The Man Who Was Thursday - Chap. 14

Introductory Remarks

What does it all mean? Chapter 14 finally begins to peal back the veil. I've read to the end of the novel now, and find that Chapter 14 presents the "problem" of the novel in a condensed sort of way. Chapter 15 then makes the "argument" in true Chesterton form. My discussion of this section will be a bit more systematic, rather than in bullet points as with past chapters. I will keep my comments isolated to Chapter 14 here.

Discussion

The allegory is heavy from the get-go in this chapter. What do you make of the men ploughing through ploughed fields and trudging through dark thickets in pursuit of Sunday "till each was turned into a figure too outrageous to be mistaken for a tramp?"

Reading on, something important occured to me during the conversation between Dr. Bull and the others about how Bull never disliked Sunday because he fancied him as some sort of over-grown baby. This something important was the notion of "mischievousness" - so importantly distinct from "wickedness." And I thought back, as all our six crusaders must be thinking in the novel, on "what it all means." And it occured to me that if Sunday was the man in the dark room, and also the President of the anarchic council - if he really was playing both sides of the chess board - well, then, there was never any real danger. Frustrating as it might be, we have to call "no harm, no foul." For the "bombing" that Sunday had commanded them was a farse: He knew it would never happen, because he knew his six councilmen were disguised cops, for he had chosen them. He knew the cops were in no danger when he sent them in, because he knew there was no serious anarchic council. The whole thing was a bit of mischief. And I must admit, I wondered if Abraham thought the same thing coming down off the mountain with Isaac...

The next section that put me on to the real "problem" of the novel was the Secretary's comments about Sunday's laughter. Sunday represents to Monday something "gross and sad in the Nature of Things." My footnote made much of this and quoted the section from Orthodoxy I have reproduced below.

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.

Orthodoxy, IX

A beautiful paragraph. But why would God hide his laughter from us? Why does Sunday's laughter so infuriate Monday? The answer is because we - because Monday - cannot understand the "game." It's easy enough for us to conceive of God laughing in our good times. There's that painting of Jesus laughing which I despise because He looks like a Rastafarian. But I hate it for more than that. I had it because it unsettles me. God is, after all, eternal, and all moments are present to Him at once. He's not just laughing through your baby's first steps - he's also laughing through your baby's lukemia, if He's laughing at all. Forgive me the bit of seeming irreverence that it might take to say this. But this is what Chesterton was on about. This is, I think, what the book is all about.

The book is talking about the question of theodicy. How can the universe be "justified?" The old argument from the beginning about order versus anarchy - why was it that the tree, the natural thing was all in chaos in the illustration, and man's doings try to "restore" some sort of order by way of railway timetables? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Why this disorder in the world, in the universe? Yes, the fall, but why did we fall? Why did God make us so that such could happen? I think back to all our discussion of this is Dr. Lowry's class at the Seminary...

Of course, I have something of an answer, and so does Chesterton - but he's fleshing out the problem first. He's trying to look more deeply into it before he springs his "solution" on us. And the disillusionment of the Professor, the stubborness of Gogol, the scorned anger of the Secretary, and the baffled affection of Bull are all symbolic of mankind's experience of this problem. The days of Creation have received crazy messages and been led on a wild chase. Sunday is laughing at Monday. "God is in his heaven..." and mankind always has some place in the pit of the stomach that objects. But is God just in His heaven...?

The end of the chapter alludes to where Chesterton is going. His choice of "Sunday" is also a bit of a hint. I go back to my first observation in this post: the man have journeyed through the dark forests and muddy fields in pursuit of Sunday, and have now arrived, tattered and worn, at a large estate. And what does each find prepared for him? New clothes... Hrmm...