Great expectations and the secret agent - Essay Example

A Comparison of the treatment of innocence and experience, cynicism and moral conviction in Great Expectations and The Secret Agent Great Expectations and The Secret Agent would, on superficial consideration, seem to have little in common with one another. The first, regarded as perhaps Dickens's greatest novel, is the story of the move from innocence to experience in the life of Pip, who eventually realizes that the gaining of great monetary expectations does not necessarily lead to happiness, despite the opinions of those around him. The novel deals with classic Dickensian themes of abuse of authority (Miss Havisham, Mrs. Joe, Publechook), the problems associated with an obsession with money and status, together with the general social inequalities of England. The Secret Agent may, like Great Expectations, be regarded as an "adventure story", and, as in Dickens's creation, it is populated by a variety of characters ranging from idealistic revolutionaries to bureaucratic police. But both novels do deal with those apparent dichotomies: innocence vs. experience, cynicism v. moral conviction. In Great Expectations the main 'innocent' character, at least at the beginning of the book, is the child Pip. He believes that the world is little more than the cozy existence he is involved in with Joe and his wife. In a sense, as he and Joe "chew bread"1 they reflect an insular, innocent view of the world in which appearances are the same as reality and in the surface will never be contradicted by the depths. Miss Havisham represents experience, indeed, she is perhaps the embodiment of the influence it can have on one as she sits, ghoul-like, in the remains of her wedding clothes. On a more subtle level, however, she is also perhaps a type of 'innocent' as she has been unable to get to the level of maturity in which she can realize that such occurrences as being left at the altar are in fact all too common, and not necessarily a reason to abandon the rest of one's life to what has become a moment of suspended misery. Estella is a mixture of both innocence and experience when the reader first meets her: she has the innocence of a child mixed with the poison that Miss Havisham has poured into her in the latter's attempt to gain vengeance on men as a whole. In The Secret Agent there are also various levels of innocence and experience, as well as mixtures of the two. The revolutionaries may be seen as 'innocent' in their childlike, nave belief that if they want to change the world enough they will automatically be able to do so. Desire and fulfillment as synonymous ideas belong to the world of the innocent, not to the wisdom of experience. Vladimir perhaps best embodies this nave spirit. In his first meeting with the mysterious Mr. Verloc he states that ordinary acts of violence are no longer effective, because the public is almost used to them. He states that "an attack upon a crowned head or upon a president is sensational in its way, but not so much as it used to be . . . ", rather what the revolutionary needs is "an act of destructive ferocity so absurd as to be incomprehensible, inexplicable, almost unthinkable; in fact, mad."2 'Mad' might be one word applied to Magwitch (or Provis) who risks (and eventually loses) all by returning to England to see Pip's great expectations fulfilled in person. He could have stayed in Australia, living a comfortable old age, knowing that he had improved the life of the boy (now man) who had saved him. But he chooses not to. He is both mad, and, at least partially, 'innocent' in his view of the world. If he has performed a good deed then the bad deeds of the past will be forgiven, by Fortune if not be the Authorities, and he will not be caught. He has a very laudable moral conviction in believing that he must repay Pip for his good acts, even though they were slight in nature from the perspective of the child, with massive good fortune. Pip innocently gave food to Magwitch, and thus provided a life-line at a vital point. All the experience that the transformation from criminal to wealthy man has surely given to Magwitch cannot rid him of the simple, innocent, moral conviction that a good must be repaid with a good. The fact the terrorist Vladimir imagines the random destruction of massive buildings is eerily prescient for a reader with the point of view of 2006, and it can be seen that the "public", in this sense, is also innocent. It can be terrified by what it does not understand, by that which it has no experience of. Winnie's mother's opinion of Mr. Verloc is also innocent, as she tends to view the outward appearance as the reality. Thus Verloc must be a good man because he approximates the kind of man who used to stay at the "business houses"3 she worked at all her life. He appears to be a gentleman, with a gentleman's manners, and so he must be. In a sense she might be compared to Joe in Great Expectations: she is an adult, but an adult who is blessed (or cursed) with the innocence sensibilities of a child. Both characters might remind the reader of Othello, in Shakespeare's play of the same name, who is "so far from doing harm that he suspects none."4 It is worth noting that it is Iago, that ultimate cynic, who understands Othello so well. Cynicism may lead to wisdom, and innocence to ignorance, as the two novels show. What then of the secret agent himself, and how can he be compared to the characters of Great Expectations He is a complex character, as full of contradictions and inconsistencies to the reader as he is to the characters that inhabit the novel with him. He is the classic agent provocateur, a counter-revolutionary who has been planted within a terrorist group to provoke an act of violence so terrible that it will lead to its own destruction. Here we may move into the realm of cynicism versus moral conviction. It is perhaps the ultimate cynicism to infiltrate a group and to provoke it into sacrificing innocent lives in order for a wider good. It is also, from another equally valid point of view, the ultimate in moral conviction. One has to be very sure of one's righteousness to provoke murder by madmen. Mr. Verloc might be compared to Miss Havisham as she sends Estella out into the world, after years of plying with the skills and invective to destroy any man who has the misfortune to confront her. Miss Havisham believes in the righteousness, at least from the standpoint of personal vengeance, of what she is doing. She believes absolutely, without a single compunction. This is because her experience of the world has been essentially frozen in a single moment of treachery, and this now acts as a lens through which she interprets all reality, however removed from her own. The ultimate example of both experience and moral cynicism is perhaps irony. One cannot be innocent/certain and ironic at the same time. Irony stems from the distance from life which a harsh knowledge of the world brings. In Great Expectations irony is introduced in a number of ways. Estella, while she has been trained to be terrible, is in fact naturally kind, if only she could break through her training. Further, she despises Pip (or claims to) for his common "labouring"5 background, but comes from a background herself that includes, among other highlights, multiple felonies, adultery and murder. The irony is that, for all the experience and moral cynicism that has been injected into her from early childhood, she still has not learned to see herself as others see her: an essential element to a cynical view of the world. If a person knows that they are not as they seem to others, then they must surely know that others are not as they seem. The end of Great Expectations suggests that Pip and Estella will, in best 'happy ending' tradition, eventually marry. The fact that Dickens wrote two endings to the novel may show that in writing what many regard as his best work, he was himself torn between what he would want for life to be and what it actually was. In all likelihood experience and cynicism would have told Dickens that Pip's love would remain unrequited and Estella would realize, but too late, what a true love it was. But innocence, and a moral conviction that life could end happily at times made Dickens change his intended ending to one in which Pip goes to the ruins of Satis House and finds a much changed Estella. Estella no longer displays the innocence that made her so unpleasant; she is now a much warmer and more modest person, a warmth and a modesty borne from her experience of an unhappy marriage with the bully, Drumle. Her experience has shown her how vulnerable all human beings, including herself, can be. The end of The Secret Agent is extremely cynical, and reflects Conrad's scorn of the whole political process and the violence that it can provoke. While Pip and Estella are moving towards a happy marriage based upon experience, the Professor at the end of The Secret Agent seems to have seen nothing, learned nothing. As he walks through the streets, "he was a force . . . his thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction."6 In The Secret Agent innocence and moral conviction cause violence and intolerance, and they are no less destructive because of their apparently benign origin. In Great Expectations experience, while hard-won, eventually leads to mature contentment. Pip and Estella have hurt, and been hurt, a great deal, but their cynicism has eventually been replaced by a happy realism, which surely promises them a bright future. ________________________________________________________ Works Cited Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Agent. Signet Classic, New York: 1983. p.42-43. Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Signet Classics, New York: 1983. Shakespeare, William. Othello. The Cambridge Shakespeare, CUP, Cambridge: 1991. Read More