ABSTRACT
In "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" a mysterious character appears who is described as possibly a defrocked priest or else an unemployed actor. This might be presented as Joyce's own sly signature. Broken, transformed, dying and dead priests make their appearance in several of the Dubliners stories. As Harry Levin said with great effect, the chalice which broke in the hands of the ruined priest of "The Sisters" was the symbol of a broken communion and a theme throughout Joyce's work. The passage of the day has been directed toward a meeting between Stephen and Savior Bloom, and it brings them to the amalgam of the Circe episode, where for a moment they become one in a mystic sign of unity, the sign of Stoom, or Blephen. Molly Bloom escapes comedy by refusing mental extension, by concentrating in her moment of being.
