Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Man Who Was Thursday, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Order, Chaos, and God
Identity
Tradition vs. Modernity
The Purpose of Art
Summary
Analysis
Syme looks at the masked men through the binoculars and sees that none of them is the President. Inspector Ratcliffe suggests that the President is already carrying out his attack, then leads the others away into the woods. The masked men follow them, but are nearly impossible to pick out in the tumult of broken sunlight shining through the treetops. With his straw hat, Ratcliffe looks like he’s wearing a mask, too, and this makes Syme question whether anyone is really who they appear to be at all. After all, Syme’s enemies (the Professor, Dr. Bull, and the Marquis) have all turned out to be his friends. And they could turn back into enemies again at any moment. Perhaps nothing in the world really means anything at all.
The novel descends into the second of its three chase scenes. Just as in the others, it’s difficult for readers to know who is truly chasing whom, but the chase provides an occasion for the characters to reflect on the novel’s main philosophical concerns. Here, the broken sunlight and Ratcliffe’s hat complement Syme’s meditation on the nature of identity and disguise. Ratcliffe explicitly states what Chesterton has been hinting at all along: in the modern world, it's difficult to tell reality from illusion—especially when it comes to identity, for which there often isn’t a deeper truth at all. No matter how good their intentions, people often can’t tell whether they’re really on the side of good or evil. Of course, Chesterton will soon offer a caveat to this picture: none of this has to be true if we put our faith in a higher power.
Themes
Syme asks where they’re going, and Ratcliffe replies that they’re heading for a seaside town named Lancy, where the anarchists don’t have much support. Like most true anarchists, Ratcliffe explains, Sunday’s henchmen are powerful millionaires who don’t want the government to rule over them. The group runs into a suntanned French peasant—the kind of man Syme thinks would never be an anarchist. But Colonel Ducroix points out that, in France, peasants actually own their land, and he respectfully negotiates with the man to get a ride in his cart.
Ratcliffe’s comments about anarchist millionaires and the group’s encounter with the peasant both bring the novel back to a key question: who really benefits from anarchism? Even though anarchists claim to be liberating the masses from government tyranny, Ratcliffe suggests, anarchism actually only benefits the rich, who would see their power increase even more under a society without government. In a way, Chesterton views an anarchist society as an extreme form of capitalism. Indeed, he uses the French peasant to show how even common people can have dignified lives when they actually own property. Later in life, he would go on to condense these insights into a philosophical system that he called distributism. (In short, he believed that redistributing property and land more equally was the best way to improve society.)
Themes
Literary Devices
The peasant brings the group out of the woods to an inn near Lancy. They watch the anarchist army following them, but growing thinner over time. When they reach their destination, Ducroix arranges for the elderly innkeeper to bring them drinks and horses, which will allow them to reach the nearest police station. As soon as the men ride away, the black-clad anarchist army reaches the inn.
Like Ducroix and the peasant, the innkeeper doesn’t hesitate to do what’s right. All three men belong to an older, more traditional, more honorable world, where people still followed higher moral values. In contrast, the anarchists represent the moral emptiness of the modern world, where power and self-interest reign.
Themes
