The Man Who Was Thursday

“That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face—that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem.” 

The narrator describes several of the residents in the park and the duality of their appearance. The young man described in the quote is Lucian Gregory, and though he says he is a poet, he is an anarchist. Gregory, representing evil, thinks of himself, perhaps, as the subject of Life’s story, when he is actually an object in that story. 

“‘I tell you,’ went on Syme with passion, ‘that every time a train comes in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and that man has won a battle against chaos.’” 

Syme and Gregory are debating whether poetry is chaos or order. Gregory contends that only when everything is unpredictable and confused can it be poetic. Syme disagrees; he feels when things work, in spite of possible failure, that is poetry. By exploring chaos and order, this quote reflects one of the many dualities explored in the novel. 

“‘You don’t expect me,’ he said, ‘to revolutionise [sic] society on this lawn?’ Syme looked straight into his eyes and smiled sweetly. ‘No, I don’t,’ he said; ‘but I suppose that if you were serious about your anarchism, that is exactly what you would do.’” 

Syme uses Gregory’s words as proof Gregory is not a true anarchist. If he were a real anarchist, he would champion his cause whenever and wherever it was possible. Yet given the later reveal that Gregory is not only a true anarchist but perhaps Satan himself, it stands to reason that his aim here is to manipulate Syme into following him to anarchist meeting where he will be set up to take the role of Thursday.