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ornamental line

The Bottom of the Matter

"Unlike his sister, who put her trust in face values,
he wished to go to the bottom of the matter" (127).
Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907)

 

Points for Reflection

J. Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907), chps 6-8

chp. 6

  1. How perspicacious is the lady patroness of Michaelis, according to the narrator?  Does the Assistant Commissioner share her view of Michaelis?
  2. What crime placed Michaelis in prison, and why did the court incarcerate him for such a lengthy period?
  3. Why is Michaelis so beloved by the people following his release from prison?
  4. What impact has the lady patroness of Michaelis had on the Assistant Commissioner’s marriage?
  5. Why does Heat prefer dealing with the crime of theft instead of anarchist acts of destruction?
  6. Why is the Assistant Commissioner so concerned about Michaelis’s getting arrested?
  7. Who wins the non-violent duel of words and wits punctuated by long silences?  Chief Inspector Heat or the Assistant Commissioner?
  8. How is Michaelis spending most of his time?
  9. Is Heat an admirable public servant?
  10. According to Heat, is Verloc an effective spy?
  11. How much does Heat’s professional reputation hinge on the information Verloc has fed him over the years?

chp. 7

  1. Is the Secret of State’s private secretary, Toodles, a comical or serious character?
  2. Why does the Assistant Commissioner avoid giving Sir Ethelred, the Secretary of State, details about the recent bombing incident?
  3. Does the Assistant Commissioner believe the recent bombing incident part of a large and ongoing anarchist plot?
  4. How useful an employee is Chief Inspector Heat, as described by the Assistant Commissioner to Sir Ethelred?
  5. In the latter part of chapter seven, we see the Assistant Commissioner cheerfully adopting the guise and manner of an undercover agent as he darts about London. Does the chapter end with the same lighthearted tone established by his playacting?

chp. 8

  1. Why does Winnie's mother not leave Stevie any furniture in her will?
  2. Why does Winnie's mother think Stevie only "a little peculiar" (114)? Does she understand the full range of his abilities more fully than others? What of Winnie--does she know her brother well?
  3. What authority figure does Winnie regularly reference to get Stevie to behave?
  4. Does Conrad's characterization of Stevie mark him as a dependent idiot, a semi-dependent imbecile, or a virtually autonomous but simple-minded individual?
  5. Does Stevie's linguistic ability seem appropriate in light of his other disabilities?
  6. Why does Winnie's mother decide to move out on her own, and live in the more modest housing (one in a row of charity cottages) provided her by her husband's former coworkers?
  7. In what ways does Stevie's response to the cabman's woes (122-26) echo his past response to the complaints of office boys at his former work place (7)?
  8. Why does the cabman choose to walk his horse away from Stevie?
  9. What does the narrator mean when he claims that Stevie is "not mad" but "reasonable" (123)? Do we take seriously the narrator's suggestion that Stevie feels things "with greater completeness and some profundity" compared with others (126)?
  10. Compare and contrast Stevie and Winnie's very different assumptions about the proper responsibilities of policemen (126-28). What does Winnie's perspective suggest about her current worldview?
  11. We are told six different times in chapter eight that Winnie avoids looking too closely beneath life's surface (113, 114, 124, 127, 130, 132). Why is this? Is Mr Verloc himself willing to look beneath the surface of things (132)?
  12. What does the narrator mean when he explains that "Mr Verloc loved his wife as a wife should be loved--that is maritally" (132)?


Wilfred Owen's "Disabled" (1917)

  1. This poem opens by describing the poem's subject in the third person, establishing the narrative voice as that of the narrator and not the man with the disability. Should we, then, assume that the phrases "ghastly suit" (l.2) and "saddening like a hymn" (l.4) are the product of the narrator's own perspective? Might they be shaped instead by the wheelchair-bound subject?
  2. How did the male subject "throw away" his knees" (l.9), and what does this metaphor suggest about his attitude towards the event in question?
  3. What aspects of his past does the male subject idealize most readily?
  4. Why did this individual join the military in the first place?
  5. Why might a religious man ask our newly disabled subject about the state of his soul (ll.37-39)?
  6. Why does the poem suggest that our subject will spend only "a few sick years" in institutes (l.40)?
  7. Does the kind of prejudice experienced by the subject of our poem still characterize the experience of similarly disabled men and women in contemporary American society? What kinds of attitudes have you seen directed at soldiers recently returning from overseas? Does the presence of a disability affect society's construction of the soldier's heroism in some way?


    a painting of a bright, cloudy sky and dark horizon at sunset. the sky is blue and gradually shifts to golds where the sky meets the horizon.
    Nightfall (1865)
    Claude Monet


Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu