Joseph Conrad’s ‘The Secret Sharer’

Joseph Conrad, as I’ve written someplace or one other, is without doubt one of the best prose stylists within the English language. His books and quick tales are additionally philosophically wealthy, which is why he’s nonetheless studied, and authors like Evelyn Waugh, merely learn. That’s slightly harsh, nevertheless it’s the reality.

Moving into Conrad might be troublesome. His subject material (usually international), settings (usually nautical), and preoccupations (usually mysterious) might be off-putting to the first-time reader. The shorter works work greatest as a place to begin and serve, just like the shorter Platonic dialogues, as an introduction to themes handled at larger size within the novels.

“The Secret Sharer” (1910) is pretty much as good a starting point as any of Conrad’s quick tales, so it offers me pleasure to induce additional Conradian exploration by presenting it briefly right here. Printed in two installments via Harper’s Journal, this sea-bound story is narrated by an unnamed captain on the helm of an unnamed ship resting someplace within the Gulf of Siam.

The story, in the principle, is about identification. Extra particularly, the captain’s psychological journey towards self-actualization. Firstly of the ebook, he unknown to himself, and exists with the uninteresting understanding of drifting seaweed. As he relates “…what I felt most was my being a stranger to the ship; and if all the reality should be instructed, I used to be considerably of a stranger to myself…I questioned how far I ought to end up trustworthy to that ultimate conception of 1’s personal persona each man units up for himself secretly.”

This private disaster, if that’s certainly the fitting phrase, turns into public, because the captain had two weeks therefore been externally appointed to take cost of the ship. He doesn’t know the lads; they don’t belief him. This unstable stability continues till the final web page.

One night time a person—Leggatt—swims as much as the boat whereas the captain is on watch. We be taught, after the latter quietly lifts the bare, struggling mass from the ropes, that Leggatt has not too long ago murdered a companion aboard the Sephora, now anchored a brief distance away. The homicide is sophisticated, or so the captain trusts, and he permits—invitations is extra correct—the escapee to secretly stow away in his chambers the place he’ll keep till the ultimate moments of the story. The captain’s shipmates, after all, are unaware of this resolution. Later, the looking Sephora will, too, be postpone the scent by the captain.

To return to my above declare concerning Conrad’s twin virtues of fashion and philosophic depth, I need to finish by pertaining to their confluence in “The Secret Sharer.” A language of doubleness begins virtually without delay and doesn’t let up. Leggatt turns into, for the captain, his “double,” “my secret self,” “my second self,” “my secret double,” “my very personal self,” “my secret sharer.” The supply of the kinship, almost corporal, felt by the captain is troublesome to find. All through the entire of the story he and Leggatt converse lower than two pages of reported dialog. Certainly, at instances the captain can’t be positive the person is just not an apparition, seen solely to him. And but, this shadow-Leggatt makes flesh and blood what earlier was a shadow-captain. Understanding how and why is the pleasure of “The Secret Sharer.”

Every of us has a “double,” don’t we? It might not go by this identify, however the relationship of every man together with his “secret sharer” observes the identical course of, regardless of the tradition or historic interval. I feel, although Conrad doesn’t make specific, this too is his understanding of human nature. If I’m appropriate, leaving open that I’ve ingested an excessive amount of seawater through the years, then the “The Secret Sharer” is greater than merely a mariner’s story.