A Research Paper on G.K. Chesterton and The Man Who Was Thursday Essay

While doing research on G.K. Chesterton and his literary masterpiece, I came upon this article on Gilbert Magazine in which his answer to the question What is the difference between progress and growth? was posted. To this question, he answeredThe fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things rotter us, has give awayly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside of us. First of all, I didnt even know he has a magazine. Secondly, since I strike never heard of him before, I ask myself why on earth has it taken so long for me to discover much(prenominal) an amazing man? His arguing above is just mavin of the marvelous pithy quotations of a man who never earned a doctorate and, in fact, never even go to a university. I present read round of them and I am amazed at how he discount say something nigh everything and says it better than everybody else. It is with utter delight that I am taking this journey to the discovery and uncovering of a gen ius a journalist, a debater, an artificer, a happy man for in discovering him, I discover passion, wisdom, and myself.G.K. Chesterton A Poet, Storyteller, and Ironist G.K. Chesterton cannot be summed up in 1 sentence. Nor in one paragraph. With all the fine biographies I have encountered that have been written of him, I dont know if the Gilbert Keith Chesterton has really been captured between the covers of those take fors. In the first place, how could one simplify a man of such complex talents? He was very good at expressing himself, but to a greater extent importantly, he had something very good to express the reason why he was one of the greatest thinkers and writers of the 20th century and a champion of the Roman Catholic religion.K. Chesterton is alive and kicking to daytime in a way that or so of his contemporaries are not precisely because he enunciated clearly and forcefully the fundamental principles in the light of which issues, whether of today or of yesterday , can be confronted intelligently, and he has devote this extraordinary intellect and creative power to the reform of English government and society. Literary types would laud him for his poetry and novels and detective stories and plays social critics would approve him for his prescient admonitions about eugenics and nihilism and socialism champions of domestic democracy would like his doctrine of distributism philosophers would be challenged by his insights and quips the fundamentalist Christian would defend him for defending Christianity, and the Catholic Christian would have a go at it the enjoyment Chesterton derived from his Catholicism. This is a multifaceted man. Gilbert was a day boy at St. Pauls. The masters rated him as an under-achiever, but he earned some recognition as a writer and debater. Although he never went to college, he proved that genius cannot be tied down to the rules of the academy, nor need we be submissive to the prejudices of the academy in evaluating genius. Chesterton, in fact, chose to be a journalist, because in that role he could think most profoundly, powerfully, cogently, and effectively. He was vitally concerned with the injustices of Great Britain to its dependencies. He progressed from newspaper to public debate. He used logic, laughter, paradox, and his own winning personality to show that imperialism was destroying English patriotism. In 1900 he published his first literary works, both volumes of poetry. In 1900 he met Hilaire Belloc, and in 1901 he married Frances Blogg. These events were two of the great influences in his life. From 1904 to 1936 Chesterton published nearly a dozen novels, the most important world The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) and The Man Who Was Thursday (1908). In 1911 Chesterton created the Father embrown detective stories. During his literary career he published 90 books and numerous articles.He poured out a wealth of lighthearted essays, historical sketches, and metaphysical and polemi cal works, together with such well-known poems as The Ballad of the White Horse, Lepanto, and the drinking songs from The go Inn. Among his major critical works are studies of Robert Browning (1903) and Charles Dickens (1906). Prodigiously talented, Chesterton also illustrated a number of Bellocs light works. Chesterton spoke of himself as in the first place a journalist. He contributed to and helped edit Eye Witness and New Witness. He edited G. K.s Weekly, which advocated distributism, the social philosophy developed by Belloc. Chestertons predominate concern with political and social injustice is reflected in Heretics (1905) and Orthodoxy (1909), perhaps his most important work. I could say that Chesterton was not a philosopher in the sense of one who, like Plato or Aristotle, Aquinas or Bonaventure, Descartes or Kant, Hegel or Kierkegaard, made original contributions to the history of human reflection on the reality of the real. We can, however, say that he made two remarkabl e contributions which are still immensely worthwhile today (1) he was unmatched in his ability to satirize the philosophical foibles of his day and (2) although his philosophy was not unique his manner of expressing it was unique one cannot read him, even today, without being again and again suddenly pulled up short. In collect of his perennial concern with ideas and with ideas that count, with ultimates he has to be called a philosopher, not merely, however, as a lover of wisdom, but as one who possessed a authentic kind of intuitive wisdom. Throughout his life, G.K. Chesterton was one of the most colorful and loved personalities of literary England. To his intellectual gifts he added gaiety, wit, and warm humanity that endeared him even to his antagonists. This English author, journalist, and artist was born in London on May 29, 1874. He died at his home in Beaconsfield on June 14, 1936, but it doesnt matter. To those who know him and are ardent readers of his works, his wisd om lives on. To those like me who simply stumbled upon him, he lives again. In our hearts, his wisdom is timeless.The Man Who Was Thursday A Masterpiece of a Non-Degree Holder Genius Versatility of topic, address, genre, device, whatever more there is in the heaven and earth of mind and spirit brought to letterssuch is the hallmark and mandate of Chesterton. He can be straightforward and for right, squat and to the point, or witty, with a certain malice aforethought. He can take the way of irony or simply snort when his patience is exhausted. He can soar with angelic sweep or swoop like a bird of prey. His descriptive hand is as authentic as any, as regard this from the beginning of The Man Who Was ThursdayThe suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout its skyline fantastic its ground plan absurd.More especially this attractive unreality strike down upon it about nightfall when the extravagant roofs were dark against the afterglow and the whole insane village seemed as separate as a drifting cloud. This . . . was more strongly dead on target of the many nights of local festivity, when the little gardens were often illuminated, and the big Chinese lanterns glowed in the dwarfish trees like some fierce and monstrous fruit. The Man Who Was Thursday was the phantasmagorical 1908 novel of eccentric nihilists, philosopher-detectives and a riddle-writing criminal mastermind who just might be God. Subtitled A Nightmare, this masterpiece by G.K. Chesterton better known for his Father Brown detective series mingles theological brainteasing with cloak-and-dagger capers like a cross-country balloon chase and a bombing conspiracy fomented over jam and crumpets. This metaphysical thriller spirals out madly from a marvelous premise a London counterintelligence chief has formed a corps of policemen who are also philosophers. An initiate tells the books hero Gabriel Syme , who is with the British policeThe ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed We say that the most hazardous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Soon after joining these vigilantes, he was hired by an unknown, unseen man to infiltrate the mention anarchist movement, making him stumble upon an anarchist conspiracy to destroy civilization and morality itself. He starts with a loudmouthed poet of disorder, Gregory, and follows him into a meeting of the anarchists. Gregory is forced to take hold Gabriels identity a secret for his own sake, for he himself had led the policeman into their secret hideaway. The undercover Gabriel manages to get elected as one of the heptad top men in the organization, alias Thursday, much to Gregorys silent chagri n. Gabriel meets with the other members of the council, all of who appear to be dark and dreadfully evil most of all the President, the huge mountain of a man called sunlight. Little by little, however, Gabriel realizes that the other five people under Sunday are not at all evil, but all of them spies from the police In the process, however, Gabriel succeeds in getting an entire French countryside to think he and his new friends are really anarchists (meanwhile they are thinking, or wondering in disbelief, that the entire countryside is full of anarchists after them). They nearly get lynched. When things are settled, this group of undercover police go back to England to test out Sunday, whom they soon find is the very man who hired them to infiltrate the council in the first place Sunday leads them on a strange and wild chase, during which the six philosophize about the nature of their strange antagonist. Phantasmagoric escapades proliferate, and police pursuit collides with the c arnivalesque nature of the universe. They realize that they have been seeing him from behind, and from behind he looks poisonous but the apparent evil was misleading. The journey ends at a palatial estate where the six are treated like kings, and finally see Sunday for who he is The Sabbath, the peace of God. The council of anarchists has turned into a High Council commemorating the Seven Days of Gods Creation. The purpose of Sunday as the evil anarchist was to bring forth good through the others to urge them on to unnatural virtue. As they were fighting, they were fighting Satan. As the hearers grow indignant at Sundays using them for his purposes and allowing them to go through such trials, the paradoxical Problem of Evil seems somehow resolved. The last question asked of the strange man as he recedes into dummy is Have you ever suffered? and the answer the Christian knows is whispered from the distance. The last scene sees Gabriel Syme waking from his reverie, and chatting phil osophy with the other Poet of Saffron Park, Gregory. Chesterton offers up one highly biased enigma after another in The Man That Was Thursday. He truly knows how to create an atmosphere of hallucinatory suspense, to use the fantastic and paradoxical and fugitive to coup doeil the other side of God. In an article published the day before his death, he called this literary masterpiece of his, a very melodramatic sort of moonshine. I guess thats how we would describe a novel set in a phantasmagoric London where policemen are poets and anarchists camouflage themselves as, well, anarchists. By turns hilarious and terrifying, Chestertons The Man Who Was Thursday is a lyrical search for truth in a world where nothing is what it seems. This is not a book. This is a glorious experience. full treatment CitedBloom, Harold. Modern Horror Writers (Writers of English). New York Chelsea House Publishers, 1994.Chesterton, G.K. The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton. New York Sheed & Ward, 1936.Ches terton, G.K. The Man Who Was Thursday A Nightmare. New York Dodd, Mead & Company, 1908.Coren, Michael. Gilbert, The Man Who Was G.K. Chesterton. New York Paragon House, 1990.Dale, Alzina Stone. The Outline of sanity A Biography of G.K. Chesterton. Grand Rapids, Michigan Eerdmans, 1982.Dale, Alzina Stone. The Art of G.K. Chesterton. Chicago Loyola University Press, 1985.Ffinch, Michael. G.K. Chesterton. San Francisco Harper & Row, 1986.More letters asking Whats the Difference?. Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity. 30 November 2007 Titterton, W.R. G.K. Chesterton A Portrait. Folcroft, Pennsylvania Folcroft Library