The Secret Agent Appearances Quotes

This early description of Verloc seems to be generous at first, saying that his laziness has a "majestic" quality to it. But in the next line, we find out that Verloc is burly in a "fat-pig style," which totally shakes us as readers. Conrad loves to throw in these drastic shifts of tone. He'll follow a gentle image with a rough one that seems to come out of nowhere. One of the reasons he does this is because his writing tends to be very dense, and he needs to keep your attention for every line, since it's easy to miss something important. Also, these sudden changes help to establish the balance of distance and closeness that Conrad always strikes between his narrator and characters. Just when you think the narrator has become sympathetic or admiring, he'll go and call the main character a fat pig.

Mr. Vladimir tells Verloc he's way too fat, since anarchists are supposed to be poor and starving. Vladimir here might just be looking for reasons to be mean to Verloc and call him lazy, but he's actually got a strategic point in saying that Verloc's weight makes him less believable as an anarchist. Here, Conrad also shows off a bit of his humor, which can be tough to pick up at times because the dude is so gloomy all the time.

During Conrad's time, people like Ossipon who read Lombroso would've believed that black people were a less evolved form of human being. What this passage shows us, though, is the hypocrisy of Ossipon's belief in Lombroso, since Ossipon himself has all of the physical characteristics that Lombroso would have called "degenerate."

Ossipon takes an interest in Stevie because he thinks Stevie's a "degenerate" in the terms of Lombroso. It's actually really tough to pin Conrad down in terms of his opinion on Ossipon and Lombroso. Yes, Karl Yundt says that Lombroso "is an ass," but there's probably no one this book respects less than Yundt. The idea that you can tell a person's intellectual capacity and honesty by looking at the lobes of his ears seems a bit nuts. But there were a lot of people in Conrad's time who thought this was a scientific fact.

The physical effects of a fifteen-year imprisonment have been devastating for Michaelis' body. At one point, the book also refers to his gut as a ball and chain that he has to carry around with him for the rest of his life. Here, Conrad might be criticizing the long-term effects of imprisonment. The outrage of Michaelis' physical condition is made even worse by the fact that his prison sentence was far too strict for the crime he committed. His paleness also makes him sound like some sort of underground dweller, and gives him an almost half-dead look. Although when you look at Conrad's world, it's hard to believe that anyone gets sunshine ever.

Of all the unattractive people in this book, Karl Yundt has to be the grossest. He almost sounds like a Disney villain. The use of certain words like "limply" show how old and weak Yundt is. But symbolically, they also show that like all the anarchists in this book, he never actually does anything to back up all his big talk about being a terrorist. Conrad seems to single out Yundt as the worst of the worst, and basically puts him in a dunking booth for us to throw apples at.

Arguably, the professor is the most dangerous and powerful man in this novel, but he's also the scrawniest. He's really small, and Conrad might actually suggest that his bomb is his way of compensating for the fact that he's a tiny guy who no one has ever paid much attention to. The Professors tininess seems to symbolize the fact that no matter what fantasies he might have about himself, he'll always be a little dude.

Like Michaelis, Sir Ethelred is totally huge. He also sounds like a cartoonishly snooty British man, especially with his hooked nose. Here, Conrad is definitely spoofing the upper crust of London, but his description of Ethelred's vast body is also connected to the fatigue that always hangs over this guy. Ethelred may have a very good reason for being so tired all the time, but his tiredness makes him avoid looking into the details of life, which might be bad for the people of England. In the end, Ethelred's physical appearance is almost exactly what you'd expect from Conrad, who tends to give his flattest characters the worst physical descriptions.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or something like that. When Comrade Ossipon looks at Stevie, he sees a whole list of "scientific" characteristics that tell him Stevie is a degenerate, or less evolved than other human beings. When Winnie looks at Stevie, though, she sees only her brother, and even thinks he's an attractive young man. This passage actually makes you feel pretty good about the bond between Winnie and Stevie, which just makes it that much harder when you find out that Stevie's blown himself to pieces.

Ultimately, Ossipon betrays Winnie because he's afraid she'll murder him the same way she murdered her husband. Then again, Ossipon might just be a huge jerk that wants to steal Winnie's money, and all his Lombroso nonsense is just a way to justify his decision to himself. In this sense, Conrad might be criticizing people who use science to justify the crummy things they do.