65 pages • 2 hours read
G. K. ChestertonThe Man Who Was Thursday
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1908A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Identity and Disguise
From beginning to end, the novel centers on identity and disguise. Syme’s first challenge is to discern between enemies and friends. The narrative describes Syme’s introduction to the anarchists and combines his observations of their external appearance—clothing, facial features, body type, and behavior—with his emotional reactions. They seem to be ordinary men, but with closer examination, Syme judges each man to be subtly “wrong.” The detectives initially represent evil and then are revealed as good. Lucian Gregory is the opposite. Syme believes he is harmless and mainly good, but he is exposed later as the ultimate evil.
Chesterton makes it clear identity cannot be determined by external characteristics alone; intangible attributes of personality are not as readily apparent. In a religious context, this concept represents the doctrine that “[…] the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). When each man strips off his mask, their unseen identity is revealed. The professor is amiable and immediately bonds with Syme. Dr. Bull is young, mischievous, and delights that his deception was so convincing. The Marquis is amused as he taunts Syme to pull off his nose. The other detectives demonstrate similar qualities, and all of them are courageous in the face of fear, dedicated to their mission, and loyal to each other.
These notions of identity are perhaps most pronounced when the Secretary and his masked mob pursue the detectives by horse and car. Each side assumes the other is made up of anarchists, when in reality all of them are allied with the police. When attempting to make sense of the absurd conversation after the fact, Syme asks himself, “Was he wearing a mask? Was anyone wearing a mask? Was anyone anything?” (84). Even though Syme and the others are tasked with fighting anarchists, the scene of dozens of anti-anarchists shooting and swinging swords at one another is itself a display of anarchy. Thus, the line between anarchist and policeman is blurred to the point that Syme begins to question his own identity and the identities of his companions.
Later, the relationship between identity and disguise is further muddled when Syme and the rest of the detectives don costumes that represent the days of Creation. Throughout much of the book, characters reveal their identities by removing disguises. Yet here, Syme says, “[…] these disguises did not disguise, but reveal” (120). The donning of the costumes is thus framed as part of the act of holy revelation Sunday provides at the end of the novel.
Sunday embodies all the characteristics of identity: physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. He is an everyday person, the manifestation of good and evil, nature in all its aspects, and the Sabbath, or the peace of God. The real mystery of the novel is the search for answers to the ultimate mysteries: the existence of God, man’s relationship to Him, and one’s true identity.
The Narrative as Metaphysical Thriller
According to the G.K. Chesterton biographer Kevin Belmonte, The Man Who Was Thursday is a “metaphysical thriller,” a term he attributes to the English novelist Kingsley Amis. (Belmonte, Kevin. Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life and Impact of G.K. Chesterton. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. 2011.) By this, he means that the mystery at the heart of the novel is of a spiritual nature, unlike traditional murder mysteries or whodunnits. On the surface, Syme and his compatriots aim to uncover Sunday’s motivations for bringing them together to pose as anarchists.
Yet as the novel reaches its conclusion, it becomes clear that uncovering Sunday’s motivations is as beguiling a goal as divining the motivations of God himself. This is reflected in the Secretary’s angry confrontation with Sunday in which he says, “If you were from the first our father and our friend, why were you also our greatest enemy?” (123). This question of how God can be both benevolent and cruel, and the question of why God allows evil to exist in the world, are among the most profound spiritual and metaphysical inquiries humanity faces. It is no accident, for example, that the policeman who first recruits Syme says that his boss seeks out philosophers to join the anti-anarchist division. Moreover, when Syme says that he has no experience as a detective, Sunday tells him that a willingness to serve is sufficient, another reference to Biblical language. The fact that Chesterton frames these questions through what at first glance seems like a traditional mystery yarn is a brilliant gambit on the part of the author.
In the end, the “reveal” of the mystery is nothing less than the holy revelation itself. For Syme, the feeling of knowing God’s love and power is akin to waking from a bad dream, hence the book’s subtitle, A Nightmare. While the moment of revelation itself is still shrouded in mystery, Syme feels as if someone gave him “impossible good news” (126), a phrase used by Christians to describe the gospel of Jesus Christ. Moreover, the narrative closes with a vision of Rosamond tending a garden. Given that Rosamond is the book’s only female character, she also symbolizes the first female, or Eve. Her placement in a garden makes the Biblical connection even more explicit. It suggests that Syme’s reward for all his hardship, suffering, and confusion throughout the book is to join the Kingdom of God finally as one of His flock. Yet Syme and his companions may be more than mere converts. They are specifically selected by Sunday, which suggests they are something more, perhaps apostles. In any case, while no temporal or earthly mystery is solved by novel’s end, the spiritual mystery of God’s love is resolved.
Reality Versus Fantasy
Reality and fantasy are inseparable throughout the book. In Chapter 1, the narrator describes the environs of Saffron Park as fantastic and wild, with homes and people that aren’t quite ordinary: “The place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could regard it not as a deception but rather as a dream” (1).
As Syme leaves Saffron Park, the narration indicates he doesn’t see Rosamond again until the conclusion of the narrative. In the same paragraph, the author includes a statement that suggests the story is a dream: “For what followed was so improbable, that it might well have been a dream” (1).
There is a back-and-forth between reality and fantasy in every chapter. When Syme debarks on the bank of the Thames River, he feels as if he’s on another planet: “To Syme’s exaggerative mind the bright, bleak houses and terraces by the Thames looked as empty as the mountains of the moon” (28). Later, as Syme crosses Leicester Square with the Secretary, the place seems changed somehow: “It will never be known, I suppose, why this square itself should look so alien and in some ways so continental” (32). The juxtaposition of the ordinary men at breakfast and their extraordinary plan is consistent with ebb and flow of reality, as is the continual change of enemies turning into friends and vice versa.
The chase between the detectives and Sunday through London also takes the plot from reality to the realm of fantasy, and the ride to Sunday’s house transports them into a world of surreal natural elements: “Syme looked left and right upon the patch of green field in which he found himself. The hedges were ordinary hedges, the trees seemed ordinary trees; yet he felt like a man entrapped in fairyland” (118). Other surreal elements include Sunday’s ride on an elephant through the London Zoo and his impromptu trip into the sky in a hot air balloon. Given that Chesterton frames the resolution of the book as an act of holy revelation, these and other bizarre happenings may reflect humanity’s bewildering state of nature prior to discovering God. To a Godless man, life is little more than a continuous stream of absurd, incomprehensible hardships—in other words, a nightmare. Only when individuals discover the “good news” (126) of Christ’s gospel is their relationship with nature once again righted. Thus, when Syme wakes up from the heathen fantasy of his life up to this point, he finds himself in a state of harmony, his eyes open to the reality of God’s love and the beauty that comes with it.
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