![]() ![]() But Conrad depicts them as comic grotesques. For instance the ‘terrorists’ who group themselves around Verloc are all hopelessly inadequate beings who have very little political effect. This occurs where there an obviously funny disparity between something intended and the result. In fact he employs several types of irony throughout the novel, much of it for grim effect. The sub-title of the novel is ‘A Simple Tale’ – which itself is deeply ironic, because the story is anything but simple.Ĭonrad is celebrated for his use of irony, and he lays it on very thick indeed inThe Secret Agent. Here Conrad prefigures all the ambiguities which surround two-faced international relations, duplicitous State realpolitik, and terrorist outrage which still beset us a hundred years later. The English government and police are subject to sustained criticism, and the novel bristles with some wonderfully orchestrated effects of dramatic irony – all set in the murky atmosphere of late Victorian London. It is based on the real incident of a bomb attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1888 and features a cast of wonderfully grotesque characters: Verloc the lazy double agent, Inspector Heat of Scotland Yard, and the Professor – an anarchist who wanders through the novel with bombs strapped round his waist and the detonator in his hand. The Secret Agent (1907) is a short novel and a masterpiece of sustained irony. ![]() Tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links ![]()
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