Its probably not much of a shocker to find out that a book called The Secret Agent contains a bunch of lies and deceit. In the style of James Cameron's True Lies, Verloc keeps his secret agent status a secret from his wife for seven years. Lies and deceit are secret agent man Verloc's main tools for living, but lies and deceit are also the tools that the police use. The whole social order seems to be based on lies and deceit, and the winners in life are the ones who use lies and deceit to their advantage.
Questions About Lies and Deceit
- How does Verloc convince himself that Stevie's death is somehow Winnie's fault?
- Using specific references to the text, map out the timeline of how Verloc prepares Stevie to plant the bomb at Greenwich.
- How does Chief Inspector Heat use deception to do his job? Use specific examples from the text to support your answer.
- What does Mr. Vladimir hope to accomplish by staging an attack on the Greenwich Observatory?
Chew on This
In The Secret Agent, Conrad suggests that all levels of society function according to lies, and that honest people have little hope for survival in such a world.
In The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad suggests that lies are not only the responsibility of those who create them, but also the responsibility of the people who fail to ask questions and look beneath the surface of things.