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Before and After the Bomb a Study of Narration and Politics in Conrad’S the Secret Agent

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Before and After the Bomb a Study of Narration and Politics in Conrad’S the Secret Agent Bachelor’s thesis Before and After the Bomb A Study of Narration and Politics in Conrad’s The Secret Agent Author: Tilda Karlsson Supervisor: Anna Greek Examiner: Per Sivefors Date: 11 May 2016 Subject: English Literature Level: G3 Course Code: 2EN20E Karlsson Abstract The aim of this essay is to investigate ways in which the narrative in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent reflects the political views within and around the novel. The narrative focus of the essay is plot-structure and focalisation, and the political focus circles around anarchy and anarchism. The essay discusses how the anarchist’s belief in individual freedom and Conrad’s scepticism towards politics is reflected in the novel’s narration. I also discuss how the narrator uses irony to reflect Conrad’s scepticism. Key words: The Secret Agent, Conrad, narration, focalisation, plot-structure, anarchy, anarchism, irony Karlsson Table of Content 1. Introduction 1 2. Narratological Key Concepts 3 3. Political Background 6 4. Anarchistic Narrating 9 5. Conclusion 18 Works Cited 20 Karlsson 1 1. Introduction The era of literary modernism started around the beginning of the 20th century. The interior monologue with its development of the stream of consciousness became well used features of novels, as authors started exploring the human mind. Famous authors that belong to this era are Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, Ford Madox Ford and Joseph Conrad, among others. Joseph Conrad is famous for works such as Heart of Darkness (1899), Nostromo (1904) and The Secret Agent (1907). The Secret Agent is one of his first political novels in which we follow the anarchist Mr. Verloc and his associates. The main focus of the novel is a bomb attempt at the Greenwich observatory in London and the narrative revolves around this with a focalisation that often changes. The novel never represents the actual explosion, instead the chapters either circle around Mr. Verloc when he plans the event or different characters trying to figure out how the event actually happened. For example, in chapter two the story starts to build up when Mr. Verloc gets the order to bomb the observatory. A few chapters after this we follow Chief Inspector Heat and the Assistant Commissioner when they are trying to solve the mystery of the bomb incident and who the victim is. Some of the characters such as Comrade Ossipon and the Professor think that Mr. Verloc is dead since they know that he had bought a bomb. Chief Inspector Heat and the Assistant Commissioner believe that the victim is someone living in Verlocs’ house due to evidence found at the crime scene. However, then comes a chapter where Mr. Verloc is alive and then it becomes clear that it is actually Mr. Verloc’s brother-in-law Stevie that is dead. This creates confusion in itself, but the chapters does not follow the chronological order of events, which makes the confusion and the sense of disorder even greater. The aim of this essay is to investigate ways in which the novel’s political and anarchistic views are reflected in the narration of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, with special attention to plot-structure and focalisation. The plot-structure and focalisation of the novel will be discussed together with Conrad’s political views and the politics within the novel. Since several of the characters call themselves anarchists, the political focus will be on anarchy and anarchism. Karlsson 2 The story is told by a narrator that uses irony and keeps mocking the characters. In his article, “Violence, Irony, and Laughter: The Narrator in The Secret Agent”, Sung Ryol Kim writes about the narrator in The Secret Agent. He discusses how the narrator uses irony and how s/he1 ‘sees’ the situations and events. Kim writes that the irony the narrator uses is a way to protect the readers from the heavy themes of the novel such as madness and despair. Kim also states that since Conrad ‘warns’ the reader and makes him/her aware of the irony in the narrative he wants to make sure that no one misses the irony and ‘gets lost’ in the dark and rather violent story (n. pag.). Research has been done about The Secret Agent in connection with narration, for example, the article by John Hagan Jr. called “The Design of Conrad's The Secret Agent”. The article deals with the novel’s narration, and also discusses irony. Hagan brings up ideas regarding the novels focalisation, such as that the focalisation might be interpreted as being on several characters at once. Torsten Petterson also discusses Conrad’s narrative technique in his book Consciousness and Time: A Study in the Philosophy and Narrative Technique of Joseph Conrad. Petterson argues that the plot-structure in The Secret Agent does not have a first narrative, creating disorder. Both these sources also have arguments concerning politics. However, they do not discuss how the narrative reflects the political views within and around the novel. It can also be argued that the author, Conrad, uses the ironic narrator to mock the story itself, and the political views within it since the novel is considered to be a political one. Conrad himself had a scepticism towards politics, and this scepticism might be the reason why the narrative could be considered disordered and maybe even anarchistic. This essay’s theoretical framework is divided into two parts, “Narratological Key Concepts”, and “Political Background”. The first part is built upon the theories of Gérard Genette, from his work Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, where he discusses concepts such as analepses and focalisation. The second part of the theoretical framework deals with politics. John A Palmer and David Weir’s theories and arguments are brought up in this section together with Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy to bring a historical background to the concept of anarchy. The section brings the general ideas of anarchists, together with Conrad’s political views, but also the lexical meanings behind the terms anarchy and anarchism. 1 The gender of the narrator is never mentioned in the novel. Therefore is his/her and s/he used to express gender neutrality. Karlsson 3 2. Narratological Key Concepts Narratology is the study of a how story is told. The plot in The Secret Agent does not follow the chronological order of the story, and therefore it is important to sort out a number of terms and concepts, starting with the difference between story and plot. In brief, a story is the events in chronological order, and the plot is in the order in which the narrator tells the story. As in the case of The Secret Agent, a narrative does not have to be told in the actual order of the story. For example the last event may be told first and then the plot moves backward towards the first event. In other words, events in a narrative can be structured in a variety of orders, for a variety of purposes. Thus, the order of the plot is how the story is reorganised to create certain effects. When the plot does not follow the chronology of the story, this is called anachrony, according to Gérard Genette (35). An anachrony can stretch both backward and forward in time from the original time or the present time. The present time is ‘the moment in the story when the narrative was interrupted’, this is also called the first narrative (Genette 48). Genette calls this distance in time the anachrony’s reach (48). There are two kinds of anachronies, analepses, and prolepses. Analepses are anachronies that reach backward from the present time, and they can be either external, internal or a combination of both. External analepses reach to a point beyond the beginning of the first narrative (Genette 49). For example, if the first narrative about a boy’s life when he is between seven and ten years old contains a passage where his mother tells another narrative, a second narrative about when he was two years old, this becomes an external analepsis. The analepsis is not a part of the original narrative. Therefore, it becomes external. Internal analepses, on the other hand, reach within the original narrative (Genette 49). This could be, for example, that the plot goes back to a point where the boy was eight years old even though in the present time he is ten. As mentioned, an analepsis can also be mixed. This happens when the external analepsis ‘catches up’ with the original narrative, and it becomes an internal analeps since it reaches into the first narrative (Genette 49). There are also completing analepses. They return to an earlier point in the narrative and fill in the gaps that may have occurred when the narrative was first told (Genette 51). Lastly, regarding analepses, there is repeating analepsis. The repeating analepsis also reaches back to an earlier point but instead Karlsson 4 of filling in the missing gaps, it just recalls the event, often from another perspective than the first time. Prolepses are another form of anachronies. Prolepses function the same way as analepses. However, they move forward in time instead of backward (Genette 67). Like analepses, prolepses can be both internal and external, completing and repeating, and they function in the same way as analepses. Genette writes that an external prolepsis often functions as a kind of epilogue or afterword while internal prolepses often hints what is to come, a foreshadowing (67-68). The Secret Agent is told from several different points of view, or focalisations, and this is a crucial factor in the elusiveness of the narrative.
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