Ivy Day in the Committee Room Ivy Day in the Committee Room "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" is a short story by James Joyce published in his 1914 collection "Dubliners." Taking place on election day, "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" discusses candidate Richard Tierney as people filter in and out. Ivy Day refers to the anniversary of Charles Parnell, important Irish figure and nationalist. In a committee room, Mat O'Connor, a canvasser for Richard Tierney, a candidate in an upcoming municipal election, discusses child-rearing with Old Jack, who tries to keep a fire going. Joe Hynes, another canvasser, arrives and needles O’Connor on whether
Dubliners book "should be seen not just as a realist/naturalist masterpiece, but as a significant stepping- stone integrated into the modernist structure of Joyce's mature work." It has been argued that the narrators in Dubliners rarely mediate, which means that there are limited descriptions of their thoughts and emotions, a practice said to accompany narratorial invisibility where the narrator sees instead of tells. While some point to Joyce's use of free indirect discourse as a way to understand his characters, he often obscures the reliability of his characters in a way that would make any kind of analysis very difficult. As