Rambling Thoughts on "The Secret of Father Brown" and "The Oracle of the Dog"

The Secret of Father Brown—

I did some digging, and found that the character of Father Brown was actually inspired by Father John O’Connor, the priest who first enlightened Chesterton about the sacrament of Confession. “To Father John O’Connor, whose truth is stranger than fiction, with a gratitude greater than the world,” is written in the dedication.

The story delves into major issues; the exploration of the nature of sin, of confession, and of forgiveness. In high school, I read some of the other collections of Father Brown stories and what sets this particular one apart is that it includes both a ‘prelude’ and ‘postlude’ if you will, a scene of Father Brown visiting Flambeau in later years. We know that Flambeau is a former thief, former detective, and former sidekick of the priest, and we know that he has married and retired to a mountain estate in Spain. The two of them are being interviewed by an American reporter, Mr. Chace, who asks the questions we would like to ask, but doesn’t get the sort of answers we might expect. It is also interesting that Mr. Chace seems to have given Father Brown celebrity status. “But Mr. Chace has heard of Father Brown, and his tone faintly changed, as towards a celebrity.”

The genius of Chesterton is that the answers are the stories themselves. Full of secrets, and full of surprises.

We also know that Father Brown has a niece and that he is her guardian, and that he is very fond of strong Protestants because he knows they will tell the truth. And not surprisingly, the reader comes to know that one of his heroes is Pope Leo XIII. “I believe he got it from Pope Leo XIII, who was always rather a hero of mine.”

And then, Chesterton pulls a fast one. “You see, it was I who killed all those people.” Father Brown makes his own startling confession about how he solved the most puzzling murders.

If you aren’t startled…I don’t know.

The Priest’s methods are anything but modern. Father Brown himself in a bit of a spurt cries out, “But what do these men mean, nine times out of then, when they use it nowadays? When they say detection is a science? When they say criminology is a science? They mean getting outside a man and studying him as if he were a gigantic insect.” So, a criminologist tries to get outside of the criminal and study him like a giant insect. But Father Brown does the exact opposite. He tries to get inside the criminal. “You may think a crime horrible because you could never commit it. I think it horrible because I could commit it.”

Father Brown gets that understanding the motive for the crime is more important than understanding the mechanics. To understand the motive means to understand sin itself. We know that sin destroys, and that it destroys from within. That’s exactly why it’s so destructive—it does its work in the dark. What Father Brown is telling us is that the wildest crimes are not the worst. It is the cold and calculated ones that are most horrifying, committed by the man who lives only for this world, who believes that his success and pleasure are the only important things, or even worse, who will do anything to save his respectability.

See the whole “Prince of Paradox” thing?

It is worth showing just how opposite Father Brown is from Sherlock Holmes (of whom Chesterton was a fan). Father Brown solves his crimes through a strict reasoning process but is more wrapped up in spirituality and philosophy than scientific details. His methods seem to be more intuitive than deductive. And it may be worth noting that Chesterton wrote this story before he converted to Catholicism.

The Oracle of the Dog—

I loved the opening line of this story. “’YES,’ said Father Brown, ‘I always like a dog, so long as he isn’t spelt backwards’.” I read it is perhaps a questioning of God, interesting because Father Brown is a Priest, which presents the reader with an interesting paradox.

One great detail of this story is Chesterton’s inclusion of a “locked room mystery” within the story. Essentially, a man is stabbed to death in a summer house to which every access route is guarded, and in which no weapon is to be found.

“A dog is a devil of a ritualist. He is as particular about the precise routine of a game as a child is about the precise repetition of a fairy−tale. In this case something had gone wrong with the game. He came back to complain seriously of the conduct of the stick. Never had a thing happened before. Never had an eminent and distinguished dog been so treated by a rotten old walking−stick.”

We know the circumstances involve the murder of Colonel Druce, in his isolated summerhouse on the Yorkshire coast.  A number of suspects slip in and out of view: the Colonel’s solicitor, Mr. Aubrey Traill, Dr. Valentine, Janet Druce, the daughter of the deceased and Valentine’s lover; Donald Druce, her brother; Herbert and Harry Druce, nephews of the deceased; and Patrick Floyd, the Colonel’s ingenious and startlingly arrogant American secretary.  All of them had motives and opportunities (given to us in pieces), as well as comments on what actually happened.  There is also one other witness who might know much more than anyone else.  Unfortunately all he can do is bark or howl, like a dog.

What is incredible is that in this case, by helping an eyewitness see his own evidence in a different light, the priest-detective solves the murder of Colonel Druce without even leaving his desk. I think Chesterton is trying to show that common sense is not as common as we might like it to be, and if I can take a stab at what he’d like the reader to take away I would say that the story prompts us to take a fresh look at the assumptions that can cloud our vision.