Holidays and weekends simply go away too fast for us. We would start by planning some elaborate activities, in hope of some true excitement, only to find ourselves lost, wandering about the day with no sense of orientation. By nightfall we have no choice but to exclaim, \u201cnothing really happened!\u201d<\/p>\n
Such feelings are similar to our reaction towards \u201cAn Encounter,\u201d a short story in James Joyce\u2019s Dubliners<\/em>. A lot has been said about other pieces in the collection. For one, scholars have done elaborate research trying to figure out the meaning of \u201cThe Sisters,\u201d in particular, the word \u201cparalysis,\u201d which is mentioned in the beginning of the story. It has been argued from multiple angles that \u201cparalysis\u201d, which symbolizes the dark and lackluster Irish society, constitutes the underlying theme of all the stories in Dubliners<\/em>. (Kelly, xxiv) But when it comes to \u201cAn Encounter,\u201d much less can be said. The narrator and two friends of his, playing truant, originally planned \u201cto 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.\u201d (Joyce, \u201cAn Encounter\u201d 20) But one of the three never showed up, and they never got to the Pigeon House; instead, the narrator and Mahony encountered \u201ca queer old josser,\u201d who bored them with his monologue and made the narrator feel afraid. (26) The ending is abrupt, and just like our typical weekends, \u201cnothing really happened.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But it is the lack of orientation that bothers us the most. Granted, the theme word made its appearance: \u201cparalysis\u201d shows itself in the figure of the old man, walking \u201cso slowly that I thought he was looking for something in the grass\u201d (24). But it tells us little beyond that, and we are left wanting. In absence of a complete story structure, instinctively we start looking for the author\u2019s guidance. Why does he write such an anticlimactic story? Where is James Joyce, and how can we understand this story through him?<\/p>\n But before this question can be answered, it deserves a reevaluation. Can we find Joyce in the story itself? He is, of course, the author, and the common sense is that, in every word, we are brought to a direct connection with him. But the statement itself introduces the problem: our connection with the author must go through the barrier of language. The author, in other words, is on the other side of the page, always at a remove, so that by perfecting our interpretation of a text we can only get closer to the actual person writing it, never reaching. Underlying this argument is Nietzsche\u2019s claim that language, in its inherent ambiguity, is imperfect when guiding us towards the truth. It is even more apparent in Joyce\u2019s works. Volumes of books can be written on his life experiences, but one seemingly absent-minded word choice can send a literary critic go scrambling for interpretations. Volumes of interpretations, then, are written, but the critic is still unsure whether the intention of Joyce is correctly understood\u2014for all we know, it may never be understood.<\/p>\n Since the author is nowhere to be found, it follows that we shouldn\u2019t seek the presence of him. But the absence of Joyce certainly doesn\u2019t mean that we can do whatever we want with his text. If we freely assign subjective interpretations to his works, not only does it mean that \u201c[t]oo many elements in the stories have to be forced, twisted or suppressed to achieve the supposed \u2018unifying\u2019 pattern,\u201d (Kelly, xxii) the massive corpus of interpretations it creates can leave us even deeper in disorientation. Who should we look for, then? Who, indeed, do we claim to know, when we say we know the author?<\/p>\n The answer seems apparent this time: we are familiar with the image of Joyce portrayed through his language, a representation of the author by the language. Joyce often writes in an autobiographical way, so our popular construct of him is developed through our analysis of his other texts, creating what Foucault defined as the \u201cauthor-function\u201d. And there is, in this case, literally a Portrait<\/em>: the person we claim to know is not James Joyce, but rather the protagonist in The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man<\/em>, and later on in Ulysses<\/em>: Stephen Dedalus. It is him that we should be looking for in \u201cAn Encounter.\u201d<\/p>\n So, what do we know about Stephen Dedalus? In the famous second-to-last sentence of The Portrait<\/em>, Joyce writes:<\/p>\n Welcome, O Life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. (299)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n William Empson offers an interpretation of this sentence that most people agree on. The phrase \u201cfor the millionth time,\u201d according to Empson, is not \u201cthe young man\u2019s vanity [making] him use inflated language.\u201d \u201cHe recognizes that the process has happened a million times before, because he knows he is only an avatar of the needed culture-hero.\u201d (208) Dedalus vows to become a culture-hero for his corrupt and sinful nation, through his exploration of and experience with reality.<\/p>\n But before we make any further deductions from this image, we have to address that, weirdly enough, Empson arrives at this conclusion by stressing the author, not the author-function. He is a proponent of the primacy of author in a piece of work, and claims that his fellow literary critics are ignorant to think they can understand literature without looking at the author\u2019s biography first. But had he adhered to his own doctrine meticulously, the ideal Empson would, in an effort to prove his point, throw pieces of Joyce\u2019s biography at us. He didn\u2019t; instead, his first instinct is to seek evidence in language. He betrayed it himself: \u201cIt becomes clear that I must defend every clause of the penultimate sentence of the Portrait<\/em>, as it has been nagged at by a series of critics.\u201d (207) In defense of his position, the first evidence he seeks is \u201cevery clause of the penultimate sentence\u201d\u2014in other words, language. It is therefore safe for us to resume our discussion, and apply Empson\u2019s image of Dedalus to \u201cAn Encounter.\u201d<\/p>\n We immediately notice that \u201cAn Encounter\u201d is written in first person. Of course, the first person in a novel does not have to refer to the author himself; the question left for us is, does the narrator resemble Dedalus? The similarity, indeed, is striking. The young boy, after school, would reenact Indian battles he read in teenage novels with his friends. But he gradually grew tired of it:<\/p>\n 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. (20)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In seek of \u201creal adventures,\u201d one has to go abroad. This is precisely the core rationale behind the final scene of A Portrait<\/em>, where Dedalus exclaims:<\/p>\n Away! Away!<\/p>\n The spell of arms and voices: the white arms of roads, their promise of close embraces and the black arms of tall ships that stand against the moon, their tale of distant nations. (298-299)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As Ghahreman puts it, \u201c[e]vidently, Stephen is warming up for his eventual vocation as an artist in exile.\u201d (161) The young artist, in short, wants to sail away to \u201cdistant nations,\u201d in order to fulfill his aesthetic pursuits. We also see Dedalus\u2019 perennial interest in ships: in the quote above, we read \u201cthe black arms of tall ships\u201d; the title of his novel Ulysses<\/em> is almost self-evident; in \u201cAn Encounter,\u201d the narrator out of school chooses, of all things, to visit the river, and stare at vessels and sailors. The story, then, is organized around a journey in pursuit of freedom, or, projecting Dedalus\u2019 ambition, a journey to \u201cencounter for the millionth time the reality of experience,\u201d the antithesis of \u201cparalysis.\u201d<\/p>\n It is hardly a surprise, therefore, that because the narrator\u2019s \u201cjourney\u201d in \u201cAn Encounter\u201d is still within Ireland, he encounters, instead, the personification of \u201cparalysis\u201d:<\/p>\n He came along by the bank slowly. He walked with one hand upon his hip and in the other hand he held a stick with which he tapped the turf lightly. He was shabbily dressed in a suit of greenish-black and wore what we used to call a jerry hat with a high crown. (24)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Though not literally paralyzed as in \u201cThe Sisters,\u201d the man is still described as \u201cfairly old,\u201d with mustache \u201cashen-grey.\u201d But perhaps more importantly, the narrator took the time to notice the color of the old man\u2019s suit. According to John Kelly, \u201c[g]reen, the Irish national color, is constantly associated with frustration or perversion.\u201d (xxiii) We immediately see his perversion in action:<\/p>\n Then he asked us which of us had the most sweethearts. Mahony mentioned lightly that he had three totties. The man asked me how many had I. I answered that I had none. He did not believe me and said he was sure I must have one. I was silent.<\/p>\n [\u2026]<\/p>\n \u2014 Every boy, he said, has a little sweetheart. (25)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n His monologue progresses with increasing eroticism:<\/p>\n 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. (26)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The fantasizing and objectifying of females is evident in his language. Furthermore, there is something inherently pedophilic about the old man, his favorite activity being looking at the hands and hair of \u201ca nice young girl\u201d; projected to the Irish nation, it is even darker and more disturbing.<\/p>\n But what is interesting is the narrator\u2019s reaction: \u201cIn my heart I thought that what he said about boys and sweethearts was reasonable. But I disliked the words in his mouth.\u201d The original question of the old man was \u201cwhich of us had the most sweethearts\u201d\u2014as if winning the favor of women is a competition\u2014and Mahony, adept in his use of slangs, assigned the word \u201ctotties.\u201d What the narrator is objecting to is treating women simply as objects of sexualization. Love is, to say the least, \u201creasonable;\u201d eroticism and perversion is not. This is reminiscent of a scene concerning Dedalus\u2019 love interest, Emma, in The Portrait<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u2014 Indeed you might, answered Heron. We saw her, Wallis, didn\u2019t we? And deucedly pretty she is too. And inquisitive! [\u2026] She\u2019s ripping, isn\u2019t she, Wallis?<\/p>\n \u2014 Not half bad, answered Wallis quietly as he placed his holder once more in a corner of his mouth.<\/p>\n A shaft of momentary anger flew through Stephen\u2019s mind at these indelicate allusions in the hearing of a stranger. For him there was nothing amusing in a girl\u2019s interest and regard. (85)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n From the novel, we know that Emma to young Dedalus is like Beatrice to Dante: a love almost Platonic, a symbol of beauty and life. Indeed, when he meets her again at the end of The Portrait<\/em>, Emma turns out to be just like any ordinary Irish girl, and Dedalus fails to bring himself to start a relationship with her. It is quite possible that the narrator in \u201cAn Encounter\u201d has a sweetheart, which is why he fell silent upon the old man\u2019s further inquisition. For his conception of a sweetheart is different from the old man\u2019s and Mahony\u2019s idea of sweethearts: the former signifies freedom, life and aesthetic pursuits, whereas the latter hints at perversion and decadence.<\/p>\n It might also be worth it if we take a step back, and look at the story as a whole. The narrator always seems to be the observer; his sensitivity contrasts himself with other kids in school, who runs around and enjoys \u201cbarbaric\u201d games. Dedalus has almost exactly the same characteristics: alone, reflective, contemplating. According to Kelly,<\/p>\n Joyce is in the Flaubertian tradition. He believes that the artist should remain outside his text, so disinterested, as he has Stephen Dedalus put in A Portrait of the Artist<\/em>, that he stands aside paring his finger nails while his novel proceeds. (xiii)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We see here that this pattern of narrative choices distinctive to Joyce can also be applied to \u201cAn Encounter.\u201d The belief that \u201cthe artist should remain outside his text,\u201d in addition, gives us further confidence in pursuing the construct of Dedalus hidden in the Joycean language, and not Joyce himself.<\/p>\n And just like Stephen Dedalus, the author-function constructed from the author\u2019s other works, helps us understand the meaning of \u201cAn Encounter,\u201d when we are reading the short story, we are also following the perspective of a young boy out of school. We see another Dedalus whose passion for ships and journey beyond the nation is all too familiar; who despises the perversion, decadence and \u201cparalysis\u201d of the Irish society; whose role of a quiet observer is directly precedent of the role of the young artist in the author\u2019s later works. Herein lies the value of the author-function: In finding Stephen Dedalus, we find the key to understand \u201cAn Encounter.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Work Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n Holidays and weekends simply go away too fast for us. We would start by planning some elaborate activities, in hope of some true excitement, only to find ourselves lost, wandering about the day with no sense of orientation. By nightfall … Continue reading \n