Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Walter Reinsdorf
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The Chesterton Review
266
The Perception of Father Brown
267
The Chesterton Review
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The Perception of Father Brown
269
The Chesterton Review
270
The Perception of Father Brown
271
The Chesterton Review
272
The Perception of Father Brown
Unmasked, they are driven from that false self. A character can-
not recognise his image in a mirror. They must solve the mystery
of self.
The mystery of self and the mystery of life correspond.
According to Dorothy Sayers, "The mystery is made only to be
solved, these horrors which he [the reader] knows only to be mere
figments of the creative brain, comfort him by subtly persuading
that life is a mystery which death will solve." 12 i f her statement
were rearranged, "Death is a mystery which life will solve,"
then I think Father Brown would agree. Life, not death, is the
unknown. From Father Brown's view, life, the perceivable and
natural, foreshadows and is one with the imperceivable and the
supernatural as in mediaeval allegory. Sayers believes that life after
death will make this life clearwill provide the solution to the
mystery of life. Chesterton believes that life clarifies. The clues
are here. They can be understoodnow. The spiritual life does
not begin after death. To be entered into then, it must be under-
stood now.
Wholly rational solutions cannot satisfy. I f the detective is
the rational hero of the technological society; if Sherlock Holmes
separates light from darkness, then he failed. As Elliot Gilbert
states in "The Detective as Metaphor in the 19th Century":
If, then, the detective was a metaphor for the nineteenth
century's faith in man's problem-solving abilities, he was
just as importantly a symbol of growing nineteenth-century
disillusionment with reason as a meaningful response to
the human condition. 1 3
273
The Chesterton Review
274