English Literature the Secret Agent

Running head: ENGLISH LITERATURE 1
English Literature
The name of the Student
The name of the institution

ENGLISH LITERATURE 2
The reflection of the society’s view on culture, religion, and event in reference to The Secret
Agent Book
Introduction
The book, The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale was written by the Joseph Conrad and many
people, especially the literature critics and the scholars with great minds find it the best novel, for
the time that it was published, to be the best book that describes terrorism (Conrad, 1995). The
book focuses on the narration of the three subjects that include terrorism as quoted, lawlessness,
and undercover activities. Well, Mr. Adolf Verloc, who happens to be the main character in the
tale, is a secret agent of the F.P. group that believed to be a militia terror group meaning “The
Future of the Proletariat.” The tale takes place in London and he is believed to own and/or run a
business that sells pornographic and contraceptives materials to people illegally. He is, however,
entitled to his family that comprises of his wife Winnie, mother-in-law, and his brother-in-law
Stevie as well. He has a couple of friends including the likes of “The Professor,” Comrade
Ossipon, and Michaelis although they are, at a greater extent, viewed as terrorists as their
activities are widely known to the police. However, the book may be used as a reference to what
the society is currently facing as well as the challenges that may arise out of the wrong viewing
of a certain culture, religion, event, or region among others. In our literature review, we shall be
looking at the aspect which the author repeats it that “things do not stand much looking into” in
details.
Why “things do not stand much looking into”
Back in the novel, the author repeats the above phrase a number of times indicating that
something fishy was taking place. As a result, there always arose cases that resulted in bigger

ENGLISH LITERATURE 3
problems due to the problem of seeing. For instance, the police used to look at the activities that
the group used to do and terming them a terrorist. The shop that was owned and ran by Mr.
Adolf was also seen as a place that illegal things could always be found by the immorally upright
people including the sale of pornographic contents. There was a problem in looking with the
police as they did not condemn such trading but rather condoned it. The brother-in-law to Mr.
Adolf was suffering from a kind of mental disability and was, always, served by his sister, the
wife of Mr. Adolf. In this section, the public and the rest of the family looked at the situation as
the wife being taken advantage of by Mr. Adolf by making her his brother’s all-time servant. On
one occasion, Mr. Adolf was supposed to blow off the Greenwich Observatory with the
explosives that he was carrying before they denoted prematurely, thus, his masters viewed him as
a failure by not completing the assignment that he was assigned to do (Layish, 2017).
It is also quoted that his sister later committed suicide by killing herself after the
incidence of bombing happened. Here, the rest of the family saw her actions as evil without
understanding the reason as to why she committed suicide. We should note that Mr. Adolf was
employed by an organization that wanted to organize and effectively coordinates terror activities
in London according to the tale. Another important point to note was that the only person who
was a true anarchist was Winnie Verloc who commits a serious terrorist act than any other
person in the group. In the whole story, there are a number of people who happen to be looking
at something such as the police viewing Mr. Adolf and his friends as terrorists, the organization
that employed Mr. Adolf to blow up the Greenwich thinks the Greenwich is a bad place, and the
way Winnie looks at her mother as if she is spending too much on her cab transportation fees.
These cases have risen to worse scenarios such as the bombings and others committing murder