Order, Chaos, and God
G. K. Chesterton’s 1908 novel The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare follows the intrepid poet-detective Gabriel Syme’s quest to save the world from a global anarchist conspiracy. Syme infiltrates the Central Anarchist Council, whose members use the days of the week as pseudonyms, and starts working to sabotage the group’s plans. But gradually, he realizes that all of the other council members are also undercover detectives doing the exact same thing—and its President…
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Identity
In The Man Who Was Thursday, nobody is who they seem to be. All of the protagonists have multiple identities, and the more sinister they seem at the outset of the novel, the more benevolent they tend to be by the end. Indeed, in the middle section of the novel, Gabriel Syme learns that one after another of his supposed anarchist rivals are actually fellow undercover detectives. For instance, Syme learns that the man…
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Tradition vs. Modernity
The Man Who Was Thursday is set around the turn of the 20th century, when major social, economic, technological, and philosophical changes were transforming life in Europe. Pessimist intellectuals were turning against democracy and the Enlightenment. The Second Industrial Revolution was making factory work the norm and technologies like steam trains and electric street lamps more widely accessible. And the majority of the population was living in cities for the first time. All of these…
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The Purpose of Art
Gabriel Syme, the protagonist and title character of The Man Who Was Thursday, is no normal detective: he’s also a poet. Even when he’s supposed to be busy saving the world, Syme spends much of his time contemplating the meaning of humanity and the beauty of the environment. In fact, G. K. Chesterton’s broader interest in the nature and purpose of art is apparent from the very beginning of the novel, which…
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