Double Life

The idea of the double life is interesting to me in The Man Who Was Thursday. Every one of the “anarchists” –barring Gregory, of course—was actually a policeman. Although, I am not completely sure what Sunday was, I do think he was a good guy. They all needed to play a part to infiltrate the underground force, but what does that say about them? Yes, they were hired to stop the bad guys from winning a “war,” but there is always the question about someone who decides to play an undercover policeman: are they really in it to bring down the bad guys, or do they want to be a bad guy themselves? That may be a stupid question since they were all philosophers (supposedly), so they should know that being a bad guy wouldn’t have gotten them anywhere, but that is always fascinating to me. I don’t really think that any of the men wanted to be a true anarchist, but maybe they have me fooled. I do wonder, though, how long they were in the Supreme Council of Anarchy before Syme joined them and everything came undone.
I do remember that Sunday is the man who hired them all, so he must have known that they were not true anarchists, but Sunday is another man with a double life. His double-ness goes beyond his profession because his body doesn’t make sense. He’s so massive, but he’s agile at the same time. If I had seen him, I’d be like Syme and be scared of the major difference between his size and his speed. I can’t say that I completely buy that he’s a Christ figure, but he does seem to be made of something that does not belong to this world. Syme said that Sunday looked at him “as if he were made of glass” (41). To me, this means that he could see straight through him, so Sunday must have known what each man was in his heart, but to not give a single hint that he was not the man that he said he was proves that Sunday is the ultimate master of the double life.