The Man Who Was Thursday

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**The Man Who Was Thursday: a Nightmare**

Author	G. K. Chesterton
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Thriller novel
Publisher
Released	1907
Media Type	Print (Hardcover)

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare is a novel by G. K. Chesterton, first published in 1907. Although it deals with anarchists the novel is not an exploration or rebuttal of anarchist thought; Chesterton's ad hoc construction of "Philosophical Anarchism" is distinguished from ordinary anarchism and is referred to several times not so much as a rebellion against government but as a rebellion against God, and takes on many aspects of nihilism. The book has been referred to as a metaphysical thriller.

1 Plot summary
2 Details
3 Gabriel Syme
4 Annotations
5 Mercury Theatre adaptation
6 Appearances in popular culture
7 Notable Quotes
8 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In a surreal turn-of-the-century London, Gabriel Syme, a poet, is recruited to a secret anti-anarchist taskforce at Scotland Yard. Lucian Gregory, an anarchist poet, is the only poet in Saffron Park, until he loses his temper in an argument over the purpose of poetry with Gabriel Syme, who takes the opposite view. After some time, the frustrated Gregory finds Syme and leads him to a local anarchist meeting-place to prove that he is a true anarchist. Instead of the anarchist Gregory getting elected, the officer Syme uses his wits and is elected as the local representative to the worldwide Central Council of Anarchists. The Council consisting of seven men, each using the name of a day of the week as a code name; Syme is given the name of Thursday. In his efforts to thwart the council's intentions, however, he discovers that five of the other six members are also undercover detectives; each was just as mysteriously employed and assigned to defeat the Council of Days. They all soon find out that they are fighting each other and not real anarchists; such was the mastermind plan of the genius Sunday. In a dizzying and beautifully surreal conclusion, the six champions of order and former anarchist ring-leaders chase down the disturbing and whimsical Sunday, the man who calls himself "The Peace of God".

[edit] Details

Like most of Chesterton's fiction, the story is heavy in Christian allegory. Chesterton, a devout Christian by this time (he joined the Roman Catholic church about 15 years later), suffered from depression for much of his life, and claimed afterwards that he wrote this book as an unusual affirmation that goodness and right were at the heart of every aspect of the world. He had hoped the book would serve as an encouragement to himself and to other members of his family who also had the tendency to become melancholy.

On an interesting note the costumes that the anarchists/detectives don towards the end of the book represent what was created on their respective day. Sunday, 'the sabbath and the peace of God', sits upon a throne in front of them. His last words, 'can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?', is the question that Jesus asks James and John in The Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, vs 38-39, to challenge their commitment in becoming his disciples. The name of the girl Syme loves, Rosamund, is derived from 'Rosa Mundi', meaning 'Rose of the World' in Latin, and a title given to Christ. Chesterton would have meant this as a deliberate allusion.

[edit] Gabriel Syme

The character of Gabriel Syme, a man who wants to destroy Sunday because he is afraid of him and a 'man should leave nothing in the universe standing that he is afraid of', eventually finds that he embodies everything that he was fighting for. What Syme details about his upbringing is very much Chesterton's own upbringing, making him perhaps the most autobiographical of all of Chesterton's fictional characters.

[edit] Annotations

Martin Gardner edited The Annotated Thursday which provides a great deal of biographical and contextual information in the form of footnotes, along with the entire text of the book, original reviews from the time of the book's first publication, and comments made by Chesterton on the book at various times. Originally published by Ignatius Press, the book is currently out of print. A less thorough annotation was done for the edition of the novel published as part of The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, also from Ignatius Press.

[edit] Mercury Theatre adaptation

On September 5th 1938 the Mercury Theatre on the Air staged a somewhat abridged radio-play adaptation written by Orson Welles who was a great admirer of Chesterton. This was almost two months before the more famous War of the Worlds broadcast.

Although it remained true to the book and is admired by most fans of Chesterton, its abridgements render it somewhat harder to understand, mostly because it omits some of the metaphysical and theological discussions and treats much of the whimsical and comedic asides rather too dramatically. Almost all of Chapter 14: The Six Philosophers is left out, in which the majority of the metaphysical speculation is found. Those who have not read the book might find the play somewhat baffling.

[edit] Appearances in popular culture

The computer game Deus Ex features several excerpts from the book, that can be found at various points in the game; the excerpt usually relates somewhat to the player's situation. Additionally, a man found in a free clinic in New York comments to another that he is making a sculpture, that he will call "The Man Who Was Thursday". Gabriel Syme, the protagonist of the book, is also featured in the hotel guest list in Hell's Kitchen.

[edit] Notable Quotes

"No one has any experience of the Battle of Armageddon." (The Police Chief)
"Well, really, I don’t know of any profession of which mere willingness is the final test."

"I do. Martyrs. I am sending you to your death. Good day." (Syme and the Police Chief, again)

"The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked about the Rights of Man! We hate rights and we hate wrongs. We have abolished right and wrong." (Lucian Gregory)
"Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?" (Gabriel Syme)
"The moderns say we must not punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a right to punish anyone else." (Gabriel Syme)
"We deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. We remember the great poisoning princes of the Renaissance. We say that the most dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral people, and my heart goes out to them." (The Policeman)
"As you know, his death was as self-denying as his life, for he died through his faith in a hygienic mixture of chalk and water as a substitute for milk, which substance he regarded as barbaric, and as involving cruelty to the cow." (Comrade Buttons, about Syme's predecessor in the office of Thursday)