I propose to read Alice Munro's " Thanks for the Ride " and " The Shining Houses " together, focusing on the fact that each story depicts an encounter that takes place in an (apparently) unfamiliar territory and highlights patterns of entrapment for the protagonists or narrator. I will show that the encounter challenges the protagonists' versions or visions of life and that both stories exude a sense of freedom in spite of the patterns of entrapment they reveal. In Deleuze and Guattari's words, these short stories are defined by an interplay of lines and organized around the question " what happened? ". As the stories suggest that the encounter has " left a mark " , I will consider how in these early stories Munro is already experimenting with ways to challenge traditional closure and will consider the role played by the embedded story in " The Shining Houses " .