The tone of “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” is a detached yet frustrated one. The narrator of the story does not offer any direct commentary or opinions on the goings-on in the Committee Room, yet their frustration with—and judgment of—the characters comes across in subtle ways. When introducing the characters, for example, the narrator tends to zero in on their unappealing qualities. Take, for example, the introduction of Crofton and Lyons:
Here two men entered the room. One of them was a very fat man, whose blue serge clothes seemed to be in danger of falling from his sloping figure […] The other man, who was much younger and frailer, had a thin clean-shaven face.
The narrator is not actively disparaging these two men, yet, in focusing on how Crofton's “clothes seemed to be in danger of falling from his sloping figure,” the narrator displays a critical orientation to the man. The description of Lyons as “frail” despite his youth also doesn’t paint a very flattering portrait. In these subtle ways, the narrator’s frustration with the waning energy of the Nationalist Party comes across. (The narrator’s tone is likely influenced by Joyce’s personal critiques of the Nationalist Party at the time.)
It is worth noting that, because the narrator essentially disappears for much of the story—letting the characters talk amongst themselves without interruption for pages at a time—the tone of the story also merges with the tone of the various characters. While the characters joke amongst themselves at points, they are mostly gossiping and bickering, contributing to the judgmental and discontented tone of the story.
