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
Gabriel Syme really is a poet, and his hatred for anarchists really is sincere. It comes from “a rebellion against rebellion”—his family was full of insufferable, nonconformist cranks, and he once witnessed a terrible bombing. He began to see anarchists as a dangerous horde of brutes, and he resolved to dedicate his life to fighting them.
Syme’s childhood explains his profession: he thinks that the best way to stop the forces of evil is by using their own tactics to undermine them. But in this way, he’s just as passionate and emotional as the anarchists he wants to stop. Of course, his attitude also parallels Chesterton’s goals in his work: he wants to rebel against the literary and philosophical rebels (like romantics and modernists) who dominated the intellectual scene of his time.
Themes
Literary Devices
One night, Syme was walking down the riverbank, brooding about anarchists, when a policeman noticed his shabby clothes and stopped him. Syme complained that policemen are not only cruel but calm about their cruelty. But the policeman replied that this is “the calm of organized resistance” against evil. He revealed that he is a “philosophical policeman” who works to protect civilization against intellectual conspiracies. Instead of unjustly brutalizing the poor, like most policemen, he fights the worst kind of criminal: “the entirely lawless modern philosopher.” Syme agreed: ordinary criminals are willing to live in society, if only they can have more money or property for themselves. But anarchists are far worse because they want to destroy society itself.
Syme hates anarchists, but this doesn’t mean that he believes in preserving society just the way it is. Where anarchists try to destroy things they don’t like, reformists like Syme want to improve them. Indeed, Syme recognizes that modern governments are often designed to sustain inequality, and that the police often do more harm than good. Yet the “philosophical policeman” is different—he belongs to what people would recognize today as an anti-terrorism unit. Indeed, the distinction between normal criminals and “lawless modern philosopher[s]” is similar to the difference between criminals (who try to improve their standing in society through unethical behavior) and terrorists (who try to undermine the very foundations of society for everyone).
Themes
Literary Devices
The officer asked Syme to join the police and fight the organized anarchist army, which is preparing to strike. Most of the army’s soldiers are ordinary anarchists who think that humanity would be happier without laws and society, but its leaders are dangerous ideologues who think humanity should collectively commit suicide. Syme agreed to join. The officer led him to Scotland Yard to meet the anti-anarchist unit’s chief, an enormous man who holds meetings anonymously in a pitch-black room. Syme told the chief that he didn’t have experience, but the chief replied that nobody does, since the job is to be a martyr. He hired Syme, but told him that he would die on the job. Syme cleaned up his clothing, hair, and beard, then got to work.
Modern readers might see the threat of an anarchist conspiracy as an innovative plot twist, but actually, it was just a familiar reality for readers in the early 20th century. Chesterton communicates his skepticism about the anarchist movement’s true aims through the philosophical policeman: while the masses who joined the movement might have mistakenly seen it as a pathway to a better society, he suggests, its leaders were really selfish misanthropists. In other words, just like the novel’s plot, anarchist politics is based on deception and mistaken identity. But Syme’s meeting with the police chief might lead readers to wonder if the same isn’t true of anti-anarchists, too. The chief’s size, dramatic flair, and penchant for secrecy are all important details that foreshadow the moment when his identity is revealed, near the end of the novel.
Themes
Back in the present, after being elected as Thursday, Syme boards the tugboat under a bleak, moonlit sky. He feels like he’s on a foreign planet, embarking on a wild medieval adventure. All night, the tugboat works its way down the Thames. At daybreak, it reaches an embankment with steep stairs, and Syme disembarks.
From Syme’s sense of adventure to the weather, this passage’s tone couldn’t be more different from the opening scene’s—in which the crazed anarchist Lucian Gregory chatted calmly with his friends in beautiful, sunlit Saffron Park. Of course, these juxtapositions are intentional: they’re yet another reminder that things are usually not what they seem. One of the novel’s villains (Gregory) first appeared as a hero, and here, its main hero (Syme) dresses up as a villain.
Themes
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