Discussion+Questions

Below we will post the discussion questions for the upcoming week's session on Sunday nights. Come prepared to discuss these questions. Feel free to add your own - please list who posted what question - Mr. Roy and I have spotted you the first 14.

1. Lucian Gregory, and the anarchists in general, tear things down. Sarcasm and irony (though let’s not get started on that word, probably the most misused word in the English language) do this too – both are rather prevalent these days. While tearing things down, along with sarcasm and irony, can serve a purpose/be funny, what is the danger of them? How do you see this in the novel (or to get all Alice Cooper-y and following Chesterton’s subtitle)/nightmare?

2. Syme is described as a poet of law and order (10 – all page references are to the Modern Library edition). Is this possible? Can you think of any poet you are familiar with that might be described as such? Gregory answers that an artist is identical with an anarchist? Can you think of some anarchist poets or poetic movements?

3. Syme claims that the Underground (London’s subway system) is poetic (still 10, I like this part – feel it does a good job of distinguishing the two men’s aims) – is this possible? How so? What do you think of Syme’s explanation on page 11?

4. On 12, Gregory claims that poetry (and I think we can expand that to art in general) is to always be in revolt. Syme claims, “It is things going right that is poetical!” Who is right?

5. What do you think of the comparison of the tree versus the lamp on page 15? Who is right?

6. Paradox appears on page 16 – it is a term often applied to Chesterton’s work and his method. Please be aware of the idea/term as you read – what does posing a number of paradoxes allow Chesterton to do? I think part of what makes him successful is that he argues both sides of a position well. Some would deride that as sophistry (I like Whitman’s, “Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes)).” I feel that I know which side Chesterton is on, but that he still does the other side justice. He is pretty clearly on the side of the Syme, but I feel he is somewhat sympathetic to the arguments of Gregory, or else he wouldn’t be able to voice them as well as he does. One of Chesterton’s good friends was George Bernard Shaw, a leading proponent at the time of not believing in God. They disagreed about nearly everything, yet were still friends – that makes me like Chesteron more (see the passage on 25, middle of the page, where Syme talks about how he likes Gregory). I like it when someone can be friends with someone they totally disagree with.

7. At the top of 22, Syme claims to want to abolish everything – do you think he means it? Does anyone really want that? Yes or no, why?

8. When the anarchist meeting takes place in chapter two, doesn’t it seem to have a lot of rules? Isn’t it interesting how afraid everyone is?

9. Gregory calls Christians “harmless” on 31. Do you agree/disagree? Why?

10. What technique does Syme use to trump Gregory during the meeting (it is my own personal favorite technique in debate)?

11. A bit about law and order – Syme tells the policeman that policemen are “cruel to the poor, but [Syme] could forgive you your cruelty if it were not for your calm” (41). The policeman later concedes on 43 that “our ordinary treatment of the poor criminal was a pretty brutal business. I tell you I am sometimes sick of my trade when I see how perpetually it means merely a war upon the ignorant and the desperate.” Do you think there is any truth to that claim? How do you see that today if you see it at all (PS Please check out The Wire if you are not familiar with it – it is the best television show ever by leaps and bounds)?

12. What did you think of the meeting with the man in the dark (46-7)? Can you think of anything else where just being willing is enough?

13. Did you like the part on 61 where Syme does not call out to the police officer because of the promise he made to Gregory? Do you think that was a mistake on his part?

14. The music of the barrel organ pops up a few times over the course of the novel (14, 64-5, and 108) – what do you make of it?

15. On 85, the Professor observes, “You think that it is impossible to pull down the President. I know that it is impossible, and I am going to try it.” What do you make of that position (as a side note, while you think on this question, maybe check out Elliott Smith’s song “Waltz #2 (XO)” – it’s a lovely song – he is one of my favorites)?

16. As they prepare for their meeting with Bull, the Professor becomes perturbed by Syme’s giddiness – he asks Syme, “Do you understand that this is a tragedy?” (93) Syme retorts, “Perfectly, always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?” Does Syme make sense here? A couple relevant quotes from Chesterton: “Solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of his gravity.” “Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy.” Both of those quotes come from Robert Ellsberg’s All Saints, a book I like a great deal. It also contains this idea, which I explained poorly on Sunday night, so I now hope to clarify: “[With Orthodoxy, Chesterton] had set out to define his own religion, only to realize that a definition already existed in the creeds of Christianity. He compared this discovery to the embarrassment of an English yachtman who miscalculated his course and ‘discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas. . . . I am that man in a yacht. I discovered England.’”

17. What do you make of everyone turning out to be a policeman? At one point one of the seven suggests it might be a sort of keep your friends close but your enemies closer type of maneuver, but later revelation sort of disproves that. Is it a kind of we are all saints and sinners type of thing? I am pretty unsure what to make of it myself.

18. I like the paragraph on 114 where Syme talks about being ready to die. I just think it’s real pretty. No real question here – moving on …

19. From 145, “No, oddly enough I am not quite hopeless. There is one insane little hope that I cannot get out of my mind. The power of this whole planet is against us, yet I cannot help wondering whether this one silly little hope is hopeless yet.” “In what or whom is your hope?” asked Syme with curiosity. “In a man I never saw,” said the other, looking at the leaden sea. “I know whom you mean,” said Syme in a low voice, “the man in the dark room.” In relation to this, you might want to look at Hebrews 11:1 (and Ron Suskind’s book, A Hope in the Unseen, which draws its title from that verse, and why not Hebrews 12:1, because I like that verse a great deal too). What do you make of hope? What might Chesterton say about hope?

20. Syme comes back to a light, just as he did with Gregory and the lamp versus the tree, on 147: “You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind; you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy.” What does this suggest about the danger of nihlism?

21. Does the President’s speech on 152-3 remind anyone of a part of the Bible? I am thinking of a lovely, mysterious passage from the Hebrew Scriptures (there that narrows it down a bit).

22. Where Gregory appears (round about 180 or so in particular), he claims to more or less desire to destroy everything. Why might that be?

23. What of the passage at the top of 181 that ends with Syme saying, “We also have suffered”? It makes me think of the reason Christ died that I most enjoy contemplating.