ESSAY: THE SECRET AGENT BY JOSEPH CONRAD

I WAS LOOKING THOUGH MY ESSAYS FROM an English course that I took at U of T back in the stone age, and I thought I would include this one, if for no other reason than it was well-received by the prof at the time. If it adds anything to anyone’s understanding of the novel, then that can only be for the better. 
Cheers.

Modern Fiction, ENG 328, Prof. M. Levene

The Importance of Movement to Situation and Theme in The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

     In the opening chapter of Conrad’s The Secret Agent, the reader is given a description of a character’s movements that is to characterize the rest of the novel. Verloc is seen “...going out in the morning...” (Conrad, The Secret Agent, 45) leaving his shop nominally in the charge of his brother-in-law. But instead of describing Verloc’s journey around London, Conrad spends the remainder of the chapter describing Verloc’s shop and his domestic arrangements. Thus, in the narrative structure itself, Conrad establishes one of his central themes, namely the relationship between movement and immobility. The action introduced in the opening sentence is immediately countered by detailed descriptions following in the establishing frame that provide background and character information. However, presented in such a manner, this frame does not allow any further portrayal of Verloc’s movements. Thus his outward, linear motion (away from his shop) is seen, instead, to be ‘encircled’ or ‘held in check’ by his private domestic world, as described by the narrator. Beginning his novel in such a fashion, Conrad creates an atmosphere of confinement and inertia that will pervade the work until its end.

     Another technique he uses in his opening chapter to establish this sense of inertia is his virtual elimination of dialogue. Characters are described by the narrator in the past tense. Active involvement between characters doesn’t occur until Chapter Two. In Chapter One, the only recorded dialogue is Winnie’s who says, “Of course, we’ll take over your furniture, mother...” (48). This statement is ironic because of the motifs Conrad later uses which equate, (and often conflate), the organic with the inorganic, the living with the inert. At certain points in the novel, it seems there is more life in the bricks and glass of London, (or in the blasted bits of Stevie), than in the flesh and minds of most of the characters. Action is both theme and central motif in The Secret Agent.

     Thematically, Conrad examines acting, (and its inverse, not acting), in terms of both the social and the personal. Socially, he asks how are individuals to act in a community. It is a public question that asks the reader to decide what actions matter in a large, organized society such as the one represented by London of 1866. Personally, on the private level, between individuals, Conrad asks what actions, what manner of communicating, truly establishes understanding between people. Here, he especially focuses on the relationship between Winnie and Verloc. Before discussing these two important thematic elements in more detail, I would like to examine Conrad’s portrayal of the organic and the inorganic. If, in the normal course of things, the organic can be characterized as active, and the inorganic as inactive, then, surely, in this work, the distinction between the two is blurred—if not at times unrecognizable. Thus, in discussing physical movement in terms of theme and situation, an examination of just what moves and doesn’t move in the novel would be helpful.

     In Chapter Two, when Verloc leaves his house, he walks through the streets of London. His person and his actions are described with equivocation. He is “almost” (51) dewy fresh. His cheeks had a “sort of” (51) gloss, and his eyes were “comparatively” (51) alert as they “sent out” (51) glances. A sense of completeness of being, of organic integrity does not present itself here. More striking still, is Conrad’s portrayal of the inorganic world: The sun “looked bloodshot.” (51)  It stared as it “hung at a moderate elevation” over Hyde Park. Nature is personified in an unsettling manner. In the diffuse morning light there is an unreality to both the organic and the inorganic: “Neither wall nor tree, nor beast nor man cast a shadow.” (51) London was, “...a town without shadows...” (51) The distinctions between the organic and the inorganic, and the definitions of each, no longer seem to function as rigorously as they should. Each seems to share attributes of the other, and, to some extent, each seems to work towards negating the other.

     Nearing the embassy, Verloc is described as “...a soft kind of rock...” (51) The streetscape is described by the narrator as a “...majesty of inorganic nature...” (53) Here, we see the inorganic nature of the buildings contrasted with the organic nature of the beings that live and work in them but who are also characterized as being out of place: A cat is “guilty looking”, (53) and promptly scurries undercover. A butcher boy drives by like an Olympic charioteer. The red wheels of his cart are as out of place along this “private” (53) street of “dark opaque” (53) windows as is his image as an ancient Olympian. The macabre image of the organic/inorganic policeman who is “...stranger to every emotion...” (53) and who is seen “surging” (53) from out of a lamppost, is somehow appropriate on this street of “...London’s strayed houses...” (53), that move and act “rationally” (53) as they bear their street addresses. Conrad’s blending of the living with the non-living compliments the lifeless environment of the street, whose silence is broken only by the distant rattling of a milk wagon. Again, the distinction between the living and non-living blurs—almost to the point where it is non-existent. A sense of normalcy returns when Verloc enters the embassy for his interview, and the reader is given the beginning of a narrative thread that will wind its way through the novel.

     In terms of movement, it is interesting to note that Verloc is said to have “trod the pavement heavily”. (52) A sense of linear movement, from one point to another, does not appear in the description of his morning walk. The fact that he “took a turn” (53) suggests not only a randomness to his actions, (he took a turn); but it also suggests a lack of impulse on his part, a lack of ‘carrying-forward’ of a planned action from beginning to end. (The turn was there, but not his intent.) We get little sense of purpose in Verloc’s journey. His undirected, non-linear, ‘wandering’ motion characterizes the journeys of most of the novel’s characters. I examine linear motifs in the novel, for example, “a long straight street” (262); “...the drop was fourteen feet...” (239) but it important to note that such outward, ‘straight line’ movements, as outward from a centre, (as outward from the explosion—the central outward motif of the novel), are rare events in The Secret Agent. Instead, we find enclosed, encircled and introverted movements. Throughout much of the novel characters sit, talk or reflect, and when they actually do move, they walk, as Ossipon says, “...I can walk...” (261) but without purpose, “...without looking where he put his feet...” (268), and ultimately walking “disregarded” (269). Rarely do characters move decisively, with a goal in mind—either physically, psychologically, or intellectually. For example, much of the novel’s settings are centered around Verloc’s shop or in other darkened and enclosed spaces. The characters, in a psychological sense, generally fail to recognize or act upon their need for change. Intellectually, the philosophies of the Anarchists, of Chief Inspector Heat, of Verloc and the rest, remain essentially circular and immune to external viewpoints. It is also important to note that while their actions may have a purpose, that purpose can be said to be one of maintenance only—to maintain their own individual status quos. Such purpose, then, can be seen as—not linear or outward, in the form of communication—but quite its opposite: Their actions are designed to enclose and protect themselves, and to maintain their insularity.

     Stevie’s compassion, while unusual in its intensity, is nevertheless similar in its insularity to the varied (and similarly insular) motivations found in the rest of the novel’s characters. Stevie acts in order to maintain his sense of a proper order to the world. His logic is introverted, his actions are ultimately futile—both in keeping with the circularity of his intent. Ironically, Stevie’s death proves to have more ‘effect’ than does his life.

     The movement of Stevie from the organic to the inorganic provides the reader with Conrad’s most powerful motif, namely that of inert matter itself having as great, or greater, effect than living matter. In the aftermath of the explosion, we find that Stevie is not so easily “disposed of”. (49) The effects of the explosion and Stevie’s death come back upon Verloc in a circularity that is also seen in the effects created by the other characters in the novel. By acting, all of them create effects which prove either futile or else act to further insulate each from the other. (The Perfect Anarchist is ‘perfect’ because of the insulation his quest for the perfect detonator gives him.)

     In returning to an examination of motivation  in the novel, I should like to look at the journey of Winnie’s mother as she leaves Brett Street for the “Charity”. (163)  In the narrow streets, the cab’s progress is gauged by the near fronts of the houses as they are seen to be “...gliding past slowly...” (157), as if it is the house fronts themselves that are moving. Later, the cab appears motionless as it passes through the wider spaces of Whitehall. Outside the walls of Whitehall, “time itself seemed to stand still.” (157) At St. Stephen’s it is the walls that “...contemplated in immobility and silence a cab that jingled...” (158). Later its jingling and jolting “...obliterated any sensation of onward movement...” (162). This reference to the ‘explosiveness’ of the cab’s jolting, with its “disproportionate violence” (162), reminds the reader that the apparent movement of the cab is not, in fact, linear. In this remarkable passage, Conrad creates a sense of movement that is disconnected from space and time. The cab appears at various points but for the reader there is no clear understanding of just how it got there. Motion appears arrested, and neither the descriptions of the cab in the landscape, nor the perceptions of its occupants provide the reader with a coherent sense of either spatial or temporal movement. Seemingly gratuitously, the narrator reminds us, however, that the cab “rolled too.” (158) Such a comment suggests, ironically, that the reader may not quite ‘understand’ that the cab indeed has wheels and that it is drawn by a horse—so equivocally has Conrad’s narrator described its movement. The only sense of time we have is that the journey ended at dusk. The sense of travel-time is distorted by the episodic nature of the description which renders an unsettling timeless quality to the journey—is it a journey of an hour or a year? Either seems plausible. (And either is as relevant—or irrelevant.) We see in Conrad’s use of time a technique to ‘throw’ his characters out of the frame of normal reference that his readers expect. His characters do not ‘act’ in any real sense of the word and therefore to plot their actions within a normal timeframe is impossible: How long does nothing take to happen?

     When Verloc makes reference to fifteen seconds counted by the ticking clock on the stair landing as, “...an abyss of eternity...” (175), or when Ossipon much later comments that “...eternity is a damned hole...” (265), both these perceptions of time as a kind of eternal emptiness are common to almost all of the novel’s characters. It is something which both pervades and characterizes all their actions. Thus, in the seeming motionlessness of Winnie’s mother’s journey, the image of the explosive nature of the cab is an apt one—for it conveys the sense that the cab and its contents (the passengers) are about to explode with an excess of inertia.

     The novel’s characters do not act in accordance with the normal expectations of time and space. They also do not act in accordance with the normal expectations of matter. Their ‘matter’—the organic substance of their being is often seen in conflict with—or subject to—the inorganic: Speaking tubes resemble snakes about to bite. A frock coat looks as if it were made of “...living tissue...” (123). A van and horses, “...merged into one mass [and] seemed something alive....” (152) Throughout the novel there are images of the inorganic threatening to spill into and submerge, the organic, or blend with it until no distinction between the two remains. With such conflicting and competing descriptions, the question to ask is: What exactly is Conrad describing? To answer this, I would like to turn to an examination of the descriptions of the enclosed, encircled, and introverted movements that are typically practiced by the novel’s characters.

Click me!

     The title of Conrad’s novel, The Secret Agent, is appropriate because, in a sense, all the characters are ‘secret agents’. Their lives are secret and isolated from each other. On the level of personal relationships, for example, Winnie’s refusal to acknowledge her husband’s true profession as a seller of pornography, or her denial of the true nature of their relationship, both limits and defines her as surely as the walls of her parlour limit and define the physical space of her home. Sir Ethelred’s dread of details symbolizes, for Conrad, a system that is “...expanded, enormous and weighty...” (204) and is without the energy or desire to change. In the end, the only change will be that Mr. Vladimir will lose his honorary member’s status at the Explorer’s Club. Sir Ethelred, accompanied by Toodles, will continue to walk back and forth from Parliament to vote on obscure and dusty legislation. The Anarchist’s debates are meaningless rituals ending in futility. Instead of a convergence into a common purpose for change, there is a divergence and a great inertia. From Winnie’s “unfathomable reserve (47) and Verloc’s “fanatical inertness” (52), to Heat’s inaccessibility to “...ideas of revolt...” (111) and the Professor’s padlocked cupboard—one character after another is relentless described by Conrad in isolated and solipsistic terms. Conrad so rigorously describes their lives as disconnected that the seemingly bizarre overlay of geometric motifs that he uses throughout the novel comes to be seen, instead, as a functional and descriptive language used to depict the characters’ rigidly demarcated lives: The triangle of light outside Verloc’s shop; the square blocks of houses; the city seen as box-like, as a “slimy aquarium” (150) by the Assistant Commissioner; and circles—everywhere there are circles. From the circles of Stevie’s drawings “...suggesting chaos and eternity...” (216), to the circles of eyes: to the round bodies; to faces, and hats, and glasses; to the aimless, circular wanderings, and to time, time not as a linear progression but as a circle. The novel’s plot reflects this view: It begins at 10:30 with Verloc leaving his home and comes full circle to end at 10:30, with the Assistant Commissioner returning to his home and Winnie’s train leaving its station.

     With this motif of circling, Conrad describes—literally—an insanity of movement without end. All the characters are seen circling ‘within themselves’. They are both secret unto themselves and unaware and unknowing of others. The description of Winnie listening to Verloc and Heat discuss Stevie’s death is fascinating because it suggest Winnie is an explosive container, (much like the description of the cab discussed earlier). She remained in “perfect immobility” (198). Her palms moved “convulsively” (198); her fingertips “contracted” (198), and she sat without moving and with “...all the potential violence of passion...” (198). In Winnie, we see a character with the most potential of all the characters in the novel for the expression of normal human passion. (Stevie, I will discuss in my conclusion.) Yet the reader notes her attempt and failure at any kind of linear, forward movement toward change in the scene that includes Verloc’s murder. We witness Winnie, stunned by the shocking news of her brother’s death, begin to re-evaluate her life. She examines her life, as the narrator relates but, we are told, her visions are “...lacking nobility and magnificence...” (219). While such an ironic comment may seem unfair, it suggests, in Winnie, there is a lack of passion—as exists in all the novel’s characters except Stevie. The narrator seems to say that Winnie’s past actions—those of her childhood, for example—don’t amount to much. They were futile gestures; just as her present actions will also prove futile.

     Winnie’s initial impulse to leave is correct. Her desire for freedom from her life with Verloc is seen as positive. Instead, she remains. Her thoughts circle around her mind and we become aware that she will not, in the end, understand her life with Verloc. To do so would mean she would have to change and to move forward, and this terrifies her. She concludes, illogically, that Verloc “...took the boy from his home to murder him...” (222. With Stevie dead, her reason for staying with Verloc is also ‘dead’. But to leave Verloc would mean she must leave something behind. The novel’s descriptive sum has shown us that Winnie has nothing to leave—Verloc is nothing. His indolent, passionless life is matched by Winnie’s lack of inquiry. Winnie, too, is nothing. For her to understand her life as such is to face a great emptiness and this she cannot do. Instead she murders Verloc impulsively. The reader is reminded of the sudden turnings of Verloc and others on their journeys, or of Ossipon’s “sudden turning” (262) into his home. This is another random, goalless act, an act of circularity and introverted logic. After an interval which seems both timeless and all of three minutes, Winnie attempts to leave the shop. We are told it was “...as though she had run through long years in her flight across the small parlour...” (237). By the time she reaches the door, she has run full circle: The narrator tells us that neither the corpse of Mr. Verloc nor Winnie moved and that the only difference between the two is “...the fact that Mrs. Verloc breathed...” (235). She is likened to the dead Verloc. Her actions are futile for she cannot change. The ticking clock and the mocking image of the rocking hat at the chapter’s end signals the triumph of the inert over the living. 

     In their flight from the gallows, Winnie and Ossipon stare out the hansom. They were “...like two people looking for the first sight of a desired goal...” (256). This image of the two staring—for the first time—at a goal is an important one for our understanding of the novel. A goal is an end. It has a fixed point, a direction. It presupposes action and energy to attain it. It also assumes there is a place to start from. Winnie’s fear of death is understandable. But her repetition of the phrase, “The drop given was fourteen feet” (256), gives the reader the impression that it is the length of noose on the spectral gallows she imagines that she fears. She does not comment on the fear of pain or of divine judgement or even of scandal and public humiliation. It is the length of the noose that fixes in her mind. If we see the noose as a ‘line’, with a beginning and an end, then we conclude that what Winnie most fears is not death so much as having to confront a self that is not there. To confront herself is to confront nothing. She has no beginning point, no end. She is like the aftermath of Stevie’s bomb—nothing, just an empty hole.

     The motif of geometric shapes used by Conrad describes his characters perfectly. They are empty shapes without centres and without substance. Their thoughts circle within their bounded forms but do not reach out, with interest, with inquiry, to understand anyone else. Their actions offer no effect in the world because they are designed, instead, to isolate them from the world and from each other.

Gratuitous photo unrelated to TSA. 
TV show. Watched it years ago.
(Man crush, I can't keep it a secret, 
for Patrick McGoohan.
He was so cool!)

      Some final questions to ask, then, are: Why do their thoughts and actions always ‘circle back’ around them? Why do they not progress outward toward goals which act to communicate rather than deny it? Why do their actions remain futile and ineffectual? Ironically, the answer may come from Ossipon who, early in the novel says, “...[w]ithout emotion there is no action...” (80). Stevie is the only character, outside Winnie’s brief moment, who is passionate. He cares about the suffering of animals and people. Had Stevie’s intellect matched his passion, then it is possible to envision his actions as working toward goals that have effect in the world. Instead, his disabled logic encircles and entraps him. That Conrad has Stevie literally blown to bits is appropriate—it is as if his passionate ‘core’ explodes from the containment of his illogic.

      The Professor is the perfect anarchist. He is perfect in the sense that he is entirely self-contained. His quest for the “perfect detonator” isolates him from everyone. He does not ‘intersect’ with anyone in the chaotic fashion of Stevie’s circle drawings. He remains apart. On the other hand, Ossipon’s chaotic intersecting with Winnie costs him the integrity of his protective boundary. He degenerates into a cycle of self-destruction, trying to understand her “impenetrable mystery” (226).  (Of course, there is no mystery; how can nothing have any answers—hidden or otherwise?) Conrad pessimistically sees the actions of modern humanity as chaotic. Their actions are chaotic because they lack passion. People, he seems to say, intersect with each other randomly, without sense or reason. The straight streets we should be walking along are, like those at the novel’s end, “without life and sound” (262). Instead, like empty forms, without passion, we move about aimlessly intersecting with each other or else move in isolation, in an endless round, going nowhere.

Works Cited

Conrad, Joseph, The Secret Agent. Penguin Books, N.Y., 1986

Professor’s comments:

Don—What an impressive piece of work: remarkably astute, illuminating and rigorously presented. Outside of some uncertainty about punct./quotation this is almost flawless. You’ve caught the nuances of Conrad’s techniques with a rare exactness and consistency. If it’s agreeable to you, I’d like to duplicate the essay and keep it for future reference and, probably citation. A+