The Secret Agent

909 Words2 Pages

In the novel The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad, the concepts of difficulty or obscurity and simplicity are greatly expressed. Many of the characters in the novel are morally simple while other characters have a vast amount of moral complexity to them. The same can be said about people in our world today in the sense that there are individuals with very simple qualities to them and ones who are almost the exact opposite of simple. The full title of the novel is The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale, but the temporal shifts in the novel make it more complicated than anticipated. This "simple tale" would be as simple as the title entails were it not for the complex nature of morality. Conrad's novel is not as famous as it is merely because of the plot of it, but rather because of how complicated the idea of morality is. It is easy to come to the conclusion that, due to the characters' moral values and how complex they are, that the novel portrays the modern world as morally complex. This does not mean that the plot of the novel is not important, though. The main themes are this novel are terrorism and anarchism, and these things are also very complex subjects. Terrorism and anarchism involve moral values, and this is what causes them to be so complex. The different beliefs of the two groups in the novel cause them to have different moral values, and these different values create a difficulty in telling whether an action is right or wrong. The complex world in the novel is brought forth by different moral values, and this complex world portrays the modern world as being complex as well.
Joseph Conrad took a much different stance than the other authors of his time when he wrote this novel. Rather than writing about a "perfect" or "glamoro...

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...is mainly because of the fact that the answer to the question relies on your morals. Different groups have different moral values which lead them to believe that certain things are just, while others might view these things as being the opposite. In the novel, the Anarchists have one idea of what is best for society, and the Authorities have another. These two groups perform actions based on what they believe to be morally correct. In the minds of the Anarchists, setting off bombs and sacrificing lives was necessary in order to better society. The fact that they believed it to be necessary to achieve a greater good makes their decision neither right nor wrong. The biggest theme in The Secret Agent was the theme of moral values. The novel showed just how morally complex the modern world is by giving readers a story based in a world that was just as morally complex.

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