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
In some ways, the six men before Gabriel Syme seem perfectly normal. But in others, they seem twisted and extreme, as though they belong “on the borderland of things”—just like their beliefs. They discuss their terrible plots with a frightening ease: in three days, Wednesday will try to bomb a meeting between the Russian Czar and the French President. While this worries Syme, he’s actually more worried about something else: Sunday is staring directly at him. Syme feels like Sunday knows that he’s a spy.
Syme struggles to fit in with the men who surround him. He can’t decide what their outward appearance says about their inward nature: are they ordinary people with extremist beliefs, or monsters who have somehow learned to seem outwardly human? His sensation of teetering on the edge of reality is not just a comment on the other men, but also, as readers will eventually learn, a key turning point in the novel’s plot. This conversation gives him a clear mission—stopping Wednesday’s bombing—and will soon plunge him into the new, even gloomier world where he will go on to spend the rest of the novel.
Themes
Syme considers reporting the six ringleaders to the police, but he also remembers his promise to Lucian Gregory. So he ends up stuck “in a vertigo of moral indecision.” He’s sure that Sunday would kill him if he discovered him spying, but he also thinks that perhaps he could get all six men arrested before they had a chance. While the anarchists might have persuaded a lesser man to join their plots, Syme never considers it for a second—he fears Sunday, but he doesn’t admire him. The ringleaders eat voraciously as they discuss whether to carry out the attack with a knife or dynamite.
Syme’s “vertigo of moral indecision” comes from being stuck between two different ethical principles: he wants to keep his promise (even if it was to a criminal), but he also wants to bring the anarchists to justice and stop their attack. Clearly, Syme is fundamentally a man of principle—but his involvement with the anarchists makes it difficult for him to seriously follow or even make sense of his principles. In fact, Chesterton uses Syme’s “vertigo of moral indecision” to communicate a broader message: modern philosophy, literature, and political movements turn the world into senseless chaos by destroying traditional morality.
Themes
Suddenly, Sunday stands and breaks his silence. In a strangely timid voice, he asks the others to follow him to a private room for some “very particular” news. Syme decides that it’s time: either Sunday is going to kill him, or he’s going to turn the men in. A crank organ playing in the square reminds Syme about the beauty of humanity, and he decides that he’s willing to risk his life to save the world.
To Syme, the contrast between Sunday’s gigantic stature and his gentle voice only makes him seem more ominous and unpredictable than before. Whereas anarchists want to destroy the world because they don’t see anything valuable in it, the crank organ music shows Syme exactly what’s valuable and beautiful in the world. It’s telling that Chesterton chooses a crank organ, an instrument of the masses, to inspire Syme. Clearly, Chesterton is trying to suggest that society’s beauty and vitality come from traditional, working-class art and popular culture—and that the guardians of law and order really represent these working classes’ interests, even though anarchists also claim to.
Themes
Syme follows the conspirators into a dark room, where Gogol complains that Sunday is a hypocrite for holding meetings in secret. Sunday asks the men to sit down and reveals that he has “simple and shocking” news: the group can no longer openly discuss its plans because one of them is a traitor. That man, Sunday declares, is Gogol. Gogol pulls out two guns, and three men grab him. Syme sinks into his chair with an overwhelming sense of relief.
Syme was frightened because he thought that Sunday had found him out, but it turns out that he isn’t the only spy on the Council. But in addition to creating suspense and showing off Chesterton’s talent as an author, this daring plot twist also foreshadows the next several chapters, in which the other anarchists’ identities also come under further scrutiny.
Themes
Literary Devices
Get the entire The Man Who Was Thursday LitChart as a printable PDF.
