Book Review: The Man Who Was Thursday

Recently I read The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Penguin Classics), by G.K. Chesterton. I've heard a lot about Chesterton, and have always wanted to read some of his stuff, and I would still suggest reading something he has written, but probably not this book to start. Although it is good, the longer the book goes, the less good it gets, and the ending to me felt like I had to read it 10 times just to say 'oh, I get it now, clever'- not the kind of ending that will stand out in your mind. That being said, it was a good book, and had some good parts to it.

The book takes place in 1900 London, and focuses on a policeman who is fighting anarchists. He manages to get himself elected to the anarchists council, where each person is called by a day of the week. Our hero is called Thursday, and he schemes to stop and expose the other anarchists, including the man bad guy, Saturday. Through this surreal plot and the nutty characters, Chesterton comments on moral relativism and nihilism, and this is the best stuff in the book.

The main character, Gabriel Syme, is a guy who I sort of understand. He grew up in a home where 'change' was the mantra of the day, where his parents were beholden to progressive ideas, and where the whole family attempted to portray sophistication and rebellion. And as time went on Syme began to see how revolting this behavior was, how demented and sad these people were, and so he himself revolted to sanity. He ran from change and progressivism to common sense, to law, to gentle and courteous behavior.

I understand Syme- as our society embraces 'change' and values are lost, MTV grows more lewd, Micheal Jackson is a 'hero', not eating meat and smoking drugs is embraced, and our culture becomes more progressive, I personally am increasingly revolted. When I was younger, I was less conservative, I was more moderate- but this revolting behavior of our society is causing me to revolt against it, and to embrace traditional values, to have more common sense, and to be a better person, much like Syme was.

Chesterton, like other great authors like Orwell, understood the way the world works and understood how tyranny and oppression develops. Remember 1984 and Animal Farm- the dangerous characters, those that were bad and evil, were not the uneducated country boys who believed in private ownership and conservative values. The dangerous, evil, and bad characters were the educated, sophisticated, moral relativistic, and value free ones.

So it goes with Chesterton. As Syme talks with a policeman in Chapter 4, the policeman says:

(The anti-anarchist police) 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 dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher.

Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men. They accept the essential idea of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fullness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people's.

The common criminal is a bad man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. He says that if only a certain obstacle be removed- say a wealthy uncle- he is then prepared to accept the universe and praise God. He is a reformer, but not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse the edifice, but not to destroy it. But the evil philosopher is not trying to alter things, but to annihilate them.

Yes, the modern world has retained all of those parts of police work which are really oppressive and ignominious, the harrying of the poor, the spying upon the unfortunate. It has given up its more dignified work, the punishment of powerful traitors in the State and powerful heresiarchs in the Church.

This is a vast philosophic movement, consisting of an outer and inner ring. The outer ring- the main mass of their supporters- are merely anarchists; that is, men who believe that rules and formulas have destroyed human happiness. They believe that all the evil results of human crime are the results of the system that has called it a punishment. They do not believe that the crime creates the punishment. They believe that the punishment has created the crime. These people talk about 'a happy time coming,' 'the paradise of the future,' 'mankind freed from the bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue,' and so on.

And so also the men of the inner circle speak. But in their mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave. They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then themselves.

I realize that is a long passage, but it was one of the most meaningful in the book, because it conveys that the enemy is indeed a terrible thing, and not because they wear a black mask or have a golden gun, but because of what they themselves believe. As you read that passage, perhaps you understand why Chesterton is so highly regarded- did you get a sense that he was describing someone in our political system?

Chesterton might have called them anarchists or philosophers, and later they might go by other names like fascist or communist, but to me, their ideas about economic suicide for no reason, their dislike of labeling things right and wrong, and their views on life and mark them as the modern Democratic Party. And at the center of the inner circle there is a man who speaks to applauding crowds and says pleasing phrases, but he is under no illusions, and his actions have terrible consequences for our great nation.

Buy the book here and learn more about the left-wing movements...