The Anonymous Crowd: The value of the City in Conrad's 'The Secret Agent'

In my previous post I talked about Eliot's bleak representation of the city in 'The Waste Land', where he portrays a particularly degrading view of the faceless crowds of commuters using the city each day. This anonymity is one of the aspects of city life that is addressed in Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent. Georg Simmel wrote that "the metropolis exacts from man as a discriminating creature a different amount of consciousness than does rural life". In a rural village or community, it is hard to go unnoticed. Rural life relies upon the existence of community ties, which don't exist to the same extent in a city. "The rapid crowding of changing images" (Simmel) in a city means that almost complete anonymity can be achieved. In a crowd, one becomes part of the scenery, and can more easily blend into the background.

The character in The Secret Agent that exploits this potential for anonymity particularly well is that of The Professor. "The perfect anarchist". He uses crowds to blend into the city and travel through life with little chance of being found. As Ossipon realises, when he "looked hurriedly both ways before stepping out into the cross-currents, but the professor was already out of sight". And out of sight he remains for much of the novel, appearing only occasionally to help spread fear.

The crowded city is not only exploited by the anarchists, however. Inspector Heat attempts to use the crowds and their contrast with the Professor's isolation to gain power over the Anarchist. He tries to exploit the fact that there exists "the unattackable stolidity of a great multitude [which] was the haunting fear of his [the Professor's] loneliness". Part of the Professor's threat relies on the fear of individual attack and individual death. When faced by a crowd, his philosophy becomes inherently flawed.

However, does this "unattackable stolidity" really exist? Whilst the Inspector may wish to believe that the existence of the crowds of people in the city causes a sort of immunity against anarchists like the Professor, Christina Britzolakis notes that the city actually "appears intensely vulnerable to actual and symbolic destabilization". In an environment where no one is known, where strangers come and go every day, the safety of a crowd is cancelled out by the danger of a lack of community. The safety of a community gives way to anonymity, and allows for a less personal, harsher, more numbing attack. The anarchists know that "[t]he whole civilized world has heard of Greenwich". Not only that, but hundreds of people pass through it every day. An anarchist's goal? To create chaos. And chaos can only be caused where there are lots of people. In The Secret Agent the city is used to portray how the safety and anonymity of a crowd can instantly give way to danger caused by the same thing; it is simultaneously the safest and most dangerous place in the world.