Masculinity, Sexuality, and Coming of Age Theme Analysis

“An Encounter” features numerous older male characters with whom the narrator interacts. The male figures—the aggressive older boy Joe Dillon; the strict and haughty Father Butler at the narrator’s Jesuit-run school; and the strange old man whom the narrator and his friend Mahony encounter while playing hooky from school—each provide different, and often confusing, models of masculinity and sexuality to the young male narrator of the story. The narrator’s confusion at the visions of masculinity and sexuality that Joyce presents in “An Encounter” reveal how repressive attitudes about sexuality can make navigating coming of age as a young man difficult and even dangerous.

Joe Dillon’s transformation from the leader of violent after-school war games to the priesthood makes him the narrator’s first model for complex masculinity. At first glance, Joe fulfills the tropes of mainstream masculinity: loud, aggressive, a strong leader, and apparently invested in the themes of exploration, violence, and victory in the Wild West stories he likes so much. The narrator states that all the younger boys look up to Joe, so much so that even after Joe leaves, the boys keep playing the games he used to lead to prove that they were as bold and robust as he was. Joe’s decision to go into the priesthood, though, is shocking to the narrator. The narrator’s surprise seems to arise from his assumption that a wild and fierce boy like Joe couldn’t possibly see any appeal in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, which is notable for its order and discipline—and implicitly because Joe’s “ideal” masculine sexuality would be partially suppressed in the priesthood since priests take a vow of celibacy. Joe’s calling to the Catholic priesthood takes him from a masculine symbol for wildness and individuality that the other boys try to emulate into a cog in the mysterious and powerful machine of the Catholic Church, subverting the narrator’s earliest expectations for masculine power and suggesting, perhaps, that the Irish Catholic Church more broadly represses Irish masculinity.

However, while the narrator is confused by Joe’s decision to go into the priesthood, the way Joyce describes Father Butler provides the reader with some insight into the directions that the priesthood channels masculinity. Textual details draw parallels between Joe and Father Butler: Mahony calls Father Butler “Bunsen Burner” for his quickness to anger, suggesting that within the order of Church, there is plenty of room for the kind of aggression that Joe demonstrated during his war games. But while Joe’s example inspired “unruliness” in all the boys who looked up to him, Father Butler’s rage only compels compliance. He uses his aggression to force the boys to do what he says and to reinforce his own ideas about order and hierarchy: Wild West stories are beneath “educated” boys, lower-class boys are beneath middle- and upper-class boys, and Protestants are beneath Catholics. When Father Butler’s sudden rage towards Leo Dillon makes the Wild West appear comparatively dull to the narrator, Joyce suggests that the narrator sees some of the appeal in the power that comes from strict order, too. But when the narrator once again feels restless from the “restraining influence” of school, Joyce suggests that organized power is not as attractive to the narrator as the wildness that he saw in Joe.

The strange old man takes “wild” masculine sexuality to the extreme—in his case, it manifests as deviant masculine sexuality—and he most thoroughly confuses the narrator. At first, the strange old man seems like a normal, bookish, and slightly boring character. He talks about his schoolboy days, the weather, and books he likes. When the narrator acts like he is more well-read than he is, Joyce gives the reader the impression that the narrator wants to impress the old man and might possibly see him as a model of the kind of “studious” masculinity that the young boys were afraid to let show in front of someone like Joe. But when the strange old man starts hinting at sexual content in some of his favorite books, talking about “sweethearts,” and describing how much he loves to look at young girls, the narrator is torn between his sense of the man’s “reasonable” attitude about sweethearts and his unsettling manner of speaking about girls. As the strange old man works himself up and hypnotizes the narrator with his monotone speech about girls, the narrator seems almost frozen as the man goes off to masturbate. While Joyce does not give the reader much insight into the narrator’s mind, the narrator is torn between walking away from the man and staying put.

Only once the strange old man comes back and his sexual perversions pivot to something more immediately threatening—his desire to “whip” young boys—does the narrator act. Despite the tone in the man’s voice that makes the narrator want to “understand him,” the narrator stands up and walks away calmly but filled with terror, decidedly leaving the old man and his ideas behind. The strange old man’s version of masculine sexuality is certainly wild and violent like Joe’s. But his perversions make him dangerous to the narrator and leaves the narrator more unsettled and confused than ever.

Joyce’s attitudes about Catholicism underlying his representation of masculine sexuality in “An Encounter” reveal how difficult coming of age as a young man is for the narrator. At the end of the story, despite all the different kinds of men he encounters, the narrator still has no positive masculine role models. While Joe is the closest, his violence considered together with Father Butler’s rage leads the reader to believe that the orderly Catholic system only channels masculine aggression in a negative way. Moreover, the narrator’s understated narration style hints that while he might be more knowledgeable about sexuality than Mahony, he is still fairly naïve, and has no one to talk to about his confusing experiences. Meanwhile, the narrator’s first direct conversation about sex is one that scares him and confuses him. Without a person to talk to about his confusion, his final fears hint towards the long road towards maturity he has ahead. The lack of any positive male role models in the story also more broadly implies that Ireland itself lacks any such role models—that the country is suffering a crisis of thwarted, misdirected, and even perverted masculinity.