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
The detectives chase the President’s balloon several miles through fields on the outskirts of London. Syme ruins his suit in the process. Under the beautiful sunset, the men debate whether the President really was the man who hired them. Dr. Bull admits that he hopes the President gets down from the balloon safely, because he admires the President’s boundless energy. But the Secretary says that Sunday laughed at his woes and seemed like a “gross and sad” lump of jelly when they first met. Ratcliffe describes Sunday as ordinary, exceptionally neat, but absentminded—an especially dangerous trait in an evil person. Gogol says he doesn’t think about Sunday at all. And the Professor says that Sunday’s face is “too large and loose”—it seems to constantly change, and it makes him “doubt whether there are any faces” at all.
Without any clear answers from Sunday, the detectives debate what their journey has really meant and who Sunday really is. All of them give different answers, and these answers all closely reflect their own personal beliefs and concerns. For instance, Dr. Bull is the most optimistic man in the group, so it’s scarcely surprising that he admires Sunday and wishes him well. The Professor’s description of Sunday is particularly notable: he seems to recognize that Sunday has no consistent self or personality at all. In doing so, he again explicitly points out how this novel constantly subverts simple, ordinary concepts of identity.
Themes
Literary Devices
Syme remarks that each of the detectives described Sunday differently, but all compared him with “the universe itself.” Syme remembers seeing Sunday’s back for the first time in Leicester Square—he looked like a beast pretending to be a man. But when he came onto the balcony, Sunday’s face seemed to shine with goodness, like an angel or god. Syme has no idea which is the true Sunday: “the horrible back” or “the noble face.” During their cab chase, Syme started suspecting that Sunday’s real face was the back of his head. “The secret of the whole world,” Syme concludes, is that people see the back of things but not their true faces.
Syme’s analysis of the other detectives’ ideas about Sunday suggests that the man really does have some kind of divine, Godlike power. This raises important questions for the reader: does Sunday represent God himself, or God’s representative in the world (the Messiah)? Syme’s comments about Sunday’s “horrible back” and “noble face” point to the contradiction between Sunday’s role as the police chief (the height of goodness) and the lead anarchist plotter (the height of evil). Of course, this duality supports the theory that Sunday is somehow divine. But when Syme applies this same analysis to the universe itself, he seems to be saying that he and the other detectives have been missing a crucial aspect of things by focusing on stopping the anarchist plot. They have seen “the horrible back” but not “the noble face”—in other words, they have been steadfast pessimists. Perhaps their encounter with Sunday will show them some true goodness in the world besides their own will to stop its destruction.
Themes
The detectives watch Sunday’s balloon sink down into the forest. Gogol announces that the President is dead, but the Secretary, the Professor, and Dr. Bull disagree. Syme leads them toward the balloon. A large, old man with a scepter approaches them and announces, “my master has a carriage waiting for you.” He insists that the detectives already know who the master is. Syme notices that the old man’s clothes are the exact same color as the sky and countryside, and feels like he’s in a fairytale. The man leads the detectives to a nearby road, where they find six carriages and six attendants waiting for them. They are confused but comforted.
Chesterton again throws the reader for a loop by completely changing the novel’s content and tone. Suddenly, the hunt for Sunday is over, and the uncertainty that has plagued the detectives throughout the whole novel magically disappears. Instead, they embark on an entirely different kind of journey. Indeed, by shedding their worries and embracing the next stage of their journey, they are finally doing what Syme has just called for: taking comfort in the “noble face” of the universe. But the man who represents this “noble face,” judging by his scepter, appears to be death.
Themes
The carriages take the men up a long hill. Syme sees hedges and elm trees on the way. But later, the men realize that they each saw different things that reminded them of their childhoods. The carriages reach a vast gate, where a different old man says that each of the detectives should go to their personal room for refreshments. Syme climbs a staircase and finds an apartment that was clearly made just for him. But when he looks at himself in the mirror, he scarcely recognizes himself: he’s covered with blood and his clothes are torn apart.
Whether or not the detectives have literally died, they’re clearly heading to the afterlife, at least metaphorically. Their personalized visions and special apartments, like their different perceptions about Thursday, show how this process will look different for each of them—each must remake their own identity by reconsidering the life they have lived. Yet, when Syme fails to recognize himself in the mirror, this shows how people’s identities can change so much that they no longer recognize themselves. In other words, people aren’t necessarily the most reliable judges of who they really are.
Themes
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Syme’s attendant brings him wine, pheasant, and clothes for the evening’s ball: a blue drapery outfit with a sun on it, which represents Thursday. The attendant gives Syme a Bible and points him to the chapter in Genesis that says that God created the sun and moon on Thursday. Syme is confused, but he puts the costume on anyway. When he does, he feels liberated and empowered. His new disguise “did not disguise, but reveal.”
By this point, the novel is chock full of religious symbolism, which clearly suggests that Christianity is what has saved the detectives from the world of doubt and uncertainty where they used to live. While they spent most of the book trying to fight a shady conspiracy to destroy the universe, now they enter a new realm where, as the Book of Genesis suggests, they will finally have the chance to create something new. And while Syme’s beautiful new disguise once again suggests that people may not have a true identity lurking beneath the disguises that they wear, it also offers a solution to the problem. It shows that finding one’s true self does not have to mean rejecting and taking off the disguises that hide it—instead, it can just mean waiting for the disguise that fits best.
Themes
