9. (12) Ivy Day in the Committee Room {Public Life} Flashcards
Genre
“Ivy Day in the Committee Room” is a Modernist short story. Modernist fiction usually featured deeply discontented characters trying to survive violent forces (such as war, inequality, and, in the case of Joyce’s characters, British imperialism).
This sort of disaffected cynicism comes across in the characters in “Ivy Day in the Committee Room”—most of them are canvassers for a political party whose principles they consistently contradict.
The ways in which Joyce depicts the reality of the nationalist movement (rather than romanticizing it as a form of propaganda) also makes “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” a realist piece of literature.
Mood
The mood of “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” is unsettling and bleak. The fire in the room is never full—a symbol for the waning vigor of the Nationalist Party—so the men talk to each other in semi-darkness, and, despite the fact that they are all Party members, none of the characters actually trust each other.
Their bickering and gossip is also full of bitterness and cynicism, contributing to the bleak mood (and unfavorable portrait of the Natalist Party’s future).
Tone
The tone of “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” is a detached yet frustrated one.
The narrator of the story does not offer any direct commentary or opinions on the goings-on in the Committee Room, yet their frustration with—and judgment of—the characters comes across in subtle ways. When introducing the characters, for example, the narrator tends to zero in on their unappealing qualities.
It is worth noting that, because the narrator essentially disappears for much of the story—letting the characters talk amongst themselves without interruption for pages at a time—the tone of the story also merges with the tone of the various characters.
While the characters joke amongst themselves at points, they are mostly gossiping and bickering, contributing to the judgmental and discontented tone of the story.
Style
Joyce’s writing style in “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” features both descriptive language (primarily about the appearances of various characters) as well as heavy dialogue between the characters.
In trying to capture the everyday struggles and group dynamics of the Nationalist Party, Joyce has his third-person narrator introduce readers to different characters and then lets the characters speak for themselves (with the narrator essentially disappearing for pages at a time).
Setting
“Ivy Day in the Committee Room” is set in the Irish Nationalist party headquarters (or “Committee Room”) in Dublin on October 6, 1902. (There is some debate about the exact year, but most scholars agree that it is on or around 1902.)
October 6th was known by nationalists in Ireland as “Ivy Day” and was an annual event marking the death of popular Nationalist Party leader Charles Stewart Parnell.
Irish Nationalism emerged in response to England’s colonial rule. Like many colonized nations, Ireland struggled with the consequences of colonialism, such as a flagging economy, widespread poverty, and political corruption.
That the story takes place on a rainy day in a room where the fire can barely keep the political canvassers warm also underlines Joyce’s pessimism about the nationalist movement—the lackluster fire represents the sad state of the Nationalist Party in the early 1900s.
Theme: Youth and Political Paralysis
In “Ivy Day,” Joyce vents his anger at his native Dublin’s political paralysis by depicting intergenerational corruption and stagnation: the old have become selfish hypocrites and they have corrupted the young into the same attitudes.
The uselessness of the young and old of “Ivy Day” illustrates Joyce’s fear that political paralysis—especially of Ireland’s Nationalist party after Parnell’s death—is a self-perpetuating social illness that will doom the nation.
Old Jack—a well-meaning but useless character—embodies the weak spirit of Ireland’s older generation. Jack’s function is to keep the fire going in the hearth of the party’s Committee Room. Jack’s halfhearted, ineffective fire stoking suggests the inability of the older generation to inspire political passion in each other or in the youth.
In addition to failing to inspire the youth, Jack (and his whole generation) model poor behavior. Jack reveals that he has been violent with his son. This violence, Joyce implies, has a harmful (rather than a disciplinary) effect on Jack’s son, suggesting that his dissolute behavior may be Jack’s fault.
Due to this, Jack’s son can be read as a metaphor for Ireland’s self-replicating cycle of misplaced discipline and self-defeat, and for the improbability of the younger generation being better than their parents.
Joyce’s final damning depiction of Ireland’s decline is to depict the youngest generation with any political responsibility—represented by Mat O’Connor—as lazy.
Twice in the story, O’Connor lights his cigarettes with campaign flyers promoting his boss, the Nationalist candidate (flyers that O’Connor was supposed to be distributing). This is the ultimate symbolic rejection of his political responsibility to fight for Ireland’s independence.
With Old Jack representing the fall of the Irish Nationalist party, and the lazy Mat O’Connor and Old Jack’s drunk son representing Ireland’s bleak political future, the elderly and the young find common ground in their wavering principles and weak execution. This produces an all-encompassing image of doom for Ireland’s political future.
Theme: Isolation and Discord
The story shows a disturbing disharmony among the seven colleagues, which reflects Ireland’s political discord following the untimely death of the Nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell.
This portrait of social isolation and petty feuding evokes the discord Joyce saw in Ireland’s political landscape. In this sense, Joyce suggests that the strength of a political movement depends on collective unity, a quality lacking from the Ireland he set out to depict.
Despite working for the same political party, the men in the story have differing political allegiances.
While some characters divide over party lines, others show almost no political principles at all. Henchy is actively slick and careless with truth, O’Connor is spineless and devoid of real opinion. As these men lack conviction and loyalty, it’s no wonder they’re all mistrustful and divided.
In the final scene, a melodramatic elegy for the dead Parnell, the men finally find common ground—but Joyce suggests that their agreement is weak at best.
As the story’s finale, this note of insincerity and uncertainty rings loudly—it’s an anticlimax, reflecting the fractured and disingenuous environment of the Committee Room.
Theme: Morality vs Politics
Joyce believed that Parnell’s political legacy was ruined by the scandal surrounding his personal behavior—and by the Catholic Church’s insistence that Parnell’s private life mattered more than his political goals. By showing how this scandal ruined the spirit of Irish Nationalism (and led to rife immorality among Parnell’s uninspired, leaderless descendants), Joyce suggests that it’s sometimes important to separate politics from personal morality.
While personal morality is important to politics, throwing Parnell out for a personal transgression was destructive to both the political future of Ireland and to the moral character of its people.
From the beginning of the story, Joyce undermines the Church’s moral authority to judge Parnell by painting the institution as hypocritical and immoral.
Jack’s blind equating of Catholicism with a good moral upbringing did not pay off; his son is a wayward drunk now, which hints at the Church’s inability to instill good morality (echoing, perhaps, how ousting Parnell also failed to improve Ireland).
Furthermore, Father Keon—the story’s only character directly associated with the Church—is a shady political operator who is revealed to be a defrocked priest, presumably having lost his position for a moral transgression.
It seems that, despite having lost his status, he still wears his clerical uniform (in the dim light of the Committee Room, “it was impossible to say whether he wore a clergyman’s collar or a layman’s”). This suggests that members of the Church are falsely posing as moral authorities for their own personal gain. With this being the case, Joyce undermines the Catholic Church’s credibility in ousting Parnell for his affair.
Trevor L. Williams: ‘there is not a single priest who is not somehow morally and intellectually compromised’
In addition to suggesting that the Church is hypocritical, Joyce also shows that their ouster of Parnell backfired; rather than making Irish politics more attuned to personal morality, Parnell’s expulsion sapped his party of any morality at all.
In Hynes’ elegy, Parnell’s name appears only in its final word, while the body of the poem calls him “Lord” and “Our Uncrowned King.” These euphemisms show an obsession with Parnell’s political mythology—a boilerplate rise-and-fall story—but not a constructive desire to learn from his real-life, complex character.
While men in Parnell’s time weren’t saints, at least—the story suggests—they had real values and principles to guide them, rather than falling into empty hero worship, hypocrisy, and laziness.
Symbols: Fire
The weak fire that lights the Committee Room symbolizes the waning spirit of Irish Nationalism, since the party has failed to maintain the vision and passion of its former leader Charles Stewart Parnell.
It’s significant that this room—the heart of the party—is cold, dark, and cheerless: the fire, in other words, is Nationalism’s life force, and the room seems nearly dead. The flagging energy of the Nationalist canvassers matches their weak fire.
Furthermore, several of the men use the fire for corrupt purposes. For these men to use this fire—a symbol of the burning political passions that once propelled the party towards noble causes—for such dissolute purposes as getting drunk and smoking idly shows that whatever energy is left in the Irish Nationalist movement is being grossly misspent by corrupt politicians and the immoral hacks who support them.
Essentially, the fire is so weak that it barely affects the cold, dark room—likewise, the political values that once drove Nationalism are so weakened that the men are no longer touched by passion or vision at all.
Symbol: Ivy Leaf
Many of the story’s characters wear an ivy leaf pin on their lapel to commemorate the late Nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell. While these ivy leaves are meant to show respect for Parnell, the men’s behavior and opinions would shame their late leader; the ivy leaf, therefore, represents the disconnect between empty symbolism and the true spirit of a political cause.
This sense of the men paying empty tribute to Parnell pervades the story. While they wear Parnell’s pin—supposedly to honor him—they do very little to advance the causes he cares about. Instead, they squabble amongst themselves, drink stout, and inadvertently reveal the depths of their party’s dysfunction and corruption.
The biggest betrayal of Parnell’s legacy is that the Nationalist candidate, Richard Tierney, is apparently planning a welcome address for the British monarch Edward VII.
It’s noteworthy that the story never names Parnell until the last word. The ivy leaf stands in for him, and the men—instead of naming him—use vague euphemisms, such as “this man,” “the Chief,” and “our Uncrowned King.”
That the ivy leaf and these epithets stand in for Parnell, while his name and his values remain conspicuously absent, shows the men’s refusal to grapple with Parnell beyond empty symbolism.
They cannot speak his name, advocate for his cause, or evaluate his legacy—instead, they use the empty symbolism of the ivy leaf pin as a way to pretend to honor Parnell without taking him or his values seriously.
Allusion: King Edward VII
King Edward VII was the King of England from 1901-1910, the period in which this story takes place. The reason that the men are against King Edward VII receiving “an address of welcome” when visiting Ireland is because, as members of the Nationalist Party, they believe that Ireland should be free from England’s colonial rule. As Hynes puts it, they don’t want to “kowtow to a foreign king.”
Allusion: Ivy Day
Though this short story is a work of fiction, Ivy Day was an actual yearly event celebrated in Ireland in the 20th century to honor the death of the famous Nationality Party Leader Charles Stewart Parnell.
Allusion: The Catholic Church
Throughout “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,” Joyce alludes to the Catholic Church in Ireland, highlighting how the Church is both morally and politically corrupt.
Old Jack’s son is only 19 years old and struggling with alcohol dependency highlights how the Church wasn’t able to set him on a morally upright path.
Father Keon and Fanning represent certain patterns in Irish politics—the fact that Father Keon (representing the Church) and Fanning (representing city government) have a close relationship implies that there is something suspicious going on between the church and the state. This is Joyce’s way of encouraging his readers to consider the Church’s inappropriate hidden role in politics.
Irish Dialect: Wisha
Old Jack’s use of the exclamation “Wisha!” is one example of the Irish dialect—the word originally came from the Irish Gaelic language and was likely an alternation of the word for “Mary,” Jesus’s mother. It was historically used to express surprise.
Motif: Silence
There are several moments of silence in “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,” forming a motif. These moments primarily serve to help readers understand the awkwardness and distrust amongst the men in the Committee Room.
