Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Warning to the Curious, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
History, Culture, and Disrespect
Community vs. Individualism
Folklore, Religion, and Belief
Summary
Analysis
The coastal town of Seaburgh contains a white church uphill from the waterfront, a train station behind the church, and several small red houses. The scenery of the town is reminiscent of the novel Great Expectations. An unnamed writer recalls the time he spent in Seaburgh as a child and notes that the town hasn’t changed much over the years. He has fond memories of spending time there as a kid, so he is intrigued upon meeting an acquaintance who tells him about something extraordinary that happened in Seaburgh. The writer decides to put this story down on paper, recording it as he heard it from the man who originally narrated it to him.
The unnamed writer describes Seaburgh in considerable detail as a way of setting the scene for the story to follow. It’s a calm and cheerful vacation town of which the writer has pleasant memories. But by referencing Great Expectations, a bleak novel that opens in a graveyard, the writer imbues the beginning of this story with a foreboding tone. Already, there is a sense of some disturbance in the normally peaceful Seaburgh. This introductory section also breaks the fourth wall in that the writer acknowledges the fact that he is recording a story, which creates a relationship with the reader and pulls them into the story, embodying the inclusive community feel of Seaburgh.
Themes
The narrator—who tells the writer this tale—and his friend Henry Long used to frequent Seaburgh to play golf there, but Long has now passed away. They always used to stay at a hotel called The Bear. One day in the spring of “19—,” the narrator and Long are sitting in an otherwise empty lounge at The Bear when a younger man comes in to join them. He seems anxious, and the narrator can tell that he is eager to socialize. The three men begin to chat, and the younger man says that he’s just had a distressing experience and could use some advice. A waiter brings them a drink as they prepare to discuss the young man’s experience.
The writer no longer has any presence in the story. He records the events exactly as the narrator shares them. Omitting the exact year is a stylistic choice by M. R. James in order to make the story seem more realistic—he feigns at censoring the year for reasons of privacy or uncertainty, as one would in a journal. As the story begins, it becomes clear that Seaburgh is an affable community. The young man’s agitated state adds an undertone of disturbance, but the narrator and Henry Long are unbothered, act kindly towards him, and seem to be on friendly terms with the hotel staff.
Themes
The young man starts explaining what happened. In his story, he rides his bike to a neighboring town called Froston to see a church whose architecture he is interested in. He meets an old man outside the church who engages him in conversation about a symbol on the church’s porch. It’s a symbol of three crowns—the coat of arms of East Anglia. The old man says that the symbol stands for the three holy crowns that were buried by the sea in order to keep German invaders at bay. The old man thinks the young man doesn’t believe this and tells him to ask the rector about it. The rector approaches them, and the young man confirms that he does believe the story about the crowns. Curious to hear more, he goes off with the rector.
The encounters the young man has at the church exemplify a tightknit but rather open community. The rector and the old man seem to be close friends despite their clear socioeconomic differences, and even though the young man is an outsider, the townspeople he meets welcome him without hesitation. This interaction is the first mention of the holy crowns, a central symbol of the story. The old man’s insistence on the folklore surrounding the crowns shows how important this bit of culture is to his community. It’s also an early sign that perhaps the young man can’t be fully trusted—he claims to believe in the power of the crowns, but something about his behavior leads the old man to doubt him.
Themes
The rector speaks openly and easily to the young man about the local legend. He says that the crowns were all buried in different locations to fend off various invaders (“the Danes or the French or the Germans”), but one was dug up and melted in 1687, and another has been washed away at sea. The last crown is still buried nearby. The rector goes on to explain that a family named the Agers were the guardians of this remaining crown. The rector personally knew Nathaniel Ager, who watched over the crown during the War of 1870. The next Ager guarded it during the South African War, and William Ager, the last in the lineage, recently died of consumption. The rector tells the young man that now no one is left to watch over the crown.
The rector’s grasp of the town’s history suggests that he is perhaps a leadership figure in the community—which, in turn, indicates that this is a society centered around the Christian church. The rector’s warmth and openness speak to the camaraderie of the community as a whole. “A Warning to the Curious” was written and published in the wake of World War I, at a time when the threat of foreign invasion was a real and sensitive topic. With this in mind, if the town is under constant threat of invasion, the possibility that the crown might really have protective qualities is quite significant, since these protective qualities would be essential to the town’s welfare. It's not yet clear if the young man believes in the crown’s power, but the rector seems to. This passage also contains the first mention of William Ager, whose death is a tragedy from the rector’s perspective, as his death has left the crown (and thus the community) in a state of vulnerability.
Themes
Get the entire A Warning to the Curious LitChart as a printable PDF.
The young man is fascinated and becomes determined to find the crown. He rides away on his bike after talking to the rector and happens to catch a glimpse of William Ager’s gravestone, which he attributes to “fate.” He thinks he can easily find where Ager lived. “Fate” again leads him to a shop where he comes across a prayer book containing entries from many of the Agers. The young man considers this a lucky find, and he asks the shop worker about William Ager. The man in the shop tells him where Agers lived, and the young man sets off to find the old house. He runs into another townsperson and inquires to her too, pretending that he knows more about Ager than he really does. She leads him to the exact spot where Ager once lived.
The young man’s immediate determination to find the crown suggests that he doesn’t believe in its magical powers—but regardless of his belief, he displays a notable lack of sympathy. He selfishly takes advantage of the rector’s kindness, knowing that the crown disappearing or being harmed is exactly what the community fears. The young man seems to try to absolve his blame as he recounts the steps he took before finding the crown, speaking as though it all happened by chance. But really, it’s clear that he intentionally sought out the crown because of a superficial desire to see it for himself.
Themes
The young man scopes out the terrain and decides to dig into it to find the crown. He makes up an excuse to tell the others at his hotel why he’ll be out in the dark for so long, and he heads out to dig in the middle of the night. He tells the narrator and Long, “I won’t bore you with the details of how I supported it and filled it in when I’d done, but the main thing is that I got the crown.”
The young man avoids dwelling on the details of digging up the crown, implying that he feels some guilt about having done so. He does admit that he lied to some people at his hotel about where he was that night—hiding what he did is further evidence that he knows that taking the crown is an infringement upon the community.
Themes
This story thrills the narrator and Long, and they’re shocked when the young man (they learn that his name is Paxton) tells them that he wants to return the crown. He invites them to his own room to take a look at it. Paxton seems to be in anguish, but the narrator doesn’t understand why. He and Long see the crown and are deeply impressed. The narrator confirms that it is definitely genuine. Long proposes that they all go back to their room so that Paxton can explain what exactly the problem is. As they leave, Long and the narrator feel that they’re beginning to share Paxton’s nervous energy, and they sense a presence in the hotel hallway as they pass through.
The narrator and Henry Long are not yet clued in to the cause of Paxton’s agitated state, as they don’t see any problem with what transpired. It's only after they first see the crown for themselves that they become aware of a ghostly presence, directly linking the crown to supernatural activity.
Themes
Back in the room Paxton first met the other two in, he explains the issue. He describes noticing a presence with him since he first began planning to dig for the crown. He could see a man in his peripheral vision, but he could never look directly at him. Whenever Paxton went back to his room in Froston, the prayer book was open to the page with the Agers’ entries. As Paxton was digging into the ground, he could feel a person’s fingers scraping at his back, and he heard a scream at the moment that he first grasped the crown. Afterwards, wherever Paxton went people looked behind him as though there was another person following him.
The fact that the presence (assumed to be William Ager’s ghost) appears as soon as Paxton started digging suggests that he must have known early on that what he was doing was wrong. He couldn’t look at the ghost straight on, just as he can’t fully face his culpability (as he circumvents it in his recollection of events). In this way, the ghost parallels and represents Paxton’s guilty conscience, though the ghost is not a mere figment of Paxton’s imagination—the other characters sense it as well. In fact, the ghost displays real, tangible power both by moving the prayer book and scratching Paxton, but Paxton ignores these warning signs. He seems not to believe in the folklore around the crown simply because the idea is foreign to him, and he’s too absorbed in his own materialistic motives to be open to evidence that contradicts his beliefs.
Themes
Paxton cries after finishing his account, and the narrator and Long agree to help him return the crown. It’s already 10:30 on the night of a Paschal moon, so the group starts to formulate a plan to return the crown that very night without anyone noticing what’s going on. Long tells the hotel servant (“the boots”) not to stay up and wait for them, and the three men set out to return the crown, concealing it under a coat. They don’t see anyone on the streets, but the narrator feels that someone is watching them. As they get closer to where they will bury the crown, all three sense an increasingly troubling sensation of invisible presences watching them.
The Paschal moon is the last full moon before Easter. This detail contributes to the story’s complex spiritual backdrop by tying traditional Christianity to the otherworldly goings-on of the ghost and crown. The ghostly presences become stronger as the group approaches the crown’s original site, removing any doubt that the removal of the crown is the root of the supernatural chaos. On another note, the boots is a low-ranking hotel servant with whom the narrator and Henry Long have a friendly relationship—a relationship that parallels the egalitarian spirit of friendship between the rector and the old man who first told Paxton about the crown. This, in turn, reminds readers of the open, trusting, and tightknit nature of this community, thus emphasizing the unfortunate fact that Paxton selfishly betrayed these communal values.
Themes
When they arrive to where the crown was originally buried, Paxton frantically digs into the earth. They are terrified, though they don’t see anything or anyone around. Paxton quickly finishes burying the crown, and as they leave, Long and the narrator notice a coat lying on the ground. But when they look again, the coat is gone, and they second-guess whether the dark shape was a coat at all. They arrive back at the hotel before midnight, and the boots is still up. He tells them that he saw someone else following them.
The “coat” on the ground is implied to actually be William Ager’s ghost, as is the figure the boots saw following them. Though Henry Long told the boots not to wait up, the boots stays up out of concern for the men. This is a caring gesture and shows the reciprocity of the relationship, as the narrator mentions at one point earlier that they tip the hotel servants very well.
Themes
Long and the narrator try to console Paxton by telling him that no harm is done now that the crown is back in the ground, but Paxton is unconvinced. He feels that the harm is already done, and that more hardship awaits him—even religion won’t help him. Long and the narrator invite him to spend the next day with them playing golf, but Paxton is indifferent. The narrator notes that they would have made sure Paxton was safe with loved ones at that point, except Paxton did not have any friends or family.
Paxton didn’t initially believe in the local folklore, but now his tune has changed. It's not until his life is endangered that he’s willing to entertain ideas that go against his system of beliefs.
Themes
The next morning, the three men reunite for breakfast. Their plan is that Paxton will stay in while the other two golf, and then they will all go out together later in the day. But when Long and the narrator are ready to go out with Paxton, they can’t find him. A concerned hotel worker tells them that she saw Paxton run outside when he thought he heard the other two calling for him. Long and the narrator rush out to find him. The two men run in the sand along the waterfront, and Long spots Paxton ahead of them. It’s sunny out, but the air is hazy from the sea, so they can’t see very well. They can make out two sets of footprints in the sand. One pair of the footprints appears to be “more bone than flesh.”
At this point, Paxton’s death seems the most likely outcome. Nevertheless, the narrator and Henry Long do their best to protect their friend. Paxton seems to have spent his whole life alone, and just as he betrayed the community that Seaburgh offered him, Paxton refuses the potential benefits of company by declining the invitation to golf.
Themes
The narrator supposes that Paxton is chasing after someone or something whom he thinks is Long or the narrator himself. He wonders how Paxton could have made such an error, but he remembers Paxton mentioning that the ghost “has some power over your eyes.” As the path they’re running on comes to an end, the narrator and Long stop and climb up an artillery battery to look around. They can’t see much at first because of the mist. Suddenly they hear a horrible laugh, and when they look down they see Paxton’s dead body. His face is violently damaged. The narrator speculates that Paxton ran after the ghost until it suddenly turned around—revealing itself—and killed him.
The ghost can somehow control what Paxton sees or doesn’t see with its “power over [his] eyes,” recalling how, earlier, Paxton found it impossible to look directly at it. Again, this mirrors his relationship to his own guilt, which he can’t directly face. He does so only after he has the crown, at which point the irreversible damage is already done. In the same way, Paxton can only finally see the ghost when it turns around in the second before it kills him. As the ghost represents Paxton’s guilt, his demise serves to caution against the irreversible disaster that severe disrespect and betrayal can cause.
Themes
A watchman from the nearby tower approaches the scene, having partially seen what happened. The watchman as a witness ensures that Long and the narrator could never be blamed for Paxton’s death. The incident is deemed a mysterious murder, but only the narrator and Long know what really happened. They agree not to tell the press what they know about the crown. Since Paxton was so socially isolated, the investigation into his murder never gains traction. The narrator never goes back to Seaburgh after this incident.
The narrator and Henry Long are loyal to the Seaburgh community to the very end. They protect the community by keeping the story of the crown a secret, and in doing so, they protect Paxton’s honor as well.
Themes
