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A spiritual mystery If you come to Chesterton's avowed masterpiece expecting a piece of early twentieth-century realism, you're going to be very surprised. If you come to it having heard that it's a mystery—perhaps along the lines of his beloved Father Brown stories—you're bound to be very disappointed. In fact, I can't think of anything that might prepare you for The Man Who Was Thursday. Even after reading it, I don't get it. Sure, I get that it's a Christian allegory, a morality tale, a comment on the decadence of Western society and the deep need for a spiritual foundation. All that. It's as obvious as could be. But I don't get it as a novel. Once past the first few intriguing chapters, it never feels right to me as a story I could care about. It starts like a mystery or an early thriller. The poet-turned-detective Gabriel Syme uncovers an anarchist conspiracy against the world. Members of the gang he infiltrates are named after the days of the week. He becomes Thursday. The kingpin is Sunday, who is the most enigmatic figure and the key to uncovering the real, apocalyptic goal of the secret organization. Is he God or is he Satan? Everyone talks like Chesterton at his paradoxical wittiest, in aphorisms that defy logic, turning good and evil upside-down. The narrative similarly twists and turns, at every juncture overthrowing what you may think you knew before (though I found most of the "surprises" quite predictable). Martin Gardner's annotated edition of The Man Who Was Thursday is particularly useful for understanding this often hard-to-follow novel. By the way, Chesterton in an article denies the story is a Christian allegory, pointing to its subtitle A Nightmare and claiming it's just a whimsical tale about the duality of hope and despair. But why all the Christian imagery then? — Eric
© Copyright 2002-2003 Eric McMillan. All rights reserved.
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