# The Man Who Was Thursday — Character guide

> Key figures in The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton.

- [Gabriel Syme](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_man_who_was_thursday_se/characters/gabriel_syme.md): Syme is a poet who revolted into sanity, hating modern lawlessness with a fervor that borders on the fanatical. After witnessing a dynamite outrage, he channels his rage into undercover work, posing as Comrade Syme to pe
- [Lucian Gregory](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_man_who_was_thursday_se/characters/lucian_gregory.md): Gregory is the established poet of Saffron Park, a man of red braids and lyrical thunder who argues that chaos is the artist's only creed. His rivalry with Syme—over poetry, politics, and perhaps his sister Rosamond's at
- [Sunday](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_man_who_was_thursday_se/characters/sunday.md): Sunday presides over the anarchist council with an unsettling combination of abstraction and cruelty, his great bright eyes sometimes going quite blind. His physical enormity and dreamy menace make him less a man than a 
- [Dr. Bull](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_man_who_was_thursday_se/characters/dr_bull.md): Bull is the optimist of the detective party, a man whose sympathy for Sunday persists even as he fights him like hell. He articulates the strange gaiety he senses in Sunday—a supreme strength shown in levity, like an ele
- [Professor de Worms](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_man_who_was_thursday_se/characters/professor_de_worms.md): De Worms presents himself as a helpless old man with leaden feet and shaky hands, yet he inexplicably keeps pace with Syme across London. This contradiction—the paralytic who pursues—makes him one of the most unsettling 
- [Inspector Ratcliffe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_man_who_was_thursday_se/characters/inspector_ratcliffe.md): Ratcliffe is the Secretary of the council, a man who admits he looked the part of a conspirator from the first. His gloom contrasts sharply with Bull's optimism, and he speaks of Sunday with a knowledge that borders on d
- [Gogol](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_man_who_was_thursday_se/characters/gogol.md): Gogol sits among the seven masked anarchists as the hairy, foreign-looking Pole, but when Sunday unmasks him his thin red hair and pert London voice betray the detective beneath. He takes his exposure with nonchalance, e
- [Dr. Renard](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_man_who_was_thursday_se/characters/dr_renard.md): Dr. Renard travels with the reunited detectives by boat and train, keeping close to his companions and pressing for shared cabs and shared drinks. His optimism and conviviality soften the paranoia of the pursuit, and it 
- [Colonel Ducroix](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_man_who_was_thursday_se/characters/colonel_ducroix.md): Colonel Ducroix arrives at the flower-strewn dueling ground in solemn morning dress, unlocks the case of twin swords, and politely proposes that the play end at first blood. When Dr. Bull insists on fighting until one ma
- [The Secretary](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_man_who_was_thursday_se/characters/the_secretary.md): Sunday's mysterious and silent secretary.
- [Marquis de St. Eustache](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_man_who_was_thursday_se/characters/marquis_de_st_eustache.md): A French aristocrat briefly mentioned as a former anarchist.
- [Buttons](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_man_who_was_thursday_se/characters/buttons.md): A servant at the restaurant where the detectives dine.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_man_who_was_thursday_se/characters