He wants us to see them as people.Ĭhesterton was fond of paradoxes - seemingly self-contradictory statements that reveal a deep truth.
Chesterton wants us to stop overlooking the “invisible” men and women among us. They are not people to us they are just part of the landscape and beneath our notice. They pass among us, they are human souls with needs and passions, and in our self-absorption we are oblivious to their existence. In this story, Chesterton was making an understated but incisive point: There are people in our society who are “invisible” men and women. The mailman walked right past the bystanders, went into the building, murdered the victim, stuffed the body into his large mailbag, and carried the corpse out without attracting any attention from the bystanders. Was the murder committed by an invisible man?įather Brown solved the mystery when he learned that the footprints belonged to the mailman. How was that possible? The body had disappeared - and there were footprints in the snow on the stairs. There were numerous bystanders around the entrance at the time of the murder, yet they all swore that no one went in or out of the building. Not only was the victim murdered, but the body was removed - seemingly under the noses of many witnesses. In another story, “The Invisible Man,” Chesterton spun a tale about a murder that took place inside a building with a single entrance. In his own way, Dawkins, like Brun, seeks to scrub the name of God out of existence.) In his bestselling book The God Delusion, Dawkins proposed that Christian parents who raise their own children in the faith are guilty of child abuse and should have their children removed from the home. Chesterton’s Maurice Brun foreshadowed today’s militant “new atheists,” such as Richard Dawkins. (This is an excellent example of Chesterton’s well-known ability to foretell the future of society. Chesterton’s atheist character gained fame by waging a one-man war against the French expression “Adieu,” which commonly means “Goodbye,” but literally means, “I commend you to God.” Brun wanted to scrub the name of God (“Dieu”) from the French language by imposing a fine on citizens who said “Adieu,” and censoring the word from all French literature. Hirsch” (in Father Brown: The Complete Collection), Chesterton offers a portrait of a militant French atheist named Maurice Brun. We find a consistent moral concern expressed in both the Father Brown stories and in Chesterton’s works of Christian apologetics ( Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man) and social commentary ( Eugenics and Other Evils).įor example, in his story “The Duel of Dr. They express, with Chesterton’s trademark wit, his strongly held moral, spiritual, and social beliefs. Illustration by Sydney Seymour Lucas from Chesterton’s The Innocence of Father Brown (public domain).Ĭhesterton’s stories have considerably more satirical bite and conviction.
0 kommentar(er)
