Book Review: The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

Published during the first decade of the 20th Century, The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad reads like an eerie premonition of things to come. The novel follows a terrorist cell of anarchists in London as they plot and debate ideology, while a parallel storyline follows law enforcement investigating the bombing at the center of the story. Considered one of the first modern political thrillers, Conrad uses the plot as a mechanism to interrogate the psychology of a complex metropolis under the power of forces no one comprehends.

A real incident inspired the novel, in 1894 there was a botched bombing of the Greenwich Observatory in which the bomber was the only casualty. The novel speculates on what led to the event and the complex machinations behind it. 

The splintered perspective of the novel is best symbolized by the protagonist Adolf Verloc, a middle- aged shop owner who plots with anarchists by night, and also spies for an unnamed foreign government.  His younger wife is oblivious to Verloc's secret life but admires him for saving her from a life of ceaseless labor and poverty. Winnie's mother also lives with them, along with her emotionally unstable younger brother Steve. 

Conrad structured the novel in a non-linear fashion, adding to its disjointed tone. Questions about the various forces that hold society together and threaten to rip it apart always lurk in the background, as Verloc walks through an affluent neighborhood on the way to meet his handlers, he reflects:

He surveyed through the park railings the evidences of the towns opulence and luxury with an approving eye. All these people had to be protected. Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury. They had to be protected; and their horses, carriages, houses, servants had to be protected and the source of their wealth had to be protected in the heart of the city and the heart of the country; the whole social order favorable to their hygienic idleness had to be protected against the shallow enviousness of unhygienic labor. (15-16)

A high degree of opulence will inspire both awe and envy, and alienation everywhere Conrad is concerned with the psychological underpinnings of such a society. Curiously, the radical characters in the novel are mostly middle-aged men with their youths far behind them. Their youthful idealism has calcified into something harsh and uncompromising. At one late night meeting, an aging anarchist reflects:

I have always dreamed . . .of a band of men absolute in their resolve to discard all scruples in the choice of means, strong enough to give themselves frankly the name of destroyers, and free from the taint of that resigned pessimism which rots the world. No pity for anything on earth, including themselves - and death - enlisted for good and all in the service of humanity - that's what I would have liked to see. (38)

Meanwhile, Chief Inspector Heat investigates the bombing while contending with his ambitious new superior, the Assistant Commissioner. While the investigation goes smoothly after discovering a few leads, it's the uncovering of the motives that presents the challenge. For it's not a Sherlock Holmes situation when the solution easily follows logical reasoning, but one with so many levels it's unclear who's working with who, and whether even those involved understand their own motivations.

The heart of the novel is the domestic drama with Verloc's family. Winnie is the main female character and provides the emotion core of the story. She wants the best for her family, her sacrifices are of a different sort, for the betterment of her loved ones, as opposed to the abstract ideals of the anarchists. As things begin to unravel, she's driven to desperate and ultimately tragic acts. 

The fin de siècle world was one of diverse ideas and rapid change. The Secret Agent examines the psychological undercurrents of modernity, not necessarily by focusing on ideas and institutions, but on the people making their way within these modern systems. The vaguely dystopian London depicted in the novel, somewhere between Charles Dickens and Phillip K. Dick, directly connects to the alienations of the 21st Century and all its anxieties. 

(There have been many film and TV adaptations of the novel, including Alfred Hitchcock's 1936 film Sabotage)