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Chandra on
Joyceans I have now read the story twice, the first time after I read the very interesting introduction by Roopesh, and the second time after reading the equally interesting comments by Ruth. Since last night I have carried the story with me around whatever I have done, and the thought does not leave me that all the characters depicted by Joyce in this story are the different facets of this ONE BOY. Diferent names, different personalities, all hiding in but one person. It is the story again of another young boy. The place it occupies in Dubliner is also interesting. Did Joyce do it deliberately? In the first story, "The Sisters", the priest is dead, the boy is free to indulge in his fantasy in the second story, "An Encounter", and takes step towards adulthood really in the third story, "Araby". If my above reading is valid, the boy who is mentally freed in the last story, is now able to take part in fantasies - that is why the wild west. He can read books like "The Apache Chef" when it is expected that he reads the Roman History. It is not easy, because when his mind is involved with Indian wars, he remembers the eight o'clock mass attended every morning. Dillon is that part of him who dares read books like The Apache Chef. He is that part of the boy is ready to seek adventure, that part which is aware that >But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at > home: they must be sought abroad. So he is ready to seek adventure on a summer morning. Arrangements are made with two friends. The boy is the one who is most willing to go, most eager to go. Mahoney is one part of him, which hesitates a bit, and comes to taste the adventure though a bit late. Dillon does not come. He funked it. I understand this as being a reference to that part of the boy which was infleuenced by the church and the teaching of the priest, which cannot take part in the adventure, however it pretends to want to. And what does the boy experience on this summer day near the river? His mind is free, the infleuence of the strict upbringing he went through is receding before the calls of the big world, before the calls of the wild west. > even I, looking at the high
masts, saw, or imagined, the geography which The river was the last hindrance between what the boy was and what he wanted. He crosses it with the ferry boat. No bridge needs to be built here between the two spheres. It is a journey which does not leave any mark behind. He gets off the boat, it is as if he never sat in one, whereas a bridge would have been a permanent feature, always reminding him of the other bank, other life. He has crossed the river, arrived at new shores. The new place is exciting, but he cannot see all that he had wanted to, the new experience is too much to bear. Let us look at the scene towards the end when he is lying on the bank - of course, in the story it says that the two boys are lying on the bank. But I look at it as the two personalities of one boy, hence the singular. - and when the old man approaches. This old man is a symbol for me of what awaits the boy in the future. The old man first goes away, and then returns and sits next to the boy. Joyce is telling the boy, "You cannot avoid the old age. It is going to come some time or the other." Referring to how the man talks of studies, books, girls, etc, Joyce is hinting at the hypocracy of the adult world. Part of the boy is ready to answer questions, pretends to be wearing a mask similar to that of the old man. Part of the boy, Mahoney, is wary, careful of strangers and is not ready to give out information. When the old man goes away, god knows what he did, perhaps what the boy saw was shocking because it was typical adult behaviour and the boy was not yet adult enough to accept that it was inevitable. (Here, I am not sure that it was anything to do with masturbation, there are other things one can do which could be equally shocking ! If the old man indeed was masturbating, I don't see why he had to go away from the boys, but do it so that it was visible to the boy. And I doubt that such a man would come back as if nothing had happened.) The old man symbolises here simply a person who has advanced in age, and had spent quite a few years as an adult. He is the symbol of what could happen to the young, not-any-more-so-innocent boys. When he comes back > He seemed to have forgotten
his recent liberalism. He said that if ever he This is how every hypocrite pleads for understanding. So in my understanding, "An Encounter" is the story of the initial steps a young school boy takes towards adulthood. He is not yet across the threshold as he does in Araby. He is still fantasising about it, it is a sort of - wild west kind of - adventure for him, it promises new shores for him, (he believes that he can leave his old life behind him as easily as can cross a river with a ferry boat), but he is also afraid of the way ahead being dark, full of hypocracy. |
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