ways. This idea was best captured, perhaps, in one of Day’s favourite metaphors, the “loaves and fishes” of scripture: “we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.”[37]
The prospects of divine assistance aside, Day understood that in order for small actions to have this kind of multiplier effect they had to have propagandistic value, for actions cannot qualify as exemplary unless they command the attention of an audience.[38] This meant that some thought had to be given to the image that the Worker projected to those outside the movement. Rather than relying on the simplified, stereotypical imagery of traditional propaganda, however, the Worker consciously courted an image that looked, on the surface, counterintuitive and even contradictory. Workers challenged the idea that cleanliness was next to godliness through their “often ragtag appearance,”[39] they fought to eradicate poverty even as they embraced it themselves, and they preached the need for social action while adopting an approach that was strangely tolerant of failure. The upshot of the Worker’s incongruous appearance was that it encouraged spectators to re-evaluate entrenched assumptions about the nature of holiness and the vocation of the saint. Day often appealed to the idea of the “holy fool” to capture this relationship between the quizzical spectator and the spectated.[40] A recurring character type within the Christian tradition sometimes attributed even to Christ Himself,[41] the holy fool is an individual whose outward bearing is contemptuous of social conventions, but whose actions hint at his underlying saintliness and superiority of character. The holy fool has sometimes been interpreted as engaging in wilful deceit, or at the very least in a complex performance meant both to conceal and reveal his true nature.[42] Day clearly liked the implication that immediate appearances can be deceiving, and that it was necessary to look for the deeper meaning in seemingly eccentric and provocative behaviour before passing judgment. There was no component of deliberate concealment in the Worker’s actions, however: its departure from accepted notions of propriety was
