SOURCE: "The Rebirth of Leggatt," in Literature and Psychology, Vol. XIII, No. 3, 1963, pp. 74-81.

Whenever possible, we like to see a work of art from a single point of view, as a harmonious whole. Anything extraneous to the desired pattern leaves us uneasy. Thus the mysterious figure of Leggatt has been a stumbling block for critics of Conrad's "The Secret Sharer." For example, [in an introduction to Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer, 1960] Albert J. Guerard, Jr., sees the story as a dramatization of the archetypal "night journey," in which the protagonist makes a "provisional descent" into darkness and the primitive, emerging with a new self—knowledge and a new maturity. Guerard finds Leggatt "the embodiment of a more instinctive, more primitive, less rational self," and he feels that the captain "both sympathize[s] with and condemn[s]" this image. But this interpretation raises a new problem. How shall we account for the fact that this symbolic lower self is also "a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny"—for the captain's (and Conrad's) favorable view of Leggatt? Elsewhere Guerard finds the symbol "wrenched" at the end—"Theoretically, Leggatt should have remained on the ship;" the "proud swimmer" passage is a distortion—"the darker self… is in no sense such an heroic figure of freedom"—and the conclusion, he says, "is the chief area of incomprehensible feeling in the story." He attempts to solve this problem by suggesting that the captain, having profited from the contemplation of the Leggatt-image, is now able to see Leggatt as a mere man of flesh and blood, and therefore to part with him [Joseph Conrad, 1947].

Carl Benson, who is concerned solely with Conrad's known artistic intentions, takes issue with Guerard's view of Leggatt. Benson sees him rather as a "model of assured courage," supporting this position with Conrad's own views, as expressed in an indignant letter. If such an interpretation answers the previous question, Benson presents another one; he feels that the captain's initiation is "humanly abortive," and points out that meanwhile the captain has neglected his duty and his ship; furthermore, that he has measured up to his ideal image "only in a limited, egocentric way" [PMLA, 1954].

R. W. Stallman considers the story on the literal level, and also as an "allegory of the plight of the artist," but does not analyze the links between the story and the allegory; therefore the question whether the actions and character of Leggatt fit consistently into a symbolic pattern does not arise. On the literal level, the appearance and disappearance of Leggatt are perfectly acceptable; Stallman points out that Leggatt "provides [the captain] the utmost test…of his fidelity to his vision of ideal selfhood." Furthermore, Stallman emphasizes the captain's "doubt of Leggatt's bodily existence; Leggatt is an invisible participant" [Forms of Modern Fiction, 1948].

These approaches see the story as concerned chiefly with an experience of initiation. They tend to minimize the importance of Leggatt, and they see the action through the captain, or from his point of view. This last is of course entirely natural, because of Conrad's angle of narration. I suggest, however, a wider approach—the examination in detail of certain symbols in the story, and an attempt to view the narrative as it surrounds Leggatt rather than the captain—and this approach is justified by our knowledge of how Conrad reworked the facts on which he based "The Secret Sharer." Such an approach offers a solution of the problems mentioned above; it provides evidence that Conrad, whether consciously or unconsciously, created a double narrative, in which the captain's initiation into maturity is paralleled and complemented by a symbolic presentation of the archetype of rebirth—the rebirth of Leggatt.

Conrad's works, and "The Secret Sharer" in particular, were written more "intuitively" and with less purely logical planning than much modern fiction. This intuitive method gives the author's imagination free rein, not merely planning what may be effective for the reader, but also promoting the introduction of details which the author somehow feels to be "right." Such a writer may allow the wider area of his unconscious mind to influence his creations very freely, and in his fiction we shall find a better key to the workings of his unconscious than in that of an author who meticulously revises with an eye coldly fixed upon artistic effect.

Furthermore, "The Secret Sharer" could not have been subjected to the pruning which may have altered the original drafts of Conrad's more artful works. His wife writes [in Joseph Conrad and His Circle, 1935] that the story, a long one by ordinary standards, was conceived, composed, finally typed, and sent off to the printer within the space of a week, and without Conrad's telling her any details about the incident which had inspired it, or the process of its creation. He told her, "It is pure fiction, my dear." However, the Sephora-Leggatt part of the story is based on incidents which took place on the clipper Cutty Sark in 1880, and which were familiar to Conrad. In short, "The Secret Sharer" gives us an example of Conrad's seizing on a fragment of remembered material, taking his distinctive psychological and moral sight upon it, and reworking it into a satisfactory artistic whole very rapidly, without the correction and hindsight which would have modified a more laborious and slowly executed work. Such a story may well contain symbols and thought-patterns of whose existence the author himself was only partially conscious.

A close reading of "The Secret Sharer," if it is seen as the tale of the greatest crisis in Leggatt's life, reveals a linking of details with archetypal patterns seen in many classic narratives of men and the sea. It is a critical commonplace that the sea represents the unconscious, primordial elements in man's mind, that it is the great mother of life, and so forth; some such associations may have been in Conrad's thoughts. But the presence here of the "night journey" theme reminds one especially of famous sea-tales in which the theme is prominent. The Ancient Mariner comes at once to mind, and a comparison of "The Secret Sharer" with The Ancient Mariner, as analyzed in Maud Bodkin's pioneer work on poetic archetypes, is particularly illuminating. In both an untried innocent, held by a mysterious attraction or bond, receives instruction from one who has sinned, been cast out, and is a wanderer. The vicarious experience of sin and its consequences has a powerful effect, and the hearer grows in wisdom. Many discrepancies are apparent; yet if the two narratives are viewed with reference to the rebirth archetype, the discrepancies are bridged and the "plots" are seen to be essentially similar both in general and in detail.

Miss Bodkin presents the essence of the rebirth-pattern as follows:

Within the image-sequence examined the pattern appears of a movement, downward, or inward toward the earth's centre, or a cessation of movement—a physical change which … also appears as a transition toward severed relation with the outer world, and, it may be, toward disintegration and death. This element of the pattern is balanced by a movement upward and outward—an expansion or outburst of activity, a transition toward redintegration and life-renewal [Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, 1948].

This pattern clearly parallels Leggatt's abandonment of society—the Sephora and the order of life it represents—his descent into the sea (darkness, oblivion, death), his passivity and inertness in the cabin, and his final burst of activity and entrance into a new order of existence—wandering over the earth. Leggatt's experience resembles even more closely the account of a dream which Miss Bodkin associates with her pattern: a man dives from a crowded steamer; the water becomes warmer as he descends (the tropic sea of "The Secret Sharer," whose temperature has something to do with Leggatt's preservation); he ascends and finds at the surface a little boat which saves him.

Miss Bodkin stresses two other elements in the archetypal pattern of The Ancient Mariner: the quickening of the wind, which she equates with new life or artistic inspiration, and the figure of the man who expiates a crime by wandering endlessly—Cain, The Wandering Jew, the Mariner. Leggatt sees himself as Cain on several occasions and he knows well that he is forever doomed to wander, an outcast from society. Likewise, Leggatt has the lesson of his crime to teach. And his arrival on the ship is followed by an end to the dead calm that has prevailed. Activity begins, the wind rises, and the ship proceeds on her way.

The problem of relating Leggatt's crime to the Ancient Mariner's is more difficult, but not insoluble, for we know that Conrad went out of his way to mitigate Leggatt's action as much as possible. Guerard, who remarks that Leggatt is "outcast and more primitive … a rather dubious hero," says elsewhere:

No symbol was ever less abstract than the poignant Leggatt, doomed to a life of wandering for the slight defect of a manly temperament,

thus emphasizing the disproportion between crime and punishment, as in The Ancient Mariner, where it is thought to point up the symbolic nature of the Mariner's sin. Leggatt is sure that society will inevitably condemn him, that it cannot properly judge him, and that he must escape from society if he wishes to survive. He does not repent his crime, though he deplores it; he excuses himself on a number of grounds—that he saved the Sephora, that the murdered man was utterly worthless, that the attack occurred in a fit of passion under great stress. Nor does the captain do his duty and clap him in irons or turn him over to the captain of the Sephora—a curious sort of behavior if he truly condemns Leggatt, or if Conrad does, as Guerard would indicate.

Moreover, if we compare Leggatt with the Cutty Sark's mate Sydney Smith, on whom Conrad based his character, we find a number of significant changes. We cannot determine precisely what Conrad knew of the events on the Cutty Sark; he mentions only that the story had been common among merchant seamen for years, and he is uncertain about the date. (Probably, however, he got the detail of the captain's white hat from remembering that the owner of the Cutty Sark habitually wore such a hat.) But if we assume that Conrad was fairly well acquainted with the story, we can find much of interest in the differences between "The Secret Sharer" and its source. Smith did not have Leggatt's calm confidence; there was no notion that he was a superior being—he was a good officer, and that was all. Some gave him a bad character, and he was said to be too ready for a fight. An insolent seaman, against whom Smith had a long—standing grudge, clumsily let go a rope and threatened Smith with a capstan bar when Smith started after him to punish him—hardly provocation to murder or manslaughter for a competent officer surrounded by subordinates.

Conrad altered details with interesting effect. Smith was smuggled aboard a nearby ship by his own captain (who committed suicide by jumping overboard later on the voyage); and while a search for Smith was made, the crew of the Cutty Sark was not allowed aboard the ship concealing him. Moreover, the mate did not swim from one ship to the other, although later tall stories sometimes credited him with a heroic feat of long-distance swimming. And the symbolic and literal importance to Conrad's story of the "proud swimmer's" astonishing powers in the water can hardly be overemphasized.

We cannot explain Conrad's modification of these facts unless we suppose that in some sense he approved of the conduct he had assigned to Leggatt and wished to mitigate his guilt while retaining the artistically useful parts of the original account. One doubts whether Conrad or his fictional captain could have exonerated the real Sydney Smith. Thus Leggatt is like the Ancient Mariner in that his punishment—being cast out to wander forever—is disproportionate to his crime, though the disproportion is admittedly less.

Furthermore, one remembers the universal condemnation which the Mariner receives from his shipmates (suggesting the figure of Jonah, a classic example of the rebirth archetype); he who is to be reborn is first rejected. Leggatt is likewise an outcast on the Sephora. Its captain regards him with fear and abhorrence, and at one point he says, "I wonder that they didn't fling me overboard." Thus Conrad emphasizes Leggatt's role as outcast, making it clear that his position in "society" is quite hopeless—his pleas to be allowed to escape are refused, unlike the friendly and criminal assistance given to his prototype. Leggatt's only alternatives are certain death imposed by law or a voluntary flight to death and oblivion. His preservation, if it is hardly supernatural, is brought about by a combination of circumstances so unusual as to verge on the miraculous.

The unnamed captain's importance to "The Secret Sharer" as narrator overshadows Leggatt's importance to it as part of the source material; but since the captain may have been made up of whole cloth and Leggatt was not, our viewpoint as readers necessarily differs from Conrad's as writer. Conrad has included many significant details about Leggatt, his appearance, his actions, which the captain (and we) pass over in favor of more important matters. They are in the story, nevertheless, and contribute to Conrad's intended effect. They include statements, comparisons, and situations, and the symbolic pattern they form might be called the "secondary description" of Leggatt—remarks about him other than the more obvious ones such as his remarkable identification with the captain. The elements of this pattern are images—images of conception, gestation, and birth. Let us first consider Leggatt's journey from this point of view.

Like the male element in procreation, Leggatt is cut off from his source, and faces destruction unless the one chance in a million happens—as it does. He is saved by blind chance, by the presence of the ship, the trailing ladder, and the captain's being on deck alone—though again, like the male element toward the female, he is attracted by the ship and makes for it on a vague impulse. But the captain (who in this context would play the role of the female element or act as its symbol) is actually responsible for all these saving factors. Now Leggatt goes into a fetuslike state—his passive crouching in the dark cabin, completely helpless, protected and nourished by the captain, without movement or responsibility. At length, with regret and hesitation on both his part and the captain's, he escapes, as does the fetus, from his imprisonment into liberty, but also into danger and responsibility for himself. The whole experience, culminating in the perilous feat of seamanship involved in Leggatt's departure, like the agony of birth, has given the captain a new maturity and added a new dimension to his character.

This interpretation of the story not only fits the facts, but is borne out by a number of relevant statements. Some of these are conditioned by the physical facts of the shipboard setting; others are completely gratuitous, and therefore of more significance. But even of the necessary passages one might ask why these details should be spelled out; why might Conrad not just as well have omitted them?

According to this interpretation, the captain and the ship would play the feminine role. And the captain early displays himself as not merely hesitant, which is only natural in his first command, but singularly passive and anxious to avoid trials and difficulties—a "feminine" attitude, as our civilization regards it. In contrast to this passivity, one of the first impressions we have of Leggatt is that "the voice was calm and resolute," and we hear of his thoroughly aggressive and vigorous (or "masculine") conduct in his escape. Appropriately to his role of fetus, however, he is naked, and the captain must clothe him and lead him to shelter, where he seems almost instinctively to choose the long and concealed part of the L-shaped cabin; the captain finds him there on returning. The idea of Leggatt as fetus is reinforced by several detailed descriptions of his immobility and his posture.

I … saw the naked man from the sea sitting on the main-hatch, glimmering white in the darkness his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

I saw him far back there, sitting rigidly on the low stool, his bare feet together, his arms folded, his head hanging on his breast—and perfectly still.

[While telling his story] he did not stir a limb.

He reclined on the floor, his legs bent, his head sustained on one elbow.

Having been established in the cabin and having told his story, the "amazing swimmer" is suddenly so exhausted as to need help in climbing into the (recessed) bed; and the captain, after assisting him, is "extremely tired in a peculiarly intimate way." This curious wording, at such a point in the story, suggests allusion to post-coital or post-parturient lassitude.

It seems impossible to get food to Leggatt from outside—although Conrad might well have surmounted this difficulty—and all of his nourishment except for the captain's morning coffee comes from within the cabin, and from the captain's own private stock—"all sorts of abominable sham delicacies out of tins." At this point we have an amplification of the womb-imagery: the food Leggatt consumes is not a man's food, but a soft, prepared diet which has its source in the cabin, his refuge and prison.

The identification of Leggatt with the captain, and the inevitability of their meeting, are significant, though less importantly, in this interpretation. The idea—commonplace in all cultures—of the physical and mental bonds linking the mother and the child she carries is easily connected with the preternatural sympathy of the captain and Leggatt.

When the time for Leggatt's release comes, the captain is reluctant, and even Leggatt falters briefly, but they realize that the "birth" is necessary and inevitable; it cannot be delayed beyond a certain point. The captain says reflectively that he quickly realized that his hesitation to part with Leggatt "had been mere sham sentiment, a sort of cowardice." Leggatt has a moment of panic when the captain is guiding him toward his place of escape; he worms his way through a porthole, and he uses a rope's end to lower himself into the water. To see a suggestion of the birth canal and the umbilical cord here may seem fanciful, but the actual need of the rope is questionable; at a moment of such great tension on deck the crew would hardly hear or give attention to a splash over the side.

Leggatt is given a chance to live twice; his old life is wiped out, and after a symbolic conception and gestation he is liberated from the womb of the ship and born to a new life; again he must undergo the penalties of human existence.

[He] had lowered himself into the water to take his punishment; a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny.

The closing lines of the story are concerned not with the captain-narrator, but with the release and "baptism" of the reborn Leggatt. The captain, having been the agent of this symbolic birth, has received fulfilment, a new depth of character, new confidence, knowledge of a new kind, and is now secure in his ability to cope with the problems of maturity.

Granted that the rebirth archetype and the imagery of birth are present in "The Secret Sharer," are they intrinsically significant to its total effect as a work of art? Do they exist organically, or do they merely crop up now and again in a confused and fragmentary manner? If we compare "The Secret Sharer" to The Ancient Mariner or to the Book of Jonah, we at once observe a difference in the order of events. It is this different order, and certain technical elements of story-telling which inevitably claim the reader's primary attention, that so obscure the pattern. In the "classical" pattern, the sinner commits his crime, is reprehended and cast out, makes his descent toward death, repents, rises and is reborn, wanders to expiate his crime, and teaches others. But in Conrad's story this order has been modified by the grafting on of the captain and his role. He is at once the agent of the rebirth and the man who learns from the sinner; thus paradoxically the agent of salvation is the innocent (as with Parsifal), and the redeemed pays for his salvation by instructing his savior.

Both profit simultaneously. The captain, by his intuitive understanding and material help in a hostile society, has given Leggatt courage and the incentive toward a new life (Leggatt himself is decisive about escaping), and Leggatt, by being at once a model of courage and a symbol of the potentialities of evil, has expanded and enriched the captain's character and self-knowledge. The captain now feels that he must pay his mentor—"It was now a matter of conscience to shave the land as close as possible"—and what better payment than by having fostered him in helplessness and by engineering his rebirth into a new life?

The problem of repentance is a more difficult one. How can Leggatt properly teach before he has repented? Yet the machinery for repentance has been set in motion by Leggatt's acceptance of the inevitability of punishment and his determination to suffer it, perhaps to atone—one might adduce as a parallel the situation in Lord Jim. Furthermore, the nature of the "lesson" must be considered. If the teachings of the Mariner and of Jonah's experience may be simplified to injunctions against hate, pride, and impiety, then Leggatt has fulfilled his function as teacher by making the captain recognize his own evil potentialities, as is hinted when he uses violence on the mate. If we decide that Leggatt is simply unconscious of guilt, or refuses to admit it, then we may question whether conscious repentance must be included in the basic pattern of death to one life and rebirth to and integration with another.

The rebirth archetype is demonstrably present in "The Secret Sharer," though masked by telescoping and realignment of its elements. That it is so obscured as to be almost unrecognizable is due also to more concrete factors in the story. Conrad was not one to present the bare bones of his fable, and the reader is so gripped by the dramatic details of the surface narrative that only by close study can he become aware of their rich background of symbol and image. The dramatic arrival of Leggatt, his dangerous concealment, the continual narrow squeaks with the steward, the officers, and the Sephora's captain, the nerve-wracking approach to Koh-ring, force attention away from the line-by-line detail of the story. The reader focuses on the captain, strained to the breaking point by constant fear, watchfulness, and the need for clever improvising. But even the casual reader must be struck by Conrad's final image—the proud, confident Leggatt, triumphantly quitting the scene.

Conrad has written a double narrative of rebirth and initiation, by both direct and indirect means. To see the captain as a mere initiate and Leggatt as a mere "lower self" is to find inconsistent presentation and twisted symbolism. The rebirth pattern fills out the seeming gaps in characterization, symbol, and moral process. The characters meet and interact; each performs a vital service to the other, which only he can perform; each is learner, teacher, protector; and each, after a violent wrenching apart, in which both prove their new maturity, goes on his way with confidence in himself and the future. Conrad did not, I think, intend the story to cover a vast moral area, but rather to be a complex dramatization of a particular experience which comes to many—the profound modification of character, amounting almost to a new life, which may come through an accidental, brief, but profoundly important association with a stranger. The significance of such an encounter is vigorously underscored if it is labeled a true rebirth, and Conrad seems unconsciously to have planted such an implication beneath the surface of "The Secret Sharer."