29 pages • 58 minutes read
James JoyceIvy Day in the Committee Room
James JoyceFiction | 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.
Literary Devices
Diction
In his short story, Joyce employs specific diction in the dialogue of his characters, particularly dialect words and colloquialisms. This diction is used to strengthen the characterization and to emphasize the story’s setting and meaning: As with much of Joyce’s work, the presentation of authentic Dublin Anglo-Irish speech patterns is tied in to social, national, and political themes. The Nationalist characters also use Irish language exclamations, such as “usha,” “musha,” “moya,” and “wisha,” as well as an Irish Nationalist insult for a pro-Anglo Irishman, “shoneen.” One of the primary social programs within Irish republicanism in the early 1900s was the resurrection of the Irish (Gaelic) language. British rule in Ireland had officially discouraged the use of Gaelic, and the act of speaking (or writing) in Irish was a politicized act as well as a reflection of cultural identity.
The story’s high concentration of authentic dialogue also heightens the liveliness of the vignette, dropping the reader into the midst of the group’s conversation. The distinctions in diction between the characters helps the story to efficiently communicate the social standing of the men and their political allegiances. Old Jack and the boot boy, as the men with the lowest status and educational level, use incorrect grammar, compared to the Conservative Mr. Crofton, who has social pretensions and considers himself “above his companions” (102).
Juxtaposition
Joyce creates a juxtaposition between the roles of two monarchs in “Ivy Day in the Committee Room.” These two figures are King Edward VII, king of Great Britain and Ireland from 1901 until 1910, and Charles Stewart Parnell, the leading political figure of Irish nationalism in the late 1800s. King Edward is the factual king but one whom Irish Nationalists largely rejected at the time. In contrast, Parnell is presented in the story as a legendary, metaphorical monarch. This metaphorical juxtaposition represents the political divide in Irish and British politics between pro-Anglo colonial monarchism and Irish national republicanism.
The portrayal of King Edward VII in the story is ambivalent and reflects the contentious nature of British rule in Ireland at the time. The interlocutors make reference to the new king’s upcoming visit to Dublin, part of the royal visit to Ireland in 1903. The Irish Nationalists (both those in the room and in the country at large) are divided as to whether the Nationalist party should address a welcome to the king when he arrives in Dublin, and a comparison is made directly to Parnell as a past Nationalist who would have stood against this sort of prevarication.
Mr. Hynes is critical, sarcastically calling the king “Edward Rex” and a “German king,” and asking, “What do we want kowtowing to a foreign king?” (98). The imputation of foreignness here is both that Edward VII is of German descent and that English rule is a foreign imposition on the Irish. The men discuss the king without deference: Mr. Henchy later points out that King Edward is “fond of his glass of grog” and “a bit of rake” (103), and he is called “King Eddie” by Hynes, but the men are divided about whether the king’s persona as an “ordinary knockabout” adds or detracts from his popularity or suitability as a leader. In contrast to the real king, the commoner Parnell is recognized as a “gentleman” and “the Chief” by the men on either side of the political divide. This elevation is heightened in the poem, when Parnell is called the “Uncrowned King” and “monarch” of the Irish.
Both King Edward and Parnell are compared as having similarly low personal morals, which complicates the linguistic juxtaposition that the story sets up between the “exalted” commoner Parnell and the “ordinary” King Edward. Parnell’s political downfall was partly due to a divorce scandal resulting from a longstanding affair with his married lover, Kitty O’Shea, particularly damaging in a predominantly Catholic country. Rather than comparing King Edward to an ideal, Lyons, Crofton, and Henchy debate whether the Irish should accept the king as another “immoral” figurehead. The story therefore contains two parallel comparisons between the two monarch figures, one that exists in the men’s conscious discourse and one that is reflected by the poem’s heightened emotional language. This prevents the story’s juxtaposition from being oversimplified. Instead, it is part of Joyce’s exploration of the tension between the men’s cultural and emotional affiliation and their political principles and pragmatism.
Apostrophe
Joyce employs the device of apostrophe in Mr. Hynes’s poem, “The Death of Parnell.” Apostrophe is a literary convention drawn from classical poetry, in particular the ode or elegy, in which the speaker addresses an abstract or inanimate object as if they are a person. Throughout the poem, Mr. Hynes calls, “O, Erin,” referring to Ireland using a common poetic name. Following tradition, the figure of Erin acts as a personification of Ireland within the poem, acting as a female figure representative of the country: “Erin’s hopes and Erin’s dreams / Perish upon her monarch’s pyre” (105).
In apostrophizing, Mr. Hynes makes his poem part of a long tradition of heroic or epic verses that celebrate the great deeds and often tragic deaths of cultural heroes. Mr. Hynes’s poem follows the formal lyric conventions of both the ode and elegy: An ode is a poem that relies on apostrophe to publicly praise someone, while an elegy is a lament on the death of a friend or public figure. In this way, the poem gives Parnell the status of a great national hero in parallel with the heroes of antiquity.
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