About the author :

Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, Polish: 3 Dec 1857 – 3 August 1924)
was a Polish-British writer. Considered one of the greatest novelists to write in the english
language. Though he didn’t speak english fluentlyi until his twenties, he was a master prose
stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. Conrad wrote stories and
novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of
what he saw as an impassive, mystifying universe.
Conrad is considered as an early modernist although his works contain components of 19th-
century realism. His narrative vogue and anti-heroic characters have influenced varied
authors, and plenty of films from, or inspired by, his works.

Numerous writers and critics have commented that Conrad's fictional works, written for the
most part within the first twenty years of the twentieth century, appear to possess
anticipated later world events. Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew,
among other things, on his native Poland's national experience and on his own experiences
in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflects
aspects of a European-dominated world including imperialism and colonialism and that
profoundly explore the human psyche. Despite the opinions even of some who knew
Conrad personally, such as fellow-novelist Henry James, Conrad, even when only writing
elegantly crafted letters to his uncle and acquaintances was always somewhere a writer
who sailed, rather than a sailor who wrote. He used his sailing experiences as a backdrop for
many of his works, but he also produced works of similar world view, without the nautical
motifs. The failure of many critics to appreciate this caused him much frustration.
Nevertheless, Conrad found much sympathetic readership, especially in the United States.
H.L. Mencken was one of the earliest and most influential American readers to recognise
how Conrad conjured up "the general out of the particular".

Conrad used his own experiences as literary material thus usually that readers area unit
tempted to treat his life and work as one whole. His "view of the world", or elements of it,
are often described by citing at once both his private and public statements, passages from
his letters, and citations from his novels. Najder warns that this approach produces an
incoherent and deceptive image. "An... uncritical linking of the two spheres, literature and
private life, distorts each. Conrad used his own experiences as raw material, but the finished
product should not be confused with the experiences themselves.”Many of Conrad's
characters were inspired by actual persons he met, including, in his first novel, Almayer's
Folly (completed 1894), William Charles Olmeijer, the spelling of whose surname Conrad
probably altered to "Almayer" inadvertently. Apart from Conrad's own experiences, a
number of episodes in his fiction were suggested by past or contemporary publicly known
events or literary works.
The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale is a novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1907. This book
was inspired by the French anarchist Martial Bourdin's 1894 death while apparently
attempting to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. The story is set in London in 1886 and
deals with Mr Adolf Verloc and his work as a spy for an unidentified country (presumably
Russia). The Secret Agent is one of Conrad's later political novels in which he moved away
from his former tales of seafaring. The novel deals broadly with ideology , espionage and
terrorism.
Plot and characters:

 Set in London in 1886, the novel follows the life of Adolf Verloc, a spy. Verloc is also a
businessman who owns a shop which sells pornographic material and
contraceptives.

 He lives along with his wife Winnie, his mother-in-law, and his brother-in-law, Stevie.
Stevie has a mental disability, presumably autism, which causes him to be excitable;
his sister, Verloc's wife, attends to him, treating him additional as a son than as a
brother.

 Vladimir explains that Britain's negligent attitude to anarchism endangers his own
country, and he reasons that an attack on 'science', the current vogue amongst the
general public, can give the required outrage for suppression. Verloc later meets his
friends, who discuss politics and law, and therefore the notion of a communist
revolution. Without the knowledge of the group, Stevie, Verloc's brother-in-law,
overhears the conversation, which greatly disturbs him.

 The novel flashes forward to the time after the bombing has taken place. Comrade
Ossipon meets The Professor, who discusses having given explosives to Verloc. The
Professor describes the nature of the bomb he carries in his coat at all times: it
allows him to press a button which is able to kill him and people nearest to him in
twenty seconds.

 After The Professor leaves the meeting, he stumbles into Chief Inspector Heat, a
policeman who was investigating a recent explosion at Greenwich, where a man was
killed. Heat informs The Professor that he is not a suspect in the case, but that he is
being suspected due to his terrorist inclinations and nihilist background. Heat
suspects Michaelis. Knowing that Michaelis has recently moved to the countryside to
write a book, the Chief Inspector informs the Assistant Commissioner that he has a
contact, Verloc, who could also be able to assist within the case.

 The Assistant Commissioner shares a number of smart acquaintances with Michaelis

and is mainly motivated by finding the extent of Michaelis's involvement in order to
estimate any possible embarrassment to his connections. He later speaks to his
superior, Sir Ethelred, about his intentions to resolve the case on his own, rather
than depend on the effort of Chief Inspector Heat.

 The novel flashes back to before the explosion, taking the perspective of Winnie
Verloc and her mother. At home, Mrs Verloc's mother informs the family that she
wants to move out of the house. Mrs Verloc's mother and Stevie use a hansom cab
driven by a man who had a hook for a hand. The drivers tales of hardship, whipping
of his horse, and sinister hook scare Stevie to the point where Mrs Verloc had to
calm him.
 On Verloc's return from a business trip to the continent, his wife tells him of the high
regard that Stevie has for him and she asks her husband to spend more time with
Stevie. Verloc eventually agrees to go out for a walk with Stevie. After this walk, Mrs
Verloc notices that her husband's relationship with her brother has improved. Verloc
tells his wife that he has taken Stevie along with him to go and visit Michaelis, and
that Stevie would stick with him in the countryside for some days.

 As Verloc is talking to his wife about the possibility of emigrating to the continent, he
is paid a visit by the Assistant Commissioner. Shortly after that, Chief Inspector Heat
arrives to speak with Verloc, without knowing that the Assistant Commissioner had
left with Verloc earlier that evening. The Chief Inspector tells Mrs Verloc that he had
recovered an overcoat at the scene of the bombing which had the shop's address
written on a label. Mrs Verloc confirms that it was Stevie's overcoat, and that she
wrote the address.

 On Verloc's return, he realises that his woman is aware of the fact that knows his
bomb killed her brother, and confesses what actually happened . A shocked Mrs
Verloc, in her anguish, fatally stabs her husband. Post murder, Mrs Verloc flees her
home, where she chances upon Comrade Ossipon, and pleads him to help her.
Ossipon assists her while confessing feelings but secretly with a view to possess Mr
Verloc's bank account savings. They plan to run away and he helps her in taking a
boat to the continent.

 However, her instability and also the revelation of Verloc's murder made him worry,
and he abandons her, taking Mr Verloc's savings with him. Later he encounters in a
newspaper that a woman matching Mrs Verloc's description disappeared from the
ferry, relinquishing her wedding ring before drowning herself in the English Channel.

 Characters :

Adolf Verloc

Mr. Verloc is described as a man with heavy eyes and with the appearance of
"having wallowed, fully dressed, all day on an unmade bed". He resembles a
well-to-do tradesman, but he gives off an air of living off the vices and follies
of mankind (found, for instance, in casino-owners or private detectives). He is
"thoroughly domesticated" and content to stay close to home, near his wife
and his mother-in-law. He was born to industrious parents and, as a result,
was devoted to a life of indolence.

Winnie Verloc

Winnie Verloc is Mr. Verloc's wife. She is described as a "young woman with
a full bust, in a tight bodice, and with broad hips". She has tidy hair and is
steady-eyed like her husband.
Verloc's Mother-in-Law :

Winnie's mother is a "stout, wheezy woman with a large brown face". She
wears a black wig and a white hat, and, because her legs are swollen, is
largely inactive. She claims to be of French descent and married a "victualler
of the more common sort." After becoming a widow, she provided for herself
by renting furnished apartments for men near Vauxhall Bridge Road. She
subsequently moved into Verloc's shop once he married her daughter, but, in
the middle of the novel, she secretly manages to leave in order to live at an
almshouse set up by friends of her late husband.

Stevie

Stevie is Winnie's brother. He is "delicate" and good-looking, though his

lower lip droops. He is a source of concern to Winny's mother and to Winnie
herself. Because the Verlocs have no children, Winnie takes care of him like a
son. This behaviour began when they were both children; Winnie protected
Stevie from the brutality of their father, who was unsure what to make of
having such a peculiar son and beat him. Stevie is unsuccessful as an errand
boy because he is easily distracted on the street and forgets to deliver
messages. He sometimes stutters and squints when he feels uncomfortable.

At age 14, he set off fireworks in the staircase of the office at which he
worked, instigated by two other office-boys, and was fired for doing so.
Afterwards, he worked as a dishwasher and a shoe-shiner until Winnie's
marriage to Verloc, after which he did household duties in the Verloc's home.

Mr. Vladimir

Mr. Vladimir, First Secretary in the Embassy, first appears in Chapter II, sitting
in an armchair in a large room in the Embassy. He is popular socially, known
to be witty, agreeable, and entertaining. He often talks by sitting forward in
his chair and gesturing with his left hand raised. He has a round, clean-shaven
face with an expression of "merry perplexity".

Baron Stott-Wartenheim

Now deceased, Baron Stott-Wartenheim was formerly Ambassador in Paris. It

was he who directed Verloc to settle down in London after Verloc did several
missions for him to London in the past. As described in Chapter II, Stott-
Wartenheim "had enjoyed in his lifetime a fame for an owlish, pessimistic
gullibility". His dispatches were a joke for those in the Foreign Offices for
being preoccupied by issues of social revolution. In Vladimir's judgment,
Stott-Wartenheim was easily duped, and this fact explains for him why Verloc
was hired by the embassy in the first place.
Michaelis

Michaelis is a man with an enormous stomach and distended cheeks, with a

pale complexion. He has previously spent twenty years in prison and is out on
a "ticket-of-leave." His crime was being involved in a plot to rescue prisoners
from a police van; his job was to use a crowbar or skeleton keys to open the
door at the back of the van (he was a locksmith by training). The plot went
wrong and a police constable was killed. Michaelis was both upset that the
constable was killed and that the plot failed, and so was viewed
unsympathetically by the judge. He was sentenced to life in prison, a much
harsher sentence than expected. The harshness of his sentence was what
made him famous, and what led to a campaign by some to get him released
early.Because of his time in prison, Michaelis bad at engaging in discussion,
for he is very unused to hearing another voice respond to him as he thinks
and speaks.

Karl Yundt

Yundt calls himself a terrorist. He is old and bald with a white goatee. He uses
a walking-stick and has a dry throat and toothless gums, which makes him
difficult to understand. He is not a man of action, nor a particularly good
orator. Rather, he subtly plays on the "sinister impulses" that are present in
people's ignorance and misery.

Alexander Ossipon

Ossipon is a former medical student who is the main writer of the F.P.
leaflets. He has blonde hair and a freckled face with a flat nose. He smokes
cigarettes by placing them in a long wooden tube. He is nicknamed 'the
Doctor'. After leaving medical school, he became a freelance lecturer,
speaking to labor associations about the "socialistic aspects of hygiene".

The Professor

The Professor is a small, poorly-dressed man who wears glasses. He is called

the Professor because he was once an assistant demonstrator in chemistry at
a technical institute before leaving because he thought he was being treated
unfairly. Thereafter he worked at a laboratory that manufactured dyes, but
again he complained of unjust treatment. These difficulties made him believe
that it was impossible for the world to treat him fairly; he believed himself
smart but was unable to resign himself to existing social conditions.

Chief Inspector Heat

Chief Inspector Heat has a large forehead and a long, drooping, blonde
moustache. He is a kind man of generally amiable nature. He began his police
career investigating thieves, whom he liked because he viewed them as
playing by the same rules as society, though on the wrong side. By contrast,
he has little patience or time for anarchists, whom he views as simply
disorderly for no clear reason. Chief Inspector Heat likes to play by the "rules
of the game," and he thinks both common thieves and the police do so,
whereas anarchists do not.

Assistant Commissioner

The Assistant Commissioner is Chief Inspector Heat's boss at police

headquarters. He began his career in a tropical colony and preferred his work
in that context to working in London. He took a leave from working in the
colonies and impulsively married; his wife had many connections (including
to Michaelis' benefactor) but was opposed to the colonial climate, so he was
stuck working in England. What he disliked about working in the metropole
was the weight of public opinion, which he viewed as unpredictable and
irrational.The Assistant Commissioner is a slender man. He relaxes by playing
whist at his club every day from five to seven.

Sir Ethelred

Sir Ethelred is the Secretary of State. He is a tall, large man with a long face
and a double chin. He has puffy lower eyelids and a hooked nose. He is so
large that his clothes seem as though they are about to split. He is allergic to
details and constantly tells the Assistant Commissioner to avoid telling him
anything specific about how the investigation has proceeded.

Mrs. Neale

Mrs. Neale is the charwoman of Brett St. She has a bad marriage with a joiner
and has to take care of several infant children. She "exhaled the anguish of
the poor in a breath of soap-suds and rum, in the uproar of scrubbing, in the
clatter of tin pails"

Themes:

Terrorism and anarchism

Terrorism and anarchism are intrinsic aspects of the novel, and are central to
the plot. Verloc is employed by an agency which requires him to orchestrate
terrorist activities, and several of the characters deal with terrorism in some
way: Verloc's friends are all interested in an anarchistic political revolution,
and the police are investigating anarchist motives behind the bombing of
Greenwich.

The novel was written at a time when terrorist activity was increasing. There
had been numerous dynamite attacks in both Europe and the US, as well as
several assassinations of heads of state. Conrad also drew upon two persons
specifically: Mikhail Bakunin and Prince Peter Kropotkin. Conrad used these
two men in his "portrayal of the novel's anarchists". However, according to
Conrad's Author's Note, only one character was a true anarchist: Winnie
Verloc. In The Secret Agent, she is "the only character who performs a serious
act of violence against another", despite the F.P.'s intentions of radical
change, and The Professor's inclination to keep a bomb on his person.

Critics have analysed the role of terrorism in the novel. Patrick Reilly calls the
novel "a terrorist text as well as a text about terrorism" due to Conrad's
manipulation of chronology to allow the reader to comprehend the outcome
of the bombing before the characters, thereby corrupting the traditional
conception of time. The morality which is implicit in these acts of terrorism
has also been explored: is Verloc evil because his negligence leads to the
death of his brother-in-law? Although Winnie evidently thinks so, the issue is
not clear, as Verloc attempted to carry out the act with no fatalities, and as
simply as possible to retain his job, and care for his family.

Politics

The role of politics is paramount in the novel, as the main character, Verloc,
works for a quasi-political organisation. The role of politics is seen in several
places in the novel: in the revolutionary ideas of the F.P.; in the characters'
personal beliefs; and in Verloc's own private life. Conrad's depiction of
anarchism has an "enduring political relevance", although the focus is now
largely concerned with the terrorist aspects that this entails. The discussions
of the F.P. are expositions on the role of anarchism and its relation to
contemporary life. The threat of these thoughts is evident, as Chief Inspector
Heat knows F.P. members because of their anarchist views. Moreover,
Michaelis' actions are monitored by the police to such an extent that he must
notify the police station that he is moving to the country.
The plot to destroy Greenwich is in itself anarchistic. Vladimir asserts that the
bombing "must be purely destructive" and that the anarchists who will be
implicated as the architects of the explosion "should make it clear that [they]
are perfectly determined to make a clean sweep of the whole social
creation." However, the political form of anarchism is ultimately controlled in
the novel: the only supposed politically motivated act is orchestrated by a
secret government agency.

Symbols and motifs :

  Ride in the "Cab of Death"

Though the characters usually walk through the labyrinthine streets of

London, there is one particularly significant scene in which Mrs. Verloc, her
mother, and Stevie drive in a dilapidated carriage through the city on a
disorienting ride that makes them see it in a very different light: "Before the
doors of the public-house at the corner, where the profusion of gas-light
reached the height of positive wickedness, a four-wheeled cab standing by
the curb-stone with no one on the box, seemed cast out into the gutter on
account of irremediable decay. Mrs Verloc recognised the conveyance. Its
aspect was so profoundly lamentable, with such a perfection of grotesque
misery and weirdness of macabre detail, as if it were the Cab of Death itself,
that Mrs Verloc, with that ready compassion of a woman for a horse (when
she is not sitting behind him), exclaimed vaguely: 'Poor brute!'”. The vehicle
itself symbolises the literary vehicle of the novel itself, which transports
readers through hellish, disturbing scenes and, like the cab, halts the usual
progressive sense of narrative momentum: "The cab rattled, jingled, jolted; in
fact, the last was quite extraordinary. By its disproportionate violence and
magnitude it obliterated every sensation of onward movement; and the
effect was of being shaken in a stationary apparatus like a medieval device
for the punishment of crime, or some very newfangled invention for the cure
of a sluggish liver".

 Newspapers (motif)

Throughout the novel, the newspaper pops up as a kind of doppelganger of

the novel itself: a modern medium of communication through words that
presents the various happenings of life in the form of a vivid, sensationalistic
experience for its readers. Conrad ventriloquizes Mrs. Verloc, in her criticisms
of the anarchists' bombastic talk and newspaper sensationalism out of her
concern for her impressionable brother, to indicate the dangers of this
particular kind of writing in the directness of impact it has upon the individual
psychology of an urban dweller. In fact, we learn about how Stevie is lead to
his death by Mr. Verloc, and how Ossipon is thrown out of his mind by the
newspaper article reporting Mrs. Verloc's suicide.

 Horses (motif)

Although horses do not show up so often in the story, the appearance of the
miserable-looking, cab-drawing horse in the scene in Chapter 8 link it
unmistakably to a curious nineteenth-century tradition of sympathy for the
equine kind. Rodion Raskolnikov, the protagonist of the Russian author
Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment, once dreams of running
over and wrapping his arms around the head of a lamed horse being clouted
to death by its owner; and the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, at
the time of his losing his sanity, similarly embraced a tormented horse.
Greenwich Royal Observatory (symbol)
Mr. Vladimir instructs Mr. Verloc to arrange a bombing of some scientific
institution because he believes science to be a kind of central symbol at the
heart of bourgeois life, an attack on which would cause maximal destruction.
As he explains: "A murderous attempt on a restaurant or a theatre would
suffer in the same way from the suggestion of non-political passion: the
exasperation of a hungry man, an act of social revenge. All this is used up; it is
no longer instructive as an object lesson in revolutionary anarchism. Every
newspaper has ready-made phrases to explain such manifestations away.…
The sensibilities of the class you are attacking are soon blunted. Property
seems to them an indestructible thing. You can’t count upon their emotions
either of pity or fear for very long. A bomb outrage to have any influence on
public opinion now must go beyond the intention of vengeance or terrorism. It
must be purely destructive. It must be that, and only that, beyond the faintest
suspicion of any other object. You anarchists should make it clear that you are
perfectly determined to make a clean sweep of the whole social creation. But
how to get that appallingly absurd notion into the heads of the middle classes
so that there should be no mistake? … But there is learning—science. Any
imbecile that has got an income believes in that. He does not know why, but
he believes it matters somehow. It is the sacrosanct fetish". Although he does
not say it explicitly, part of the consideration in this line of thinking is that
science itself has exerted a kind of violence (albeit an at least partly
progressive and constructive violence), and that is taken for granted by
society; a bomb outrage, therefore, is meant almost as a counterbalancing
force of violence.

 Bomb (symbol)

For the Professor, the bomb and detonator he carries on his person function
as a prosthetic that changes the very nature of what kind of a person he is.
Comparing himself to apparently all other people in the world, he says,
bolstered by the confidence of the absoluteness of his bomb: "Their
character is built upon conventional morality. It leans on the social order.
Mine stands free from everything artificial. They are bound in all sorts of
conventions. They depend on life, which, in this connection, is a historical fact
surrounded by all sorts of restraints and considerations, a complex organised
fact open to attack at every point; whereas I depend on death, which knows
no restraint and cannot be attacked. My superiority is evident"

Exposition :

We learn about the Verloc household: Mr. Verloc financially supports his wife
Winnie, along with her mother and brother Stevie, who is mentally disabled.
Verloc has a double life: he runs a pornography shop and spends a lot of time
hanging out with anarchists, but is also an undercover agent keeping an eye
on them for a foreign government.
One day, Verloc has to meet with his new boss (Mr. Vladimir), who says he's
sick of having Verloc draw a government paycheque without doing any
tangible work. Verloc is very afraid of losing his job (which allows him to
make a lot of money while being lazy), and claims that his work has
prevented many deaths, but Vladimir doesn't care about prevention. He
wants to see results. So he tells Mr. Verloc to make sure that an attack is
carried out in London: he wants someone to bomb the Greenwich
Observatory. This initial situation sets in motion all the events that will occur
for the rest of the novel.

Criticism :

Conrad is celebrated for his use of irony, and he lays it on very thick indeed
inThe Secret Agent. In fact he employs several types of irony throughout the
novel, much of it for grim effect.

 Comic Irony— For instance the ‘terrorists’ who group themselves

around Verloc are all hopelessly inadequate beings who have very
little political effect. But Conrad depicts them as comic grotesques.
Michaelis is almost obscenely overweight, and he has lost the power
of consecutive thought whilst in prison. The Professor is a small
shabby figure who lives in abject poverty and does nothing except
walk round London with an explosive device strapped to his body.
 Narrative Irony — Conrad’s characterisation of Verloc uses this
device all the way through the novel. We the readers know that
Verloc is an overweight, lazy, incompetent, self-indulgent failure. But
Conrad in his third person omniscient narrative mode gives an
account of Verloc which is couched in positive terms.
 Situational Irony — It could be argued that the scenes in the home of
the lady protector of Michaelis offer examples of these. The guests
include Michaelis, who the police regard as a dangerous terrorist; the
police themselves, in the form of the Assistant Commissioner, who is
supposed to be tracking down the anarchists; and Mr Vladimir from
the Russian embassy, who has instigated the bomb plot in the first
place.
 Dramatic irony— There is a superb example of this at the end of the
novel when Winnie is fleeing the scene of her crime and she bumps
into Ossipon. Her state of distress leads him to believe that it is
caused by the bomb explosion at Greenwich, which he believes has
resulted in Verloc’s death. He is only too keen to take advantage of an
attractive woman in her bereaved state.What he does not realise is
that her distress is caused by the death of Verloc – but because she
has just murdered him. We as readers know that, but Ossipon does
not – and when he discovers Verloc’s body with the meat cleaver
sticking out of it, he vomits all over the floor. This is another example
of what might be called double irony (see below).
 Tragic irony— For instance in the dramatic finale to the novel Winnie
wishes to escape from the scene of her crime. She entrusts herself
and all the money she has got into the hands of Ossipon. But
 unknown to her he is a persistent user of women, and even worse, he
has categorised her as a ‘degenerate … of a murdering type’ likely to
cause him trouble. So he steals her money and abandons her – which
leads to her suicide.In fact it could be argued that there is a sort of
double irony operating here – because although Ossipon’s belief in
Lombroso’s crackpot theories of phrenology are obviously not shared
by Conrad, it is in fact true that Winnie has been a dangerous woman
with a knife, and she has committed a murder.

Conclusion:
Considering the subject matter and tragic outcome for all the major
characters, this book, with all its grotesque characters and absurd
send-ups of high-level intelligence machinations, is a surprisingly fun
read. Written long before we've been flooded with smooth, hyper-
competent James Bond rip-offs, Verloc -- the reluctant spy too lazy to
be of any real danger to anyone is a welcome alternative.
Best scene in story:
The scene where we first meet Verloc's fellow anarchists is
particularly good. The best of them is clearly The Professor, with his
constant, self-satisfied explanations of his ridiculous bomb apparatus;
everybody knows he wears the bombs, and nobody seems too
concerned about it.

ii