Joe Dillon Character Analysis

Joe Dillon is the older brother of one of the narrator’s school friends, Leo Dillon. Joe collects boys’ magazines for their stories about the Wild West. Every night after school, he leads a group of younger boys in war games based on cowboys-and-Indians battles. Donning a mock Native American costume, Joe plays rough with the younger boys and always wins, celebrating all his victories with a war dance that the narrator finds particularly fearsome. Joe’s preference to play as a Native American and not a cowboy in the Wild West games suggests his, and the Irish people’s, allegiance to “colonized” people rather than “colonizers”—especially since colonial American expansion had ramped up throughout the 19th century, the time just before “An Encounter” takes place. His victories even seem to rewrite history so that the colonized people come out on top. Joe becomes a kind of symbol of masculinity, individuality, and adventure to the narrator. When Joe is called to the priesthood, the narrator is shocked—the order and routine of the Catholic Church is so unlike how the narrator saw Joe at play. Joe’s leadership and contradictory qualities infuse the story with its early spirit of adventure and set the narrator on his path to explore the unexpected contradictions in the people and places around him.