Lecture Two

How to Read Fiction—Joyce’s “An Encounter”

Scope: This “empowerment” lecture is intended to clarify the principles on

which the reading of most literature depends, especially the principles
we must embrace to read the challenging Modernist texts of this
course. Contemporary literary scholarship can seem daunting and can
encourage a sense of literature as a code that must be broken, a code
that only the learned can understand. Using James Joyce’s short story
“An Encounter” as our case in point, we’ll show how attentiveness and
common sense are the most essential attributes of good readers.

Outline
I. Understanding most literature—especially Modernist texts—depends upon
the individual reader trusting to his or her own close reading as opposed to
relying on literary criticism for insights.
A. Stories should always be read with our first principle in mind: what the
task of reading is and the nature of literature.
B. Despite the remarkable scholarship in literary study, one of its
consequences has been to encourage a very narrow and, in some ways,
dangerous idea of what literary study is.
1. The danger might be summarized as the “puzzle-solving school”
of literary study, which asserts that the language of literature is out
to trick readers and open only to specially tutored decoders.
2. This view transforms the act of reading into a game in which the
reader is manipulated like a mouse in a maze. It also transforms
writers into mere conjurers whose art is that of riddle-making and
trivial deception.
3. Further, this attitude undermines what is most important about
literature because it assumes that readers must not accept what
most literary works seem to be saying directly and clearly and that
their true meanings lie concealed beneath an ocean of details
whose function is to mislead readers.
C. But the far happier truth is otherwise. Nearly all literature speaks to
most literate adults, not to professors or other specialists. In fact,
literature is one of the few activities left in our era of specialization that
does not require expertise or specialized knowledge.
II. To demonstrate the importance of these principles, and to illustrate
something of the nature of “close reading,” let’s examine James Joyce’s
short story, “An Encounter.”

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 A. The story relates the modest adventures of two friends playing hooky
from their Catholic grammar school. Their plans for an exciting day go
awry and in the story ends in their encounter with a strange old man.
B. This straightforward story has great complexity.
C. But for many people, what is straightforward seems uninteresting or
simple. To illustrate this in my classes at MIT, and to encourage
students to be skeptical of interpretations that feel outlandish, I read
excerpts from William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to James Joyce
(1959).
1. Tindall discovers a search for the Trinity in the story (in a story
that barely mentions religion) by twisting or appropriating certain
minor phrases. But I read his most outlandish passages with a
straight face and then ask my students what they think.
2. Some embrace Tindall’s interpretation and try to extend it, while
others admit that they don’t recognize the story they read in his
comments.
3. At some point, I slam the book to the floor, declaring Tindall’s
interpretation “Garbage.” The mere publication of an interpretation
does not guarantee that it will be sensible, much less persuasive
and illuminating.
4. Tindall’s “errors” include:
• indifference to the manifest content—the story,
characters, setting
• dependence on “secondary evidence”—such as
biographical facts, references to other works by the
same author, information drawn from literary or
cultural history—for every central claim in his
interpretation. Secondary evidence is valuable, can
and should be used, but should never be used as the
primary or sole evidence for the meaning of a text.
• Tindall’s deepest error is underestimating the
complexity of ordinary experience and the
importance that Joyce and his story attribute to it.
III. How might we establish a more compelling interpretation of “An
Encounter” and, by implication, most literary works?
A. We would begin with the simple act of description, looking closely at
the story and describing its fundamental elements: characters, plot, and
language.
B. Description is a kind of interpretation, allowing for a commonsense
approach to the reading of literary texts. As one great teacher (Irving
Howe) once said to me: “Never ignore the fascinating surface in favor
of the mere depths.” So any good interpretation of a story must account

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 for its fundamental features: its plot, characters, and its style or
language.
C. The power of “An Encounter” comes from its surface elements.
Broadly, the story is a drama about thwarted expectations.
1. Often in the story, plans go awry or expectations are unmet.
2. These smaller events reinforce the larger experience of the main
action of the story. The plot, then, is a drama of disappointed
hopes.
D. The characters, Mahony and the narrator, show fundamental
differences. As we can see by looking closely at their behavior at
various moments in the story, the narrator clearly represents
imagination and intelligence. He is smarter than Mahony but also
timid, and his dumber friend is the one who acts in the face of
difficulty.
E. The difference in character is strongly illustrated when Mahony runs
off across the field, completely unintimidated by the old man, while the
narrator remains next to him.
1. The narrator’s bragging to the old man suggests that he identifies
with adults more than with children.
2. The narrator gets his comeuppance in a certain moral sense when
he recognizes that there is something strange and terrible about the
old man, while Mahony runs in freedom across the field.
F. “An Encounter,” then, is partly about the limitations of intellect and
intellectuals. Although Joyce himself was intelligent and learned, he
frequently dramatizes what the narrator of this story acknowledges in
the end: our dependence on ordinary humanity.
G. The symbolism in “An Encounter” is complex but accessible and
reinforces the themes already discussed.
1. First, what are symbols? They are items in the physical universe
that are granted larger meanings not usually associated with them.
2. How can we tell when an item in fiction is symbolic? There are so
many objects in stories that we could not make sense of them if
every element were symbolic.
3. But the fact is, the text will signal what is symbolic; there will be
clear encouragements from the story to read certain items
symbolically.
4. In “An Encounter,” the green eyes are symbolic, and their
symbolic role is obvious, even heavy-handed. The narrator
searches among the sailors for “green eyes,” clearly a symbol of
adventure and freedom. Then he encounters the “bottle green
eyes” of the old man. Thus, the symbolism in the story reinforces

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 and enlarges what we’ve already seen is dramatized in the plot and
embedded in the characters.
H. The style or language of Joyce’s story also makes a crucial contribution
to our understanding.
1. Joyce establishes a delicate balance of sympathy and judgment for
his narrator in the subtle language of the story. The first-person
perspective establishes a basic sympathy but the diction itself
sounds a note of gentle mockery and judgment. This is the
vocabulary of an older man, looking back at a younger, naïve self.
2. This rich style, creating both immediacy and moral distance, keeps
the story from being grandiose. This speaker knows it takes many
lessons to make a man, not just one encounter with a pathetic old
pervert.
I. The complexity of Joyce’s voice in “An Encounter” also reminds us
that this narrator’s good sense and humanity are also essential qualities
for readers of literature and far more valuable than a specialist’s trained
eye.

Essential Reading:
Joyce, “An Encounter,” in Dubliners.

Supplementary Reading:
Thorburn, “Introduction,” Initiation: Stories and Novels on Three Themes, pp.
1−10.

Questions to Consider:
1. Why does the narrator think it important to tell us that the old man had
green eyes? Is there another, larger discovery implicit in this one?
2. Why does the protagonist feel penitent about his negative feelings toward
Mahony, and why is this revelation disclosed in the final sentence of the
story?

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