Joe Hynes Character Analysis

Joe Hynes, a fellow Nationalist canvasser and a convincing speaker on politics, delivers a pious and overdramatic elegy to the late Nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell in the story’s finale. Unlike his colleagues, it’s clear that Hynes has some political principles; after all, he is not afraid to accuse their candidate Richard Tierney of corruption and royalism, calling Tierney “Tricky Dicky,” speaking of his origins in illegal liquor, and chiding him for considering a welcome to King Edward VII (a gesture that would offend any true Nationalist seeking independence from England). Hynes even goes so far as to defend Tierney’s opponent Colgan, a blue-collar working man who sticks up for the lower classes. In this way, Hynes draws attention to the serious corruption at the upper levels of the Nationalist party (while also drawing accusations from Henchy that he is a spy). Hynes is not perfect; he is revealed to be a blind follower of the late Parnell. He uses Parnell’s commemorative ivy leaf as a prop in debate and invokes “this man” rather than speaking Parnell’s name, two cursory gestures that suggest Hynes’s inability to think for himself or to engage with Parnell’s complex moral legacy. So, while he draws attention to the moral failings of current politics, Hynes also draws readers’ attention to the ways in which political followers can become overly obsessed with their leaders’ personas. In his concluding elegy to Parnell (recited at the end of the story), the shallowness of Hynes’s investment in Parnell is made clear by his overdramatic language and his formulaic, uninspired use of Christian imagery and moral tropes like “hypocrisy.” The poem teaches nothing insightful about why the late leader is worth lamenting. The other men’s warm reception of the poem helps illustrate the dangers of blind political worship and helps make clear Joyce’s argument that, ever since the Catholic church ousted Parnell on moral grounds, his followers have been scared out of engaging with deep, real-life moral questions. Instead, they have reverted to cardboard idolatry.