An Encounter

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born in Dublin, Ireland, on February 2, 1882. He was the oldest of 10 surviving children born into a middle-class Roman Catholic family that saw their social and economic standing steadily decline during his childhood. Joyce’s mother, Mary Jane, died in 1903, less than a year after he graduated from the Royal University of Ireland. His father, John Stanislaus Joyce, already known as an idler and a drinker, slipped further into alcoholism. Within a year, the 22-year-old James left Ireland for good.

In October 1904, Joyce and the woman who would become his partner for the rest of his life, Nora Barnacle, moved from Dublin to the European Continent. It was there, during stays in Zürich, Trieste, Rome, Paris, and other European cities, that Joyce wrote the vast majority of his works, although the stories were always set in and primarily concerning Dublin. Joyce had a lot to say about the state of Ireland’s political, religious, and cultural identity, and the stories that he wrote for Dubliners were among his earliest attempts to showcase the best and worst of Irish life at the beginning of the 20th century.

“An Encounter,” the second story in Dubliners, was completed in 1905, toward the middle of Joyce’s writing process for the collection. He was almost a year into his self-imposed exile from Ireland, but the city and its people were constantly in his thoughts. Thanks to political leanings and concerns that he inherited from his father, Joyce was highly skeptical of the Church, which dominated so many aspects of Irish life. However, he was also acutely aware that Ireland’s social elite at the time were not Catholics, but members of the Protestant Ascendancy. This minority group dominated professional life in Ireland from the 17th century up until the early 20th century thanks to their ties to England and the broader political power of the United Kingdom.

Being Catholic, Joyce’s family was firmly middle class. Even if they had not suffered their economic decline in Joyce’s boyhood, they would not have harbored much hope of moving significantly up the social ladder. Class determined which occupations were attainable, which marriages were suitable, and which schools were reputable. In leaving Ireland, Joyce was rebelling against all of these norms and expectations of conformity.

Each story in Dubliners follows characters whose lives are filled with constant reminders of these strict social and religious rules. In “An Encounter,” lower-class children are mocked and bullied, and children who are thought to be upper-class Protestants are met with derision. Joyce makes room for many of the interactions that he would have experienced in his own youth in Dublin. His final novel, Finnegans Wake, was the culmination of this mission. Considered one of the most difficult novels in the English language, it is written entirely in a language that is particular to the author, filled with puns and allusions and portmanteaus and invented words. The only person who could ever hope to understand it all was Joyce himself, but year after year readers keep trying to make sense of it.