leo and another boy names Mahony and go walk around Dublin. They make a pact to meet the next day at 10 am but only Mahony arrives on time. The pair of boys have some adventures and they meet an old man that starts chatting with them and starts asking them if they had girlfriends and stuff like that, and when the man leaves for a moment, the narrator tells Mahony to use code names, “Smith and Murphy”. When the man returns, Mahony leaves to chase a cat and leaves the narrator alone with the man who starts talking about how a boy who talks to a girl should be whipped, and that he would like to execute that kind of punishment. The narrator then gets up from where he was seated and told the man he had to leave.

          Again, I don’t know what’s the point of this story, I didn’t really like it that much because it has no interesting end, and I find it pretty weird that James Joyce would chose something like these to write about.