"Throughout The Man Who was Thursday, the reader is confronted with the larger-than-life character of Sunday. He is Chesterton’s literary representation of God, complete with difficulty and ambiguity. His plans are perplexing, his ways sometimes infuriating. Every undercover cop on the Anarchist Council is forced to struggle with the identity, purpose, and ambiguity of this colossal man."
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Beer, Brewing, Thursday and Sunday
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Funny you should mention that - we're having a discussion on The Man Who Was Thursday on... Friday. :)
ReplyDeleteOops - I meant to add...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link! Great article!
Yes, lots of people do think that "Sunday" is "supposed to be God" ...
ReplyDeleteBut that is not quite GKC's intention, as he explained in his Autobiography:
I have often been asked what I mean by the monstrous pantomime ogre who was called Sunday in that story; and some have suggested, and in one sense not untruly, that he was meant for a blasphemous version of the Creator. But the point is that the whole story is a nightmare of things, not as they are, but as they seemed to the young half-pessimist of the '90s; and the ogre who appears brutal but is also cryptically benevolent is not so much God, in the sense of religion or irreligion, but rather Nature as it appears to the pantheist, whose pantheism is struggling out of pessimism. So far as the story had any sense in it, it was meant to begin with the picture of the world at its worst and to work towards the suggestion that the picture was not so black as it was already painted. I explained that the whole thing was thrown out in the nihilism of the '90s in the dedicatory lines which I wrote to my friend Bentley, who had been through the same period and problems...
[GKC, Autobiography CW16:103-4, emphasis added]
In any case, let the discussion begin - it's about time (2007!) we had a nice long dicussion here on The Man Who Was Thursday...
This is its centennial, after all!
TMWWT is my favorite novel, and the best by far to give to a friend struggling with the postmodern fallout of pessimism and despair.
ReplyDeleteSPOILERS!!!
ReplyDeleteI am familiar with what Chesterton says in his Autobiography and elsewhere about the identity of Sunday. But I still say that he is Christ. *harumph*
Hey, thanks for linking to The Brew. How'd you hear about us?
ReplyDelete