Classics Illustrated #17: The Secret Agent (Classics Illustrated Graphic Novels, 17)

By Joseph Conrad

Book Overview

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) The Secret Agent is the unsurpassed ancestor of a long series of twentieth-century novels and films which explore the confused motives that lie at the heart of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1597074160
• ISBN13: 9781597074162
• Release Date: July 2013
• Publisher: NBM/Papercutz
• Length: 124 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.1" x 0.4" x 6.6"
• Age Range: 10 to 14 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 9

Customer Reviews

"The occurrence of something definite."

Joseph Conrad's novel, "The Secret Agent" is based on a real-life incident that occurred in Greenwich in 1894. Conrad's novel is built around the known facts of that case and concerns an agent who works for the Russian embassy. The agent, the anarchist Verloc, was well respected when he worked for Baron Stott-Wartenheim, but times have changed. When Verloc is summoned to the embassy, he receives a cold reception from his new superior, Vladimir. Vladimir tells Verloc that he's going to have to start producing or he'll lose the wages he receives. A humiliated Verloc is shocked when he receives orders to blow up Greenwich Observatory. Verloc has been living a double game for some time, and he also provides information to the British police. He married Winnie, the daughter of his landlady after Winnie's relationship with another man collapsed. Verloc and Winnie now run a small shop together, and Winnie is completely ignorant of Verloc's political activities. She's quite aware that several shady characters come and go, but she doesn't ask questions. Winnie's emotionally damaged brother, Stevie also lives with the Verlocs. While Verloc imagines that Winnie loves him for himself, the truth is that Winnie married him for stability. By marrying Verloc, Winnie thinks she's assuring a safe home for Stevie, and so for her the marriage is a silent, unspoken pact. Verloc provides a home, and she, in return, is a good, uncomplaining wife. When tragedy strikes in the most unexpected way, the Verloc household is thrown into turmoil. Conrad's novel explores the theme of the individual vs. political beliefs through the tragedy of his characters. Most of the characters within the novel are unpleasant--for Verloc, the 'cause' is secondary to his own skin, but he's willing to sacrifice another to maintain the status quo. Verloc's fellow conspirators are shown to be dismissive of the human race, and careless of any damage caused to the individual (except themselves). Everyone uses each other, and there's a hierarchy even in the police force that promotes use of individuals as long as they provide information. The two 'nicest' characters in the novel are also those who possess no political ideals whatsoever--Winnie and her brother, Stevie. These siblings are bound by the memory of an abusive childhood--Winnie's main desire in life is to protect Stevie, and he can't stand violence or cruelty in any form. These two innocents meet a horrible fate as the result of the 'high' political ideals of others. The novel is not an easy read. I found the story a little difficult to get into until the drama picked up--this was largely due to Conrad's writing style that is often quite stilted by its excessive verbosity. However, that said, once the drama unfolded, I was unable to put the book down until I finished the final page. The characterizations of Verloc and Winnie are fascinating, dark and bleak. Married for years, the events of one day show how little they understand one

This act of madness or despair.

At the end of the novel Comrade Ossipon says, "An impenetrable mystery...this act of madness or despair." He is thinking about what Winnie has done. He cannot fathom it. The novel is unfathomable too; dense, twisting, sordid, ironic. There are some great scenes in this book. At the end, Verloc thinks Winnie truly loves him when in fact she doesn't, and never has; she had always loved the butcher. The horse scene where Stevie pets the old mistreated horse also comes to mind. The only character Conrad has sympathy for is Stevie, and he gets blown to bits. Stevie is the only one who can truly show love. Ironically, he's mentally retarded. Everyone else is manipulative and calculating. The book was published in 1906, some 50 or so years after Das Capital, The Communist Manifesto, etc. were published. Europe was swarming with "revolutionists" and "anarchists." Journalists were writing about "the people" and "the masses" and "social justice." Conrad was no dummy. He analyzed what was going on around him in England, France, Germany, etc., then he wrote this book as an "answer" to the socialists, anarchists. This is probably one of the most supremely ironical novels ever written. Stevie's demise is meaningless; there is absolutely no sense or purpose to it. The anarchist world in the novel is meaningless, peopled by sordid, parasitic rabble-rousers and journalists. Even Heat, the Assistant Commissioner, Sir Ethelred, the Assistant Commissioner's wife, the lady patroness, the "good side"--none of them without guilt. They too are schemers, calculating their social advancement. Like a coin, they are just the flip side of the socialits'. The whole society is corrupt, socialist and police alike. In repugnance, Conrad just blows up the whole damn mess. And how ironically does he do it! He blows up the only redeeming thing in that society, a retarded boy who loves without calculation, who goes into emotional fits when witnessing any gratuitous cruelty--cruelty even shown to animals. Dark novel. Great book!

Marvelous, if you give it a chance

I don't want to in any way be condescending, either to those who will read this review, or to those marvelous writers who have gone before, but I do think modern readers do not always approach older writing in the proper frame of mind. We need to remember that the only mass entertainment they had was novels, and the pace, because that's all there was in those days, is understandably slower. What modern writers would dismiss in a line or two might take a page or more for people like Conrad and Dickens. But, oh my, the places you can go, if you just consent to be seated in one of those old-time carriages!THE SECRET AGENT is certainly a case in point. Like all Conrad--for my tastes, at least--he was a bit difficult to read in places. Conrad really loaded up a sentence. But when he's on his form, he writes some of the best sentences ever crafted in English Literature.Other reviewers have given many of the plot points, so I won't repeat them here. Let me just say that I just finished reading the novel last night, and many of those images are still with me--epecially those in the last section of the novel. It was tough sledding in the beginning. Quite frankly, I found myself wondering why some consider this novel to be one of Conrad's finest, but there were enough of Conrad's marvelous sentences to keep me in the book. Then I got to the part where Winnie learned of her brother Stevie's fate, and Mr. Verloc's role in it, Verloc being Winnie's husband. From then to the end of the book it was a ride in a rocket! Conrad's depiction of Winnie's feelings, culminating in her own ghastly actions, must surely rank among the very finest scenes in literature. It was just astounding, especially when one considers that Conrad wrote at a time when women's thoughts and feelings were considered trivial, if they were thought of at all. But those passages that revolved around Winnie's reaction to Stevie's death could have been written yesterday, in the sense of getting down to how a woman in her place would feel. As for the sentences... well, only the masters wrote at that level, and Joseph Conrad is certainly one of these.If you're one of those avid readers who takes the time to read reviews like this, read THE SECRET AGENT. You won't be sorry you did.

Inventive espionage thriller from the 1900s

The major event of the plot is an anarchist conspiracy to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. An "agent provocateur", Verloc, is the man caught in the middle, a pawn in a game played by a high-ranking Russian diplomat, a leading police inspector and, on the other side, the sometimes clumsy and ineffectual anarchists. One example of the characterisation immediately sticks in the mind of the reader, long after completing the novel. It is the character of the mysterious Professor, a misanthrope and angel of destruction, who supplies Verloc with the explosives needed to carry out the plot and who embodies nihilism at its most extreme. Joseph Conrad is known for his dense and sometimes contorted prose, and the style of "The Secret Agent" is no exception. Though no great storyteller, he nevertheless demonstrates that he is a psychologist of the first order, in his searching analyses of character and motive. The novel is partly a domestic tragedy, a highly innovative and experimental early Modernist work, a darkly humorous tale with lashings of "schadenfreude" and an esponage thriller that anticipates, in many ways, the best and most recent examples of the genre.

A dark and nihilistic tale; grim realism at its best

As I read through the "critical" comments of high school and college students who are assigned to read the works of Joseph Conrad then fuss and fume at the very idea of it, I find myself deeply disappointed by their lack of appreciation for the subtleties of great literature. They have little time or patience to devote to an author who provides his readers with so much vivid description, building toward a stunning and inevitable climax. In the "Secret Agent," Conrad points to the frailties of the human condition, the large forces of nature at work that conspire against the simple and downtrodden man trapped by his own cunning devices. Mr. Verloc is a simple, plodding peasant; and just why he embraces the anarchistic cause is never made clear to the reader, but no matter. He is trapped in a sterile nightmarish world where the idealists and the self-proclaimed revolutionaries are as morally bankrupt and empty of human emotion as the system they purport to overthrow. Conrad's characterizations are brilliant. His use of dialog and description, a hallmark of the early twentieth century realists, and the grim ending to this novel is a masterpiece of understatement. It is too bad that fine old classics of literature like this one and the more famous Conrad novella "The Heart of Darkness" must be subjected to the vapidity and sophomoric opinions of a generation of students weaned on MTV, the Simpsons, and thirty-second TV soundbytes.