Friendship and The Duelist: Chesterton's The Ball and the Cross (1909)

Chesterton's biographers often remark on the journalist's capacity for friendship with even his opponents. His sense of humor and magnanimity made it possible for him to disagree strongly with another person yet maintain a cordial, even jovial relationship. The two best-known examples of this are his friendships with George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, both of who were his opponents in print and public debate. Chesterton on a number of occasions publicly defended both men and insisted that their positions be dealt with correctly and fairly. He also was able to patch up rifts between himself and them. This wasn't always easy since his co-conspirators, such as Hilaire Belloc, did not always extend the same measure of goodwill to Shaw and Wells. 

Discussion Question: What does this capacity of Chesterton's in real life suggest about the friendship that grows up between the atheist Turnbull and the Jacobite Catholic MacIan?

The Structure of the Novel

The Devil and the Saint (Chapter 1): Doctor Lucifer's empiricism, evolutionary doctrine, and technological materialism face off against the monk Michael's trust in the cross and his basic happiness.

Staging the Offense (Chapter 2): What is one willing to die for? The magistrate's incomprehension at such a question.

A Shared Struggle (Chapters 3-4): Turnbull and MacIan define further the nature of their duel, their shared belief in honor and humanity, and their shared opposition to the safe secularity of the shopkeeper. They discover that they both believe in the right to take their fight seriously.

On the Road: The two companion-opponents encounter a number of failed ideologies: Tolstoy's pacifism (Chapter 5) and Nietzsche's superman (Chapter 6); and they further define their differences, agreeing that "a man is a man," an insight the others have not reached (Chapter 7).

The Interlude (Chapter 8): Turnbull and MacIan debate the meaning of nature, progress, the Church, sainthood, and childhood and virginity.

On the Road: Two Romances (Chapters 9-11)--MacIan falls for a skeptical lady of the upper class, and in turn, Turnbull falls in love with a faithful Catholic woman; The Homeric Feast (Chapter 12)--The two agree to a feast before the  resume their dual.

In the Asylum (Chapters 13-14): They discover that they have climbed over into the asylum they sought to escape. Their own madness is revealed in Turnbull's anger at the problem of evil and MacIan's rage at the failed Jacobite cause.

The Two Temptations: Order and Revolution (Chapters 15-16)-Turnbull and MacIan are both tempted with versions of their utopian dreams only to discover their deadly sides.

The Triumph of the Saint  (Chapters 17-20): The Apocalypse--Turnbull and MacIan are locked in adjacent solitary confinement, only to discover the monk Michael, who is perfectly happy, is also locked away in a kind of anchorite cell. After escaping to discover that the others they have encountered have also been unjustly placed in the asylum, the political take-over of Lucifer is revealed, and only Father Michael the saint may save them all.

Discussion Questions

"The Eugenic State has begun. The first of the Eugenic Laws has already been adopted by the Government of this country; and passed with the applause of both parties through the dominant House of Parliament. This first Eugenic Law clears the ground and may be said to proclaim negative Eugenics; but it cannot be defended, and nobody has attempted to defend it, except on the Eugenic theory. I will call it the Feeble-Minded Bill, both for brevity and because the description is strictly accurate. It is, and quite simply and literally, a Bill for incarcerating as madmen those whom no doctor will consent to call mad. It is enough if some doctor or other may happen to call them weak-minded. . . . It is not only openly said, it is eagerly urged, that the aim of the measure is to prevent any person whom these propagandists do not happen to think intelligent from having any wife or children. Every tramp who is sulky, every labourer who is shy, every rustic who is eccentric, can quite easily be brought under such conditions as were designed for homicidal maniacs. That is the situation; and that is the point. England has forgotten the Feudal State; it is in the last anarchy of the Industrial State; there is much in Mr. Belloc's theory that it is approaching the Servile State; it cannot at present get at the Distributive State; it has almost certainly missed the Socialist State. But we are already under the Eugenist State; and nothing remains to us but rebellion."--Eugenics and Other Evils (1922)

1. How do the overarching metaphors of the ball and the cross function in the novel? What do we learn about their ultimate use and disuse?
2. What is at the heart of the modern state of disbelief? Why does it/they fear Turnbull and MacIan's duel so much?
3. Are Turnbull and MacIan correct to believe that they have a right to duel to the death over their disagreement? Do they change their position by the end of the novel? If so, why?
4. How do the complementary characters of Turnbull and MacIan interact more and more as the novel progresses? What is Chesterton suggesting by this growth in their relationship?
5. What are the key misunderstandings each has about the other's positions?
6. Why do the extremes of Tolstoy and Nietzsche's positions fail to understand that "a man is a man"?
7. How does the romance (in both the sense of romantic attraction and in the sense of fantastic circumstance) that each experiences add to the meaning of the novel? Why do they encounter a fall for women who hold a different position than their own?
8. What is the importance of MacIan saving Turnbull's life, of the two sharing in a feast, etc.?
9. Describe the nature of their own extremisms. Why does Turnbull attack the man who believes he is God, while MacIan in turn attacks the man who believes he is the king of England?
10. What do the events of the novel reveal about the dangers of a "feeble-minded bill"?
11. What do the two dreams/temptations of MacIan and Turnbull teach them about the dangers of their political visions?
12. Does Chesterton in the last analysis entirely agree with either one of them?

Chesterton and the Purpose of the Saints

"O Woman, O Maiden and Mother, now also we need Thee to greet
Now in ages of change and of question I come with a prayer to thy feet
In the earthquake and cleaving of strata, the lives of low passions we see,
And the horrors we bound in dark places rejoice, having hope to be free:
Wild voices from hills half-forgotten laugh scorn at all bonds that restrain:
O queen of all tender and holy, come down and confound them again!"
--"Ave Maria" (1892)

"The Saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. He will generally be found restoring the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever the world neglects, which is by no means always the same element in every age. Yet each generation seeks its saint by instinct; and he is not what the people want, but rather what the people need. . . . If the world grows too worldly, it can be rebuked by the Church; but if the Church grows too worldly, it cannot be adequately rebuked for worldliness by the world. Therefore it is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most."--St. Thomas Aquinas (1933)

Chesterton, both in his life as an Anglican and in his later life as a Roman Catholic, held a high regard for the doctrine of sainthood, that is that certain individual Christian, known and unknown to history, possess a special sanctity and function as God's particular signs to each culture and age of history. This understanding should not be confused with an idolatry of persons or an exaltation of them to the status of demi-gods, though it carries with a high veneration (as opposed to worship) of such individuals and a belief in the power of their prayers.

Discussion Question

How does Chesterton exemplify this belief in the example of Michael in the novel? How essential is he to the novel's overall meaning?