Though it was Joyce’s favorite of the tales in Dubliners, “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” is a difficult story for most American readers to comprehend, thanks to its excess of Irish slang and references to turn-of-the-century Irish politics. However, the fact that most of the story is told by means of dialogue rather than narrative—an unusual, even radical, approach at the time “Ivy Day” was written—should be appreciated. Like the prior story (“A Painful Case”), it also includes a document quoted at length in place of a conventional, dramatic climax. In “A Painful Case,” the document was the newspaper article about Mrs. Sinico’s suicide, while here it is Joe Hynes’s poem, which he recites from memory.
The story is for the most part a naturalistic one with little in the way of overt symbolism, and yet “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” reiterates the themes of corruption and death introduced in the collection’s first story, “The Sisters.” The canvassers are working for money, rather than out of any particular enthusiasm on behalf of the candidate they support, and some of them seem actually to be contemptuous of Tierney. At the same time, they criticize others for having been paid off by the Protestant authorities: “Some of those hillsiders and fenians are a bit too clever if you ask me. . . . Do you know what my private and candid opinion is about some of those little jokers? I believe half of them are in the pay of the Castle.” Some also suspect Joe Hynes of spying for the rival candidate in this election. Gossip is one of the motifs of “Ivy Day in the Committee Room.” As soon as any of the characters depart the room, at least one of the others begins bad-mouthing him.
Ivy Day is the anniversary of the death of Charles Parnell, the Nationalist and “uncrowned king of Ireland” whom the Irish turned on when his affair with a married woman came to light—thus further delaying Irish independence.
