40 pages • 1 hour read
John BuchanThe Thirty Nine Steps
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1915A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Man Who Died”
The novel centers on Richard Hannay, who returned to London three months ago. During the last several years, he made a fortune working as a mining engineer in the “veld,” or rural area in the British colony of Rhodesia. Though many in London ask him about life in the colonies, he says he is “fed up” with having nothing interesting to do. Returning home from his club, Hannay determines, “I would give the Old Country another day to fit me into something; if nothing happened, I would take the next boat for the Cape” (4), referring to the southern tip of Africa.
Hannay’s desire for change is answered when he arrives home. About to unlock the door to his apartment, one of his upstairs neighbors suddenly appears next to him. The neighbor is described as a “nervous little chap” who asks to be let in, quickly looks around the apartment, checks that the door is locked, and says to Hannay, “You see, I happen at this moment to be dead” (5). Intrigued, Hannay agrees to hear his story.
The neighbor introduces himself as Franklin P. Scudder, an American originally from Kentucky, who practices espionage. He says that he connected with an underground movement of “very dangerous people” (6). According to Scudder, these anarchists, capitalists, and “Jews” are trying to destabilize the world for their own gain. In part, they plan to assassinate the Greek politician Karolides when he visits London in June. Scudder says he is being watched and believes the group knows of his plan to interfere with the assassination. To fool them, he staged a corpse in his apartment to look like him, which is why he claimed to be dead. He asks to hide at Hannay’s while he figures out his next steps, and Hannay agrees. Scudder then changes his hair, clothes, and posture to present himself as Captain Theophilus Digby, a friend visiting Hannay.
The two men spend the next four days playing chess and talking. Scudder gives more details about the plot, including the group who is after him, called the Black Stone. He says the group includes Julia Czechenyi, “a man that lisped in his speech,” and “an old man with a young voice who could hood his eyes like a hawk” (15). Hannay struggles to follow Scudder but feels inclined to trust him.
Hannay returns one evening from having dinner with an acquaintance and finds Scudder dead, stabbed through the heart.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Milkman Sets Out on His Travels”
After finding Scudder murdered in his apartment, Hannay believes that if he tells the British authorities, either the Black Stone will assassinate him too or he will be jailed for murder. Though he does not know the details of Scudder’s findings and plan, he feels “pretty well bound to carry on his work” (18). He finds Scudder’s encoded notebook and plans, he says, to go north “to some wild district, where my veldcraft would be of some use to me” and where he can pass as a Scottish local, since his father brought him from Scotland to London when he was young (19).
Hannay uses his familiarity with the morning routine around his apartment building to escape. He asks the milkman, who is about his height, to step into his apartment. He gives him a sovereign in exchange for his hat and overalls, and he promises that the milkman is a “sportsman” helping win a bet (22). This interaction serves as both Hannay’s first disguise and his first request for help from a working-class citizen. As the milkman, Hannay nervously makes his way across London to St. Pancras train station.
Boarding a train just about to leave the station, Hannay names a random town as his destination. He greets the two other passengers in the “third-class smoker” car “in [his] broadest Scots” (23), having already shifted to a new identity.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
The opening of the novel establishes the protagonist, Richard Hannay, the antagonist organization, the Black Stone, and the setting of London in May 1914. It also introduces the theme of How Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things. Both Hannay and Scudder come from relatively unremarkable backgrounds, yet they get caught up in a game of international espionage. Though Scudder dies by the end of Chapter 1, the information provided in his notebook will become the key to unraveling the Black Stone’s plot. Hannay did not invite involvement in these schemes but was entrusted by Scudder somewhat at random. However, Hannay welcomes the spy game as a distraction and a chance to feel useful like he did while working abroad. Both men have skills in codes, reasoning, and disguises that mark them as more than ordinary. To balance their exceptionalism, the story opens with richly detailed descriptions of a London populated by gentlemen in clubs and laborers speaking in distinct dialects. Most importantly, Chapter 2 ends with Hannay establishing camaraderie with fellow passengers in the third-class car, suggesting ordinary citizens will play an essential role throughout.
Scudder and Hannay also begin playing with Appearance and Reality. Hannay watches Scudder transform from an American spy to a British captain. By the end of Chapter 2, Hannay has assumed disguises as a milkman and a Scottish laborer. He feels compelled to hide, as he has “no real pal who could come forward and swear to my character” (18). Though he almost immediately trusted Scudder’s story, he does not assume that someone will do the same for him. However, Hannay will rely on the establishment of trust through personal relationships to survive and thwart the Black Stone’s scheme.
Disguised as a laborer, Hannay begins to signal his complicated relationship with Individualism Versus Bureaucracy. He does not trust the legal system to believe his innocence and instead connects with the working-class milkman and train passengers. Chapter 2 ends with Hannay noting, “I started my new life in an atmosphere of protest against authority” (23). Though Hannay feels personally compelled to protect his country, he is not blindly patriotic. Instead, he can recognize flaws without resenting them. This attitude will become clear at the end of the novel when he directly allies with Sir Walter Bullivant, a politician in the Foreign Office, while continuing to act based on his own best judgment.
Several narrative tools are also established early in the novel. Scudder ironically foreshadows his demise when he announces in their first meeting that he has died, as Hannay will find him stabbed at the end of Chapter 1. As will become a motif throughout the novel, Hannay uses newspapers to stay informed on current events. His casual awareness of European politics signals the globalization of this era and the momentum toward World War I. Modern globalization is also signaled through the relatively accessible means of travel. Third-class laborers populate the trains, and the train’s foray into relatively remote rural locations indicates its ubiquity in modern British life.
