The Secret Agent Compassion Quotes

Apparently, Stevie lost one of his jobs in the past because two jerks working in his office got him all riled up about how badly the boss was treating them. So Stevie decided to go ahead and set off a bunch of fireworks in the company stairwell to show everyone how he felt about the situation. The problem is that poor Stevie got fired and the two office boys probably just laughed about the fireworks and kept their jobs. What this passage shows us is that Stevie really wants to help out other people. It's just that he's not all that bright, and people tend to take advantage of what a nice guy he is. This passage is really important for the book because it shows us early on that Stevie's niceness makes him an easy target for jerks who want to make him do what they want. Cue Verloc and a varnish can full of explosives.

As you might've noticed, Conrad isn't all that concerned about making his characters totally round and believable. In fact, he usually just makes his characters into symbols for specific emotions. In Stevie's case, were talking about compassion—a point that Conrad bashes us over the head with all through this book. More than any other character, Stevie takes the suffering of others and applies it to his own life. But this passage also shows us that Stevie's not exactly a Care Bear. Dude doesn't get sad when he hears about bad things happening. He gets really, really mad. This anger keeps him from being the simple little model of compassion we might want him to be.

Here, Winnie describes what a tough time she has trying to calm Stevie down once he's gotten himself worked up about the terrible things happening in the world. Again, we also get a pretty good idea of how ticked off Stevie can get when he hears about people being mean. Deep down, the poor guy thinks that the world is supposed to be a friendly place full of rainbows, hearts, stars, horseshoes and… well, that's Lucky Charms, but you get the idea. The fact that Stevies actually willing to grab a knife to show his anger makes you want to watch out for the guy as the novel continues.

Stevie gets really upset when he sees a cabman whipping a horse. It's probably a good thing he doesn't have a knife on him, because from what we can tell as this point, he'd probably use it. Right after this moment, though the cabman starts poking Stevie with his weird hook-hand. He tells Stevie that the life of a nighttime cab driver isn't as glamorous as its cracked up to be, so he has to whip his horse to make as many fares as he can. Dude has a family to feed, and there's not much Stevie can do about that. Again, you see Conrad hammering away at the point of Stevie's compassion, which applies to all living things.

When he keeps staring at the horse, Stevie starts worrying not only by the animal's painful life, but also the badness of the entire world. He tries as hard as he can to make sense of the situation, as though he might come up with some great solution to the world's problems. His sister Winnie, though, never thinks about these sorts of things because she feels that nothing can be done about them. Stevie never lets up in his efforts to figure a problem out, and in this case, the narrator ironically shows us that despite his intellectual disabilities, Stevie is actually a way deeper thinker than Winnie.

In his desperate attempt to think of a solution for all the pain and badness in the world, Stevie decides that he has to find an example of perfect compassion and bring everything back to it. For him, the best feeling ever is the feeling he had growing up when Winnie would take him into her bed. And no, not in a creepy way. Stevie would never associate going to bed with anything sexual. Instead, he remembers the feeling of Winnie bringing him into her bed to comfort him when he was growing up. So he wants to take this example and bring the whole world to bed with him. This passage gives us a really close look at the bond between Stevie and Winnie, while also showing how impossible it is for Stevie to heal the world. In this passage, Conrad might come closest to saying directly why he thinks compassion can't thrive on a social level.

Here, we find out directly from the narrator that Stevie's compassion has the ability to turn vicious. When he can't think of any way to stop the cruelty of the world, Stevie gets extremely angry. The image of clenched fists in his pockets shows that he might wish he could go all Bruce Banner on us and turn into the Hulk. But the mention of his "incapable hands," reminds us again that Stevie doesn't have gamma radiation powers (sigh), and he probably can't cause real change in the world.

Like Michaelis with his manuscript, Stevie is always struggling to put his compassion into words. He's always trying to get a handle on the badness of the world, and he feels the only way he can do this is to put the badness into language. However, there's a pretty stark contrast between Stevie's efforts, which usually result in jumbled phrases and words like "Shame," and the efforts of Conrad, who gives us hundreds of pages of really sophisticated writing. Through this contrast, we get a constant reminder of how limited Stevie is in his abilities, despite how strong his compassion might be.

Poor Stevie's compassion makes him very easy to manipulate, and there are few (if any) characters in this book that aren't willing to take advantage of him. In fact, there isn't really anyone in this book (other than Winnie and her mother) who wouldn't manipulate Stevie at the drop of a hat. Sure, Mrs. Neale has children at home and a crummy life, but the narrator isn't all that sympathetic to her. The only message you can really take from her is the fact that the world is a very rough place, and everyone is always struggling to get as much as they can for themselves.

The Professor tells Ossipon about a visit he made to Michaelis out in the country (which doesnt fit with his character at all, and is never really explained by the book, FYI). The Professor lays down some of the same smack talk about Michaelis as the narrator does, saying that the idealistic Michaelis cant think "consecutively," and insisting that there's no logical order to the dude's thoughts. The Professor is only concerned about ideas and actions that can actually change the world. Here, Conrad draws a parallel between Michaelis and Stevie, the two most obviously compassionate people in the book. In both cases, their compassion just looks silly and naïve, and in this sense, Conrad might really be suggesting that their humanitarian ideals cant really lead to any substantial change in a world full of maniacs and jerks.