The Man Who Was Thursday Summary

Chance Dunlap
Fiction Book Report 1st Quarter The novel The Man Who was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton is an incredible work of fiction that thoroughly shows the ingenuity of its author. The plot has multiple twists and continually forces the reader to ponder the statements of the characters who all make philosophical statements throughout the entirety of the book. The novel gives the reader great detail into how England and France appeared to the people in the early 1900‘s. The novel begins in Saffron Park, just outside London, in the early 1900s with several important characters. Lucian Gregory is the first character introduced, a poet who stands in the park talking about anarchism everyday without fail. Gregory pops in and out of
the plot throughout the story, but is only focused on at the very beginning and the end. Gabriel Syme meets him at a party in the park, and the two begin to argue upon the meaning of poetry. With Syme having a more convincing argument than Gregory, Gregory becomes agitated and stalks away, returning later to talk to Syme claiming to have something to show him.
Gregory leads him to a small, decrepit restaurant on the seashore, and makes him pledge that he would never say anything about what he was about to see before leading him into the world of the Central Anarchist Council. The story really takes off then when Syme reveals that he is a policeman from Scotland Yard; just then, the other members of the council appear to elect the next Thursday, who is the man in charge of that chapter of the Council. Syme convinces the members attending the meeting that he is from their president and makes a speech that gets him nominated to be the next Thursday. From there he begins the real journey. The next morning, he meets the rest of the council leaders. The president who is Sunday, is larger than any man he has ever seen, both in height and weight. Every member, Sunday through Saturday, had something extremely odd about them, but none of them knew that every single one of them was an undercover cop, or that Sunday was the cop that instated them all. Over the course of the plot, they discover they are all Scotland Yard agents, and get attacked by lots of people, bringing them to the conclusion that Sunday has taken over the world, and that all the people are now anarchists. While
in reality, the people have merely been convinced that the cops (Monday through Saturday) are anarchists. At the end when the cops are being surrounded, Thursday goes on a suicide mission and asks them why they are attacking. The absurd response comes as they think that the six cops are anarchists. After they all produce their ID’s proving that they are actually cops, they begin their journey back into England, and follow Sunday through the streets of London on an elephant, cabs, and on foot. Sunday makes it to his destination and climbs into a hot air balloon and floats away. Monday through Saturday follow on foot until they see the balloon come to the ground. Just as they round a corner not very far from the balloon, they find six carriages, each carriage meant to carry one of them. They are taken to a mansion where they are all dressed according to their day corresponding to the creation story in the Bible. They discover as the nightmare ends that the only real anarchist is Gregory, who claims to want to destroy everything. I would not recommend this book to anybody on any condition at all. I believe this book was absolutely horrid. The author used more words than necessary, using five or six large words that the majority of people, including myself, have to look up to understand, where two or three mediocre words would have sufficed. The plot has so many little sidespins between the beginning and the end that there were several occasions where it was necessary for my understanding to reread several chapters two or three times to piece all the details into the puzzle. There are places where too much detail is given, and others not enough, sometimes even within a three page span. The amount of detail placed into the description of the lamp post and street was incredible, but the description of the meeting place of the council was summarized into a mere two sentences, leaving the reader lacking an idea of how the room, in this very crucial scene, appeared. Another completely unacceptable description missing was for Sunday. I spent about ninety percent of the book under the impression that he was black, only to find in the last three chapters that he is actually white. The novel The Man Who was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton is an impressive display of vocabulary, but not necessarily a worthwhile book to read. I advise to any person deciding to read it to have a dictionary near at hand because you will need it quite often.