Although the word “water” is only mentioned once, there is a kind of fluidity seeping through the landscape of “An Encounter.” Based partly on an experience shared by James Joyce and his brother Stanislaus, the story chronicles a day’s truancy for the narrator and his friend Mahony who, instead of going to school, wander Dublin, […]

The Wharf Road appears in “An Encounter” as one of the first streets along the narrator and Mahony’s long route through Dublin the day they skip school in search of adventure. After Mahoney arrives at the Canal bridge where his friend our narrator has been waiting, the two “walked along the North Strand Road till […]

Once Mahony finally arrives (and Joe Dillon doesn’t) at their meeting place, he and the narrator of “An Encounter” embark on their day’s journey. The two boys set off from the Canal Bridge and head northeast: “We walked along the North Strand Road till we came to the Vitriol Works and then turned to the […]

Ringsend is a small suburb of Dublin located on the south shore and east end of the Liffey. It’s where the narrator and Mahony spend the final stage of their school-skipping journey and where they meet the josser. At first, the two only see the area from a distance, from north of the river, which […]

Featured this week is the “Canal Bridge,” mentioned in “An Encounter” as the rendezvous point for the narrator and his two friends on the morning of their excursion: “We were to meet at ten in the morning on the Canal Bridge” (21). Mahoney is the only friend to show up, and so the boys, giving […]

This week’s featured place is not really one fixed place at all; it’s an entire route. In “An Encounter,” the narrator plans “a day’s miching” with his friends to skip school and go visit the Pigeon House (21). The video above is from the Google Earth version of the map and shows an approximation of […]