Tag: an encounter

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, observing the city’s workers, non-school-going children, and eventually its seedier inhabitants as represented by the josser.

Over the course of their journey they encounter several bodies of water, including the three largest rivers in Dublin: the Liffey, the Tolka, and the Dodder. The boys start at the Royal Canal, which runs around the city’s general perimeter north of the Liffey. Then they walk up to the Tolka and follow its south bank until they reach the area of the Liffey ‘s docks. The Tolka issues into the Dublin Bay north of the Liffey, but the boys turn southward toward the larger river. They cross the Liffey on a ferryboat, the narrator gazing out toward the Irish Sea, and then wander through Ringsend, finally settling on a sloping bank near the Dodder:

“We both felt rather tired and when we reached the field we made at once for a sloping bank over the ridge of which we could see the Dodder” (24).

The Dodder happens to figure rather erotically in Joyce’s own experiences with Nora, explains Chester Anderson in his “Joyce’s Letters and His Use of ‘Place’.” According to letters, Joyce questions Nora about her relationship with a friend of his whom she “went with…down to the bank of the Dodder.” Joyce then demands:

“Tell me. When you were in that field near the Dodder . . . were you lying down when you kissed? Did you place your hand on him as you did on me in the dark . . .?” (Letters II 232)

Anderson notes also that “in one of the portions of the letter of December 3, 1909, which is not printed in Ellmann’s text, Joyce writes in great detail (in order to excite himself and Nora) about their first sexual act five years before ‘at Ringsend,’ when, he says, he ‘came off’ through her fingers” (qtd. in Anderson 69). Anderson even suggests that “the ‘queer old josser’ (pidgin English for God) is both the Dublin god and one image of the self of the narrator as he might become in Dublin.”

Thus, a story that begins as a partial reference to Joyce’s childhood ends with a much more maturely tinged reference to his sexual life. This autobiographical fluidity of reference adds yet another example of the transition from childhood to adolescence which already figures in the story. And geographically, the transition takes the form of waters flowing toward the Liffey: the Royal Canal from the north side of the Liffey, where all the childhood stories take place or at least begin, and the Dodder from the south, where childhood innocence is challenged by  less familiar images and ideas, in this story as well as in “Araby.”

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 [they] came to the Vitriol Works and then turned to the right along the Wharf Road” (22). Originally, they had “arranged to go along the Wharf Road until [they] came to the ships, then to cross in the ferryboat and walk out to see the Pigeon House” (21), but after they cross the Liffey and wander around Ringsend for a bit, they decide against the Pigeon House. They do trek along the Wharf Road all the way to the river, though, and have several encounters with other children and adults on the way.

The Wharf Road, now East Wall Road, is a road that runs along the top of the wall built to keep the River Tolka on course on its way to the sea so that it doesn’t flood the city’s northern-eastern neighborhoods and industrial complexes. First, on the section of the Wharf Road that runs northwest to south-east, the boys encounter several children. Mahoney plays Indian and “chase[s] a crowd of ragged girls” (22). The boys are then accosted with stones and taunts by two other smaller boys defending the girls. Their siege against the other boys fails and they move on.

The picture, right, shows, toward the top, the part of the road that runs north-west to south-east, and then, along the right edge of the map, the section of the road that runs north and south just before it meets the Liffey. This is the part of the road where the boys begin “walking about the noisy streets flanked by high stone walls, watching the working of cranes and engines and often being shouted at for [their] immobility by the drivers of groaning carts” (22-23). Thus they move from navigating adversarial children to navigating adversarial adults (though they admit they incite the adversity), even before they cross the Liffey into the section of the city where the josser awaits. In this way, the Wharf Road represents a kind of microcosmic progression of the move from childhood to maturity that the story illustrates in a broader sense.

At the same time, the Wharf Road may also represent the technology and ability to control nature. The story contains references to several bodies of water. The canal, first, is a highly controlled body that the boys cross via a bridge. Then they approach the Tolka and stay well above it by way of the massive wall that keeps it en route to the sea. Once they reach the Liffey, larger than the Tolka though also fairly controlled by walls, they traverse it on a ferry, admitting the river a certain level of power not given to the waters they had navigated by dry bridge and road. The sea is described from a safe distance, though with an adventurous mystique as the narrator imagines the vast geography of the world beyond the sea. Finally, the River Dodder, over the ridge of a sloping bank, becomes the setting for the boys’ encounter with the josser. The liquidity that was so controlled and safely distant at the beginning of the story is now more unsuppressed and threatening. The Wharf Road, with its childish games and sturdy stone, even its harmless reprimands from adults, would seem a far safer and more secure location than the unfettered sloping bank of the Dodder with its strange inhabitants.

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 right along the Wharf Road” (22).

The North Strand Road runs northeast from the Newcomen (Canal) Bridge to the East Wall (Wharf) Road on the south bank of the Tolka River. (It’s where the blue tram line appears on the map section above.) Charles Haliday’s The Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin describes the area of the North Strand as it was depicted in a 1673 map by Sir Bernard de Gomme. According to the map, much of the east side of Dublin was under water after a major storm hit the city. Even when it wasn’t underwater, it was subject to flooding and only traversable by foot at low tide, according to Haliday’s fascinating accounts.

In Dubliners, North Strand Road marks the northeast boundary of the childhood stories. From the bridge to the Wharf Road, the boys walk 550 meters along North Strand, which would take approximately 7 minutes. The road is referenced only in “An Encounter,” a story that mentions several bodies of water. The boys begin at a bridge over the Royal Canal, walk along the Tolka, cross the Liffey, and end up on the bank of the Dodder. They also gaze out at the bay toward the Irish Sea.

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 could be interpreted as a safe position compared to the yet unknown dangers that lurk on the other side:

“We pleased ourselves with the spectacle of Dublin’s commerce — the barges signalled from far away by their curls of woolly smoke, the brown fishing fleet beyond Ringsend, the big white sailing vessel which was being discharged on the opposite quay” (23).

At this moment Mahony, anticipating “Eveline’s” Frank, gets the idea to “run away to sea on one of those big ships.” And anticipating the effects of the largeness of the world on Eveline, the narrator “[sees], or imagine[s], the geography which had been scantily dosed to [him] at school gradually taking substance under [his] eyes.” Though this sentiment isn’t expressed directly in “Eveline,” her paralysis on the North Wall is certainly due to the substantial geography swirling in her mind when her imagined travels present themselves as impending reality.

In “An Encounter,” the boys do board a boat, albeit a simple ferry to the other side of the river. Once there, they watch the sailors for a while before continuing their travels:

“When we were tired of this sight we wandered slowly into Ringsend” (23).

The original plan had been to take the South Wall all the way out to the Pigeon House, but by the time they spend their money in Ringsend on biscuits, chocolate, and raspberry lemonade and chase a cat through a lane and into a field, they decide to just plop down on a sloping bank and watch the Dodder flow by. This is where they encounter the strange man who casts an unexpected shadow over their adventures.

While Ringsend itself is nonthreatening and rather mundane, because of its position across the river, it represents an unfamiliar and rather adult world. As with “Araby,” which also ends on the south side of the Liffey, the ending of “An Encounter” suggests a foray into adolescence, one that is not followed by an actual return home (though one is suggested) to the safer north bank. Incidentally, Araby would have been only slightly south of the boys’ position at the end of “An Encounter,” and the train they would be taking home would be the same one the narrator of “Araby” would take to get home from the bazaar.

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 up on Joe Dillon, walk northeast along the bridge into North Strand Road. Though in the story it’s only called the “Canal Bridge,” two maps from 1836 and 1883 (embedded at the end of this post from the David Rumsey Collection) name this bridge Newcombe and Newcomen Bridge, respectively. Why the name was left out would be an interesting question to explore in more depth.

The canal is the first body of water the boys cross. They eventually ferry across the Liffey, and, depending on where the ferry lands on the south side of the Liffey, they may also cross the Dodder to get into Ringsend. In any case, they end up on a sloping bank of the Dodder where they meet the josser and then discuss the possibility of returning home by train. This mode of transportation would be quicker, and they could avoid the more liquidy parts of Dublin.

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 the route taken first by the narrator alone and then with Mahony when the two meet at the Canal Bridge.

The Canal Bridge is the first clear reference point on the boys’ route. After the narrator and Mahony give up on Joe Dillon, they begin their journey: “We walked along the North Strand Road till we came to the Vitriol Works and then turned to the right along the Wharf Road” (23). The boys meander a bit around the industrial area before they board the ferry to cross the Liffey. Once across, they wander the streets of Ringsend before settling on a sloping bank of the Dodder. In all, the boys travel about 4.5 kilometers, but since parts of the text describe them walking about or wandering one area for a long time, they could easily cover much more ground than that.

Since Google Earth uses current satellite imagery (not historic), many of the buildings are no-doubt new constructions since the time of the story’s setting. The buildings on what could be the sloping bank, for example, don’t appear to be 100 years old and so probably would not have been there hindering the boys’ path. Still, the end of the route is, like the beginning of it, approximate. Since the text doesn’t specify streets once the travelers cross the river, and the geographic references are more vague, it isn’t clear just where exactly the boys finally have their encounter with the josser.

Even using an approximation, though, we can see the path the boys travel is in some ways similar to the path of “Araby’s” narrator. Both routes begin north of the Liffey near the Christian Brothers School. Both end south of the Liffey, and while they each end in different places south of the river, their two ending locations are connected by the line of the Dodder. Neither story includes a return route, but “An Encounter” suggests a hypothetical return via train.