by Stephen Wagner
G. K. Chesterton. The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2004. Originally published in Bristol, U.K. by J. W. Arrowsmith, 1908.
For some, myself included, the enterprise of literary criticism has taken on dubious associations. One reason for my antipathy to this discipline is that it tends to sour young people on the classics. I have done my part to abolish it, working quietly in libraries with a penknife to have books begin with Chapter One instead of “On Dickens and his Times.”
In relation to this, it has come to my attention that some people have enjoyed reading The Man Who Was Thursday. When I tell my friends that I too like The Man Who Was Thursday, it soon becomes apparent that we have little to say about the book. They have read it and have enjoyed its nightmarish quality, but they have put it down without reaching a definite conclusion about what it might mean. I offer here one proposal as to what it might mean. In order to accomplish this, I may have to indulge momentarily in something that looks like literary criticism, but which in the end will turn out to be nothing more insidious than reading a work of fiction in the context of what is known about its author. I will proceed on the assumption that you too have read Thursday, or could easily do so over the course of a weekend.
First, a reader of Chesterton must know that the chief literary device in his works is the contrast. This is true from the overall arc of his storylines down to his sentences, which often feature sharp contrasts with an ironic twist. Consider Chesterton’s initial description of the sinister Lucian Gregory (p. 2):
That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face—that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem.
And a bit further on:
He put the old cant of the lawlessness of art and the art of lawlessness with a certain impudent freshness.
On the larger scale, the main contrast in Thursday is between anarchy and the police. The central idea woven around this contrast is that those who fought in disguise against anarchy thought themselves to be alone, believing that the other members of the Council of Anarchists were mortal enemies. Yet, by the end of the story, each supposed dynamiter is revealed to be a policeman, a friend and a force for the restoration of order in the world. Significantly, all those posing as anarchists were recruited by a man in a dark room whom they never saw. Such was the case for Syme, recently chosen as Thursday, from whose perspective the story is told.
Second, the reader must understand that Thursday is not a work of precise allegory, but that it does have symbolic tendencies. One does not find an exact correspondence for every detail because, like Tolkien, Chesterton was not writing to allegorize but to entertain—or to terrify. The imprecise symbolism arises because, across his works, Chesterton does not major in exactitude: when he quotes, he often doesn’t bother to look up his sources; when he alludes, he does not always check his facts.1 Chesterton shoots like an archer hitting all over his target. This has the felicitous result that some of his shots are bull’s-eyes. You must read Chesterton, both his fiction and his nonfiction, for his bull’s-eyes and shrug off his wilder shots.
Third, to understand Thursday, it helps to know a bit about Chesterton’s road to becoming a Catholic, although at its writing he was still an Anglican. Chesterton once wrote that Catholicism has the unique quality in Christendom of uniting extremes. It enfolds a tendency to fecundity and a tendency to chastity, a tendency to fight and a tendency to make peace. The resulting balance, he says, is what keeps a careering horseman on his mount over perilous terrain. Chesterton arrived at Catholicism by means of evaluating how the various streams of Christianity handle a range of problems.2 The other Christian traditions, he might say, have arrived at truths without also enfolding their necessary balancing truths. As a result they have each blown one truth out of proportion at the expense of others. While he found the non-Catholic traditions to be out of proportion theologically, he thought of them as belonging within the circle of the Christian family.
At this point it is my aim to hand over the goods, to tell you how to read the symbolism in Thursday. In the narrative there are five policemen, the Secretary, and Sunday. Sunday represents Christ, met in the dark, but inscrutable once his enormous face appears in the light. The five disguised policemen represent five streams of Christianity: first Eastern Orthodoxy, then Lutheranism, followed by Roman Catholicism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism. The order of their unmasking is roughly, but not exactly, that of church history. Thus the first tradition that was thought to be an enemy, but which has turned out to be a friend, is eastern Christianity, represented by Gogol.
Gogol is the first anarchist to be unmasked as a policeman. But in Thursday Gogol is Polish, is he not? And what does he represent that looks particularly like Orthodoxy? Not much. Remember, you’re reading a nightmare, not an allegory, and not every detail will fit nicely. To get to the bottom of the symbolism of this character, it helps to know how Chesterton reacted to some ideas that came from Russian literature, particularly Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata. In that short novel, Tolstoy appeared to shred all that is sweet about love, sex, and marriage. This made Chesterton very upset, to the point of thinking its message was not Christian.3 This novella exemplified what Chesterton meant by pessimism, which was among his chief spiritual enemies. Chesterton chose the name of the Russian author Gogol because, in his disguise, that character embodies the gloom that shrouds much Russian literature, as in The Overcoat.
Interpreters of Thursday jump to the conclusion that the second anarchist to be unmasked, Professor de Worms, represents Nietzsche.4 While the story does allow a degree of ambiguity, I believe that the identification is wrong because the Professor only resembles Nietzsche before he is unmasked, that is, before he changes his preferred beverage from milk to beer (p. 70). In Chesterton’s world, Nietzsche could never be unmasked to become a friend. And he has nothing to do with Worms. But Luther does. Once it becomes clear that we are dealing with Christian traditions and not with philosophies, the identification fits. With Luther and Worms on his mind, Chesterton introduces and unmasks Dr. Bull. Who has issued more bulls than the Roman Catholic Church? The name provides another clue to the allegorical quintet of masked Christian traditions, and when Syme unmasks him, it is with an intuition “as infallible as the Pope” (p. 88).
At this point, the plot takes Syme, the Professor, and Dr. Bull on a foray across the Channel to prevent an assassination in France, but why France? Because this is the direction by which Calvinism entered England. In this scene Chesterton takes a swipe at the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion. Syme (who represents Anglicanism) arranges that at the thirty-ninth answer given by the Marquis (another anarchist, who represents Calvinism), he will challenge him to a duel. It doesn’t matter to Chesterton that the Thirty-nine Articles are not a catechism, as he suggests (p. 94), only that their number kept changing and that the catechetical approach looks to him to be contrived. Of course the Marquis, too, turns out to be a police officer.
When the now united policemen make their way back from France to London to confront Sunday, Sunday mocks them by leading them on an absurd chase, which finally draws them to his residence. There they are given finery to wear representing the Days of Creation, and Sunday entertains them. It slowly dawns on them that Sunday, like their confederates on the Council of Anarchists, was their true ally and the only one who really knew each of them. Their inward and outward peace is restored, and the unity that held them together all along is revealed. In reality only one enemy was abroad in the world, not the other Christian traditions, but Satan, who is represented by the accusing character Gregory.
Thus, following the trail of clues that the author has left scattered across his story, a careful reader can construct a plausible interpretation for the book that gives substance to its wild joy. It is my hope that when you next read Thursday, you will detect in it Chesterton’s optimism for the reconciliation of the various streams of Christianity despite their present schismatic tendencies, an optimism that he derives from the unveiled design of The Man Who Is Sunday.