Morality vs. Politics Theme Analysis

Charles Stewart Parnell was once the star of the Irish Nationalist Party, fighting for independence from England until being ousted for an extramarital affair. “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” shows Parnell’s once-ferocious Nationalist movement a decade after his untimely death: it’s now an antagonistic group of lazy, immoral political canvassers who are working for a paycheck rather than for political principles. As this depiction suggests, Joyce believed that Parnell’s political legacy was ruined by the scandal surrounding his personal behavior—and by the Catholic Church’s insistence that Parnell’s private life mattered more than his political goals. By showing how this scandal ruined the spirit of Irish Nationalism (and led to rife immorality among Parnell’s uninspired, leaderless descendants), Joyce suggests that it’s sometimes important to separate politics from personal morality. While personal morality is important to politics, throwing Parnell out for a personal transgression was destructive to both the political future of Ireland and to the moral character of its people.

From the beginning of the story, Joyce undermines the Church’s moral authority to judge Parnell by painting the institution as hypocritical and immoral. Early in the story, for example, Old Jack laments how poorly his son turned out, despite having sent him to a Catholic school. Jack’s blind equating of Catholicism with a good moral upbringing did not pay off; his son is a wayward drunk now, which hints at the Church’s inability to instill good morality (echoing, perhaps, how ousting Parnell also failed to improve Ireland). Furthermore, Father Keon—the story’s only character directly associated with the Church—is a shady political operator who is revealed to be a defrocked priest, presumably having lost his position for a moral transgression. It seems that, despite having lost his status, he still wears his clerical uniform (in the dim light of the Committee Room, “it was impossible to say whether he wore a clergyman's collar or a layman’s”). This suggests that members of the Church are falsely posing as moral authorities for their own personal gain. With this being the case, Joyce undermines the Catholic Church’s credibility in ousting Parnell for his affair.

In addition to suggesting that the Church is hypocritical, Joyce also shows that their ouster of Parnell backfired; rather than making Irish politics more attuned to personal morality, Parnell’s expulsion sapped his party of any morality at all. The story begins with Mat O’Connor’s eagerness for a paycheck that he doesn’t deserve and Jack’s ruthless beating of his son. This sets a tone for the men’s destructiveness and lack of integrity. On top of this, the canvassers are dishonest: John Henchy lies to voters on their doorsteps, bragging that the Nationalist candidate Richard Tierney “doesn’t belong to any party, good, bad, or indifferent.” The men are also mean, eager to spread rumors about each other. Henchy and Jack, for instance, growl that Joe Hynes is a spy, while O’Connor gossips about Father Keon’s excommunication. The men’s behavior gives readers the feeling that, although Parnell was kicked out of office for an immoral act, no one has improved as a result of that disciplinary action.

Furthermore, the men’s refusal to discuss Parnell’s moral transgression shows that, instead of increasing attention to personal morality, the Church ousting Parnell has chilled any discussion of morality at all. When Bantam Lyons questions Parnell’s character (“Do you think now after what he did Parnell was a fit man to lead us?”), his companions are outraged. But O’Connor nervously smooths things over with an obvious falsehood: “We all respect him now that he’s dead and gone.” O’Connor knows they don’t all respect Parnell—he’s simply avoiding making a constructive argument about how to learn from Parnell’s scandal. In fact, although the men clearly worship the idea of Parnell, they hardly use his name in the story at all; O’Connor calls him “the Chief,” while Hynes, silently pointing to his commemorative ivy leaf, calls him “this man.” This gives the impression that the men are afraid of even mentioning a touchy moral subject.

The poem that Hynes recites at the story’s finale—an elegy celebrating Parnell—encapsulates how the Church ousting Parnell has made Irish morality worse, not better. In Hynes’ elegy, Parnell’s name appears only in its final word, while the body of the poem calls him “Lord” and “Our Uncrowned King.” These euphemisms show an obsession with Parnell’s political mythology—a boilerplate rise-and-fall story—but not a constructive desire to learn from his real-life, complex character. The poem also combines these evasions with moral references that the reader knows to be insincere. For instance, the metaphor of Parnell as Christ—“with a kiss / Betrayed” (an allusion to Judas)—rings hollow after the whole story has painted the Catholic Church as immoral. Furthermore, Hynes’s insults (“modern hypocrites,” “coward hounds,” “fawning priests”) to those who ousted Parnell sound also like descriptions of Hynes and his colleagues, which shows that—while they easily judge others—they do not reflect on their own hypocrisy or try to do better. This self-implicating poem, then, shows two things: that after Parnell’s scandal, the party men cannot deal with life’s moral complexities (preferring instead simplistic narratives of heroes and villains); and, what’s worse, that this avoidance has made them oblivious to their own failings. This, Joyce suggests, is the devastating result of Irish society demanding moral perfection of a political leader. While men in Parnell’s time weren’t saints, at least—the story suggests—they had real values and principles to guide them, rather than falling into empty hero worship, hypocrisy, and laziness.