The Thirty Nine Steps

“If you’re going to be killed you invent some kind of flag and country to fight for, and if you survive you get to love the thing.”

Scudder makes this claim as part of his long explanation to Hannay about the forces at work and their different motivations. Though he is referring to villainy, the quote also speaks to the kinds of individualism that motivate Scudder, Hannay, and (as Hannay realizes at the end) some of the members of the Black Stone.

“It was the wildest sort of narrative, but I had heard in my time many steep tales which had turned out to be true, and I had made a practice of judging the man rather than the story.”

Hannay’s response to Scudder’s strange tale is echoed later by characters who hear similarly unbelievable stories from him. This quote ties to the theme of Appearance and Reality in that, while inviting the characters and audience to suspend their disbelief to enjoy the drama of the story, he acknowledges how stories may misrepresent truth.

“I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play the game in his place.”

Hannay repeatedly claims that he is an ordinary man, though he has been caught up in extraordinary circumstances. He also works to remain grounded (and Buchan works to keep him relatable), explaining his willingness to participate in the intrigues in terms of loyalty rather than grand heroism.

“It was going to be a giddy hunt, and it was queer how the prospect comforted me. I had been slack so long that almost any chance of activity was welcome.”

Early in the novel, Hannay does not appreciate the gravity of his situation. His longing for adventure expresses boredom with city life. His mistaken skepticism about the gravity of his situation adds to his believability as a character.

“As I poked into the tobacco my fingers touched something hard, and I drew out Scudder’s little black pocket-book.”

Hannay prepares to leave his apartment for Scotland. He has already searched Scudder’s body and his apartment for the book, knowing it holds Scudder’s notes about the spies and their plot. He finds its hiding place in his tobacco jar by mistake, signaling the luck he will need along his journey and foreshadowing the tricks of the spy trade.

“With my brown face, my old tweeds, and my slouch, I was the very model of one of the hill farmers who were crowding into the third-class carriages.”

The milkman was Hannay’s first disguise, but he only briefly and nervously donned it. When he blends in with the Scottish locals, this second disguise shows him beginning to embrace spy craft.

“There was not a sign or sound of a human being, only the plashing water and the interminable crying of curlews. Yet, oddly enough, for the first time I felt the terror of the hunted on me.”

This is one of the few times Hannay feels threatened, rather than comforted, by the landscape,. His feeling is a matter of perception, as the land has not changed. Hannay realizes that he can only flee for so long and the forces pursuing him are formidable.

“I want to see life, to travel the world, and write things like Kipling and Conrad. But the most I’ve done yet is to get some verses printed in the Chambers’s Journal.”

Spoken by the innkeeper, this line layers several literary allusions. Rudyard Kipling is most known for his 1894 work The Jungle Book, and Joseph Conrad for his 1899 novel Heart of Darkness. Both authors traveled widely, including living in several British colonies, which aligns with Hannay’s experiences. Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal published texts on literature, science, and art from 1832 to 1956.

“The name Julia Czechenyi flashed across my memory. Scudder had said it was the key to the Karolides business, and it occurred to me to try it on his cypher…It worked.”

The three core members of the Black Stone whom Hannay meets have aliases but no real names. Conversely, Julia Czechenyi is one of the few names Scudder gives when telling Hannay about the organization. She never appears in the novel, but the name serves as the key to the cipher encoding Scudder’s notebook. While the novel has no significant female characters, Hitchcock’s movie adaptation includes female spies and a love interest for Hannay.

“I’m Liberal, because my family have always been Whigs.”

This claim by Sir Harry makes him a representative of political bureaucracy. He accepts talking points from his uncle, who is already established in British politics. Sir Harry’s unquestioning acceptance of this family ideology demonstrates the downside to tradition, which discourage critical thinking.

“But you surely don’t think Germany would ever go to war with us?”

Sir Harry says this as Hannay begins to reveal the truth of his situation. Sir Harry represents the doubts of the British government and citizens leading up to World War I about the likelihood of war.

“I reflected on the various kinds of crime I had now sampled. Contrary to general belief, I was not a murderer, but I had become an unholy liar, a shameless imposter, and a highwayman with a marked taste for expensive motor-cars.”

Hannay speaks lightheartedly while also signaling how the adventure has changed him. In alignment with the theme of Appearance and Reality, Hannay is not a murderer, though some believe he is. He is, however, someone who has changed in his own estimation as well as that of the government and populace.

“So far I had been miraculously lucky. The milkman, the literary innkeeper, Sir Harry, the roadman, and the idiotic Marmie, were all pieces of undeserved good fortune.”

This moment exemplifies Buchan’s balance of Romanticism and Realism. As Hannay acknowledges, circumstances repeatedly align to help him in ways too good to be believable. Simultaneously, Hannay is an ordinary man caught up in circumstances beyond his control and realistically cannot claim full credit for his success.

“Most likely he had letters from Cabinet Ministers saying he was to be given every facility for plotting against Britain. That’s the sort of owlish way we run our politics in this jolly old country.”

The “he” of this quote is the old man of the Black Stone who convinced the police who were chasing Hannay to search elsewhere. In the bitterness of capture, Hannay resents not only how deeply the old man has integrated into British society but how officials have allowed him to do so. This moment of criticism signals Buchan’s and Hannay’s conflicting feelings toward political institutions.

“‘I apologize to the shade of Scudder,’ he said. ‘Karolides was shot dead this evening at a few minutes after seven.’”

This line ends Chapter 7 with a dramatic reveal. It also marks the shift toward the end of the novel as narrative threads begin to come together. In Chapter 1, Hannay read about Karolides and was warned about the possibility of his murder by Scudder. That warning proving true helps justify how Hannay has followed Scudder’s intelligence throughout the story and solidifies the dangerous consequences of failing to stop the Black Stone.

“‘You can take up your life where you left off,’ I was told.”

Back in London in Chapter 8 as he was at the beginning, Hannay is skeptical that he can return to a normal life. That skepticism is marked by his tag, “I was told.” Even when living in relative normalcy at the beginning, Hannay felt a restless need for occupation. That need has only been intensified by his involvement in the spy plot.

“I felt that great things, tremendous things, were happening or about to happen, and I, who was the cog-wheel of the whole business was out of it.”

Hannay alerted others to the Black Stone’s plot and handed over responsibility for dealing with the “tremendous things” to the appropriate authorities. However, he cannot shake his sense of individualism and worries that the information he has from his journey thus far could prove essential to its conclusion.

“Royer’s grave good sense seemed to pull us together. He was the man of action among the fumblers.”

Hannay acknowledges the contribution of others to stopping the Black Stone. This moment when even skilled politicians feel uncertain also helps ground the action in reality and counterbalance the more far-fetched developments regarding hidden identities and valuable secrets.

“I wasn’t any kind of Sherlock Holmes.”

In another moment of downplaying his exceptionalism, Hannay refutes any relationship with the famous English detective to whom he has since been compared. In this moment, though, he is practicing the kind of deductive thinking that was popularized by Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. This allusion signals a kinship with other popular serialized English fiction.

“I had talked confidently last night about Germans always sticking to a scheme.”

Hannay sometimes expresses assumptions about other nationalities. Such attitudes were common in Europe based on historic conflicts and interactions and became more pronounced with the rise of nationalism through the World Wars.

“Mystery and darkness had hung about the men who hunted me over the Scotch moor in aeroplane and motor-car, and notably about that infernal antiquarian.”

Hannay struggles to recognize the spies when they no longer seem like spies. In the first half of the novel, they fit his expectations: openly pursuing him, looking clever and scheming, and shrouded in the literal mists of Scotland. In the English country home, by contrast, they lack those markers and are, therefore, much harder to identify.

“You cannot follow in time…He is gone…He has triumphed…Der schwarze Stein ist in der Siegeskrone.”

The Black Stone’s old man speaks this line at the climax of the story. In German, he claims that the Black Stone is victorious. This pronouncement aligns with the conventions of the suspense of the genre, leaving the audience wondering for a moment if the villain has won. The intimidating old man of the Black Stone also foreshadows Germain villains who will be popular in post-war stories.

“This man was more than a spy; in his foul way he had been a patriot.”

In Hannay’s closing assessment of the old man, his earlier unease and anger are paired with a sense of respect. This feeling expresses the theme of patriotism. Though their countries were at odds, the two men were doing their best to protect the interests of their home countries.