In The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad’s distinctive literary style shows up in a combination of deliberate pacing, intricate diction, complex syntax, and rich figurative language. The novel’s speed is gradual and meticulous. It mirrors the careful accrual of information that spies perform, and gradually explains the societal unrest of the period. Instead of rapid, dramatic progressions of characterization or plot, Conrad opts for a slow-burn effect. This eking-out of resources allows tensions to simmer and prolongs the reader’s sense of uneasy suspense.
Conrad's diction in the novel is highly detailed, and also contains many idioms and historical references that strengthen the reader’s immersion in its setting in the late 1880s. It possesses an academic, serious quality, as if encouraging the reader to think as carefully as its spies and detectives. The author sprinkles words specific to late Victorian socialist and anarchist thinking, espionage, and the era's revolutionary movements throughout. These ground readers in the period-specific language of politics, spies, anarchists, and bureaucrats.
The syntax in The Secret Agent is notably complex, much like the intertwined relationships and plots within the narrative. Conrad's sentences double back on themselves. This twisty structure mirrors the convoluted world that the Verlocs and their companions inhabit.
Lastly, the novel brims with figurative language. Conrad is known for his extensive use of similes, and this novel in particular makes regular use of this literary device. Conrad employs these figures of speech, as well as metaphor and intense sensory language, as tools to evoke the world of turn-of-the-century London for the reader.
