The Man Who Was Thursday

I just finished reading G.K. Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday", and as usual Chesterton is maddeningly funny in the story.

A young man, a recently recruited police detective, named Syme infiltrates the anarchist underground in Europe. There were seven members of the central committee led by an intimidating figure who went by the codename "Sunday." Each of the other members, invariably, used the names of the days of the week as undercover aliases. Syme took the position of Thursday.

In the end, it is eventually discovered that each and every member of the central committee is in fact a police detective bent of infiltrating the organization. The notion of an anarchist organization is actually antithetical and rather humorous in and of itself, but the process of getting to the point is hilarious. In the end it is found that Sunday himself is the police recruiter who sent them in pursuit of himself.

The story takes a wild turn as Sunday ends up being a metaphor for God and we are those who he recruits to pursue himself. Each man pursued Sunday alone; however, they were all pursuing him together.

Syme explains why each man must struggle, working out his own salvation:

So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter (referring to a nonexistent suicide bomber). So that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, “You lie!” No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, “We also have suffered.”