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The narrator of “An Encounter” is a young schoolboy who is on the cusp of adolescence. He, like many Dubliners protagonists, feels restricted by his daily life in Dublin and longs for the type of adventure that he reads about in Wild West and detective fiction. However, as the story progresses, it becomes abundantly clear that the narrator’s interest in these works of fiction extends beyond the adventure that they promise. Early in the text, the narrator describes himself as “younger and more timid” than some of the boys that he plays with and claims that Wild West stories are “remote” from his shy nature. This behavior is best exemplified by the many times he is unable to assert any control over Mahony and the fact that he is unable to tear himself away from the old man even though he is making the narrator uncomfortable. These moments of characterization imply that the narrator might be interested in adventure fiction because he wants to see himself as a hero like the characters in the stories. He may read about women and romance in the detective stories but he does not have a sweetheart of his own. He may absorb adventure tales but his own adventure is ultimately uninspiring and anticlimactic. His vocabulary may be littered with heroic phrases such as “chivalry” and “siege” but he, himself, does not appear to possess these attributes. As a result, he turns to adventure fiction in order to live vicariously through characters who fulfill a hero’s journey fantasy that he will likely never be able to achieve in real life.
