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Exploration of Time in the Secret Agent

Author: ZhuYu
Tutor: DengYingLing
School: Hunan Normal University
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: Conrad The Secret Agent mechanical time cyclical time personal time narrative time
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Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2006
Downloads: 61
Quote: 1
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Abstract

The Secret Agent, published in 1907, is Joseph Conrad’s political novel written in his late literary period. The story is based on an attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, which suggests Conrad’s desire to manipulate time in the novel. Conrad’s intention to subvert linear time is implicitly conveyed in his way of constructing the novel by means of which his temporal outlook is revealed.The Secret Agent has been considered by critics as the consummate irony among Conrad’s novels. Among critics concerned with this novel, the eagle-eyed English critic F. R. Leavis in his book The Great Tradition gives much praise to the novel. He considers it one of the unquestionable classics of the first order. The thesis attempts to deal with Conrad’s profound understanding of temporality in the novel, which accounts for Conrad’s complicated and innovative creation. Time has become an ever-appealing issue since the beginning of the 20th century. To try to mobilize temporal sophistication becomes a remarkable attraction in modern fiction. The temporal dimension constructs the novel itself and serves to highlight the intricate hermeneutic acceptance for the reader. With his insightful view of time, Conrad finds a temporal approach to express his view of life in writing, deliberately seeking to break with the traditional narrative linearity.Chapter One discusses how Joseph Conrad delineates mechanical time and cyclical time. Conrad presents numerous references of the clock, and the sound of ticking. Characters’ modes of experiencing time are also vividly presented in the novel. For Conrad, the representative and the icon of mechanical time is the Greenwich Observatory, which symbolizes modern civilization and embodies the abstract idea of canonical time in. the name of science. In addition to mechanical time, "cyclical time is Conrad’s another way of time treatment. In Conrad’s"sea novels" or "jungle novels", cyclical time takes up much of the dominance and appears in the form of natural scenes. The Secret Agent also makes the narrator and the reader experience cyclical time with the recurring images of darkness and dim light. In the novel, one of the functions of cyclical time is that time seems to move backward, in contrast to mechanical time going forward. Time goes back to the far-off past, and the reader is led into a primitive, weird world in which all human beings are reduced to animals squirming and crawling in the heavy darkness. The power of circularity of time possesses the human world, and thus the view that time is linear and forward is so much denigrated. Mechanical time is thus belittled in atavism theme in the novel.With the rapid industrialization and development of technology, the field of psychology and philosophy changes tremendously. Under the influence of Bergson’s "psychological time", Conrad renders us the impression of personal time. Personal time is the pure form of inner sense involved in physical context around. The impression or impact left on the human mind becomes the effective time measurement. It seems the reality with multidimensional facets cannot be touched upon through the onefold means of mechanical time. Only with the medium of personal time, can the depth in the inmost consciousness be reached, and the essence of life be observed. In Chapter Two, Conrad’s outlook of time will be examined with the analysis of personal time embodied in such characters as Verloc and Winnie. For Conrad, personal time is always at odds with the objective regularity of mechanical time, and there is a kind of discrepancy between characters’ personal time since their sense of time-passing finds no co-reliance whatsoever.The Secret Agent not only exhibits Conrad’s temporal outlook with the vivid portrait of character’s experiencing time, but incorporates Conrad’s view of time in the narrative form of the novel. Chapter Threemanages to investigate how the narrative embodies the artist’s temporal overview.The novel is taken as a sort of temporal art since it presents the chronological sequence of the events of the story. Once the balance of linear chronological process is disrupted, the sequentially temporal order is deconstructed. By rearranging fragments of the past, the present, and the future together at random, The Secret Agent deconstructs and subverts the traditional narrative. With the use of the technique of juxtaposition, time in the non-chronological narrative appears disoriented. The whole narrative tends to be static. The frequent use of time-shifts further strengthens the impression that time is ever-changing and elastic. The reader has to find his own way to the temporal rearrangement in the novel. In The Secret Agent, the meaning of the text exists in the perception of the relationship of images. With the powerful and recurrent use of images, the narrative still comes to its wholeness. And what is more important is that the repeated appearances of dominant images echo Conrad’s partial view of cyclical time. Instead of composing traditional stable linear narrative, The Secret Agent clarifies the wholeness and totality with the amalgamation of all images which keep running all the way.The conclusive end is made with the idea that Conrad views time anything but linear, and has a partial outlook of cyclical time and personal time. Cyclical time goes back again and again till the primitive world. With his description of human proneness to primitivism, Conrad provides characters with idiographic personal time. Both cyclical time and personal time work to oppose the abstract idea of mechanical time. The mechanism is cast in great doubt. If it is safe to say Conrad’s doubt about modern European civilization is presented with Marlow’s point of view, then in The Secret Agent, Conrad employs a more cryptic, abstract mode of temporal outlook to express the same doubt about mechanical time and modern European civilization.

Exploration of Time in the Secret Agent

Abstract

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