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. While they are all ostensibly proud members of the Nationalist Party, they are hardly a unified group—some of the men earnestly support their candidate Tierney, while others refer to him as “Tricky Dicky,” some revere the late Nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell, while others judge him for the extramarital affair he had that led to his downfall.
Joyce subtly communicates these riffs and tensions via uncomfortable moments of silence in the Committee Room. This comes through especially near the end of the story after Hynes recites his poem to honor Parnell’s legacy:
Mr Hynes sat down again on the table. When he had finished his recitation there was a silence and then a burst of clapping: even Mr Lyons clapped. The applause continued for a little time. When it had ceased all the auditors drank from their bottles in silence.
Joyce uses the word “silence” two separate times in this passage. First, there is silence immediately after Hynes finishes reciting the poem. This communicates that, rather than genuinely clapping from the emotionality of Hynes’s poem, the men sit quietly for a minute, possibly calculating how they want to respond. That “even Mr Lyons clapped” underlines the fact that this clapping may not be genuine as, earlier in the story, Lyons expressed his dislike of Parnell.
The fact that, immediately following this performative applause, all the men “drank from their bottles in silence” also shows how this moment that was meant to induce a sense of camaraderie amongst the canvassers (as they all supposedly worship Parnell) failed to do so.
