The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale

by Joseph Conrad

Yet, like many a person who resolves not to work to gain his living, Verloc in fact works quite hard. This resolution not to work so often conceals a deeper neurosis: a refusal of honesty, a desire to be free but without earning freedom. Such people have in fact to work hard; and they are never free because they are perpetually at the mercy of their nerves, since their activities are usually of a criminal nature – and they are anxious not to be found out and inconvenienced. They are quasi-psychopathologically obtuse at best. Verloc’s habits are indolent. He stays in bed until noon. He moves slowly. But he is efficient enough to run a pornography business, and to subsidize it and protect it from police attention by making Heat’s reputation. He speaks at anarchist meetings impressively, although without belief in what he is saying, and