29 pages • 58 minutes read
James JoyceIvy Day in the Committee Room
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1914A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Ivy
The story’s title references “Ivy Day,” October 6, which is the anniversary of Parnell’s death and the day on which the story is set. Mr. O’Connor and Mr. Hynes both wear buttonholes of an ivy leaf, a sign of commemoration of Parnell on the anniversary of his death. The buttonholes are an outward sign of the men’s political allegiance and their recognition of Parnell as a political and cultural hero. Joyce thus sets up the expectation that the two men will hold similar views and be allies. However, much of the story’s moral tension is between the characters of Mr. O’Connor and Mr. Hynes, highlighting that, although they may both heroize Parnell, they reflect their beliefs in very different ways. Joyce uses the ostensibly unifying symbol of ivy to critique the stagnation of Irish nationalism in the early 1900s.
Porter
Mr. Tierney buys his canvassers porter, a very strong malted beer. The canvassers are given beer as a means to put off paying them for their services, emphasizing both the questionable legitimacy of the electoral process and the issue of alcohol dependency, the dangers of which are highlighted early in the story by Old Jack. The men wish to drink but either will not or cannot buy the beer with their own money: They wait impatiently until the serving boy brings porter on Mr. Tierney’s account. Joyce highlights the repetitive noise “pok!” of the corks popping out of the bottles, emphasizing that the men are gathered together primarily to drink. The porter is a symbol of political apathy and hypocrisy. Only Mr. Hynes, the radical Parnellite republican, refuses the call of the bottle by the end of the story, symbolizing his insistent resistance to the numbing influence of alcohol and the moral prevarication it symbolizes.
Fire
The fire, tended by the elderly laborer Old Jack, draws each of the political men one-by-one into the Committee Room. The fire is symbolic of Ireland, and the flaring and dying of the flames represents the hopes and disappointments of the republican cause. Just as the fire symbolizes the fervor of Irish nationalism, the embers represent the turpitude of the men who gather around it. They use the fire to warm themselves and the porter that symbolizes political apathy. They are attracted to the fire as a distraction from the work they should be pursuing: Like the warmth of nostalgia, it comforts them while they avoid proactive efforts to further the cause they espouse. Mr. O’Connor is the most egregious example, as he sits at the fire all day to avoid canvassing outside, and criticizes his fellows. Mr. O’Connor uses the fire to light his cigarette, using one of the campaign cards he is paid to distribute as a taper. This is an explicit symbol of his laziness and hypocritical self-interest.
The image of the fire is used to juxtapose the more committed Mr. Hynes and his heroizing of Parnell. Of all the men, he is the one who most keeps the “flame” of Parnell’s memory alive. Although he stands away from the fire in the room, the ode he recites makes repeated reference to a heroic fire: Ireland’s hopes were burned on Parnell’s “monarch’s pyre,” but his spirit may “rise, like the Phoenix from the flames” (105). This is the true and righteous fire of political commitment, contrasted to the weak and dying embers of the Committee Room fire, around which men only talk.
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By James Joyce
