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
After getting off the tugboat, Gabriel Syme climbs the embankment’s steps and encounters a mysterious man (the Secretary) standing at the top. The man is dressed conventionally and sports a tiny beard at the bottom of his long face. He is also completely motionless, so Syme isn’t sure if they’re supposed to meet. Then, the man cracks a strange smile, but only on half of his face, and tells Syme that they will go to meet Sunday for breakfast on a balcony overlooking Leicester Square. Sunday has decided that the safest place to meet is completely in the open, because nobody believes that people who talk publicly about anarchism would ever actually be anarchists.
Chesterton describes the Secretary in a way that instantly relates him to, but contrasts him with, Lucian Gregory. Both men have unusual chins and strange hair, but Gregory’s wild, flowing red locks speak to his calling as a poet, while the Secretary’s clean little beard suggests that he’s more of a cold-blooded political operative. And his bizarre half-smile is the only sign of his sinister intentions. Finally, Sunday’s decision to meet in the most public place imaginable is consistent with Lucian Gregory’s habit of telling all his affluent friends about his bombing plans. It again reminds the reader that, in this novel’s world of paradoxes, disguises are often really disguises, but sometimes they’re really the truth.
Themes
Literary Devices
Leicester Square looks like an exotic foreign plaza. Gabriel Syme notices a group of extravagantly-dressed men chatting boisterously over breakfast on a balcony. He immediately identifies Sunday as the gigantic man facing away from the plaza. As he climbs the stairs and approaches the balcony, Syme feels that he’s approaching “the headquarters of hell.” He takes his seat and glances at Sunday’s huge, imposing face. The other men look ordinary, except for one: Tuesday (or Gogol), a melancholy Pole whose white collar and satin tie contrast absurdly with his messy, doglike brown hair. Sunday complains that Tuesday’s sour attitude makes him stand out.
It's significant that Leicester Square, one of London’s most significant central plazas, looks foreign and out of place to Syme at the moment when he finally reaches the heart of the anarchist conspiracy. It’s also significant that the anarchists’ conversation looks rambunctious and disorderly—even though, unlike most stereotypical anarchists, they have a clear structure and obvious leader. Sunday looks appropriately sinister and imposing for the role he plays—but the novel’s constant disguises and mistaken identities should remind the reader not to trust appearances. Similarly, Gogol stands out for failing to look natural in his extravagant disguise, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s not in disguise at all.
Themes
Gabriel Syme notices that something seems to be wrong with all of the men: they seem “not normal” and “hardly human.” Monday, the Council Secretary who met Syme on the embankment, has an emaciated face and tortured eyes, in addition to his twisted smile. Wednesday, the wealthy Marquis de St. Eustache, looks too at home in his luxurious clothes, like a sinister tyrant. Friday, the Professor de Worms, is a senile old man who seems to be decaying from his very corruption. And Saturday, a confident, stocky young doctor named Bull, wears opaque black glasses that make his true expression impossible to see. He seems like “the wickedest of all those wicked men.”
Each anarchist has one or two clear traits that give them away as deviant misanthropes. This fits with the novel’s constant focus on identity and disguise: the anarchists all look like aliens thinly disguised as ordinary humans. Of course, time will show that they aren’t really anarchists disguised as normal people, but rather something else entirely, disguised as anarchists. While the anarchists appear to come from all walks of life, in reality, they all share one key trait: they are all social and economic elites. This points to Chesterton’s suspicion that anarchism is really a plot for the wealthy and powerful to undermine the government and secede from democracy.
Themes
