more unsavory sides of his nature. Thus, Leggatt, who shares the middle-class background, naval training, morals, and assumptions of the young captain, forces the captain to admit that he, too, is a potential murderer and therefore less than the perfect hero that he originally hoped to be. In other words, Leggatt and the captain are alter egos, dark and light sides of the one self. In fact, the impression that the two of them together form a single complete person, both good and evil, is reinforced by the fact that only one of them has a name.

Conrad’s style is also very rich in pictorial description. He masterfully uses setting to suggest the possibilities and meanings of human action: Thus, the water, like the green young captain, at the beginning of the story is remarkably calm. Similarly, the life-threatening gale during which Leggatt commits the murder suggests the psychological and moral turbulence of that episode in his life.

In addition, Conrad’s narration emphasizes the larger moral and social issues that give dimension to what otherwise would be merely a fine tale of adventure and suspense. Accordingly, as the protagonist is assured of Leggatt’s successful escape, he expresses satisfaction that “the secret sharer of my cabin and of my thoughts, as though he were my second self, had lowered himself into the water to take his punishment: a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny.”

Finally, Conrad suggests to the reader the magnitude and the justice of the young captain’s decision by having him narrate this tale of his youth at a much later period of his life. Thus, his story gains distance and dimension.

Life on the High Seas
Many of Conrad's works, such as "The Secret Sharer," drew inspiration from his experiences as a seaman. In 1890, Conrad ventured to the Congo for work. Prior to this period, Europe had largely overlooked Africa. However, the late 1800s saw a surge in European interest in the continent, leading to rapid colonization and significant transformations. During the 1870s, intense competition emerged among Belgium, Germany, the United States, and established colonial powers like Great Britain, as they sought to expand their empires. This scramble for dominance in Africa ignited passionate debates about relationships with the continent's indigenous people. Fueled by the abolitionist movements of the 1800s, Europeans increasingly questioned the differences, if any, between African slaves and themselves. Conrad aligned with a viewpoint common in Great Britain, which criticized Belgium's King Leopold for exploiting Africa's wealth. In contrast, many Britons believed they were aiding the natives by introducing more "civilized" customs in place of what they viewed as savage practices. The real-life atrocities in the African Congo had a profound impact on Conrad's work.

Point of View
The captain serves as the narrator in "The Secret Sharer." In typical Conrad fashion, the narrative centers on the captain's introspection of past events to gain a deeper understanding of himself. Given the story's thematic exploration of identity and self-awareness, the narrator is often considered unreliable. His preoccupations can cloud his perception, making his viewpoint subjective and biased. The captain remains unnamed throughout the narrative, symbolizing the universal journey of self-discovery each individual undergoes.

Style and Structure
Conrad's writing style appears straightforward, with the plot focusing on only a few key events. However, the underlying meaning is intricate and open to interpretation. While the surface narrative involves a murder, an escaped sailor, and the dynamic between two men who seem to reflect each other, it ultimately delves into one man's quest for self-discovery. The exact nature of the relationship between Leggatt and the captain is left ambiguous, perhaps suggesting that the journey to understanding one's true self is never fully complete. Although the narrator seems to recount a simple tale in a direct manner, it masks a complex path to self-awareness. The structure of "The Secret Sharer" mirrors its thematic essence, presenting the captain's recollections of events from years past, interwoven with Leggatt's story, who acts as a reflection of the captain himself.

Conrad employs straightforward narrative techniques, rich imagery, and potent symbolism in this story. The narrator recounts the unusual events of his first command, detailing the initial days and his motivation for moving the ship as its captain for the first time. In doing so, he meticulously describes the ship's physical surroundings and the East, using highly descriptive language that not only identifies the physical objects and environment but also evokes an emotional response to them.

The frequent repetition of phrases like "alone," "a stranger," "the only stranger on board," and "alone on deck" mirrors the captain's physical isolation and his intellectual and emotional sense of being an outsider among a crew that has been together for eighteen months. The captain, much like the ship, is at the beginning of a lengthy journey. However, his journey is internal, shared only with the secret sharer of his cabin and thoughts. The ship's voyage is both literal and symbolic, and it can only truly begin safely in both respects once Leggatt leaves a symbolic marker, the hat the captain lent him, which serves as the only means for the captain to gauge the ship's movement.

While working on his third political novel, Under Western Eyes (1911), Conrad revisited his seafaring days in the East and his first command as Captain of the Otego to craft his most compelling short story, "The Secret Sharer." This story, along with his earlier masterpiece, "The Lagoon" (1898), remains among his most widely read works. The story's social themes—such as the consequences of taking a life, addressing social imbalances, and maintaining order in the structured world of merchant mariners—are secondary to the personal concerns of the captain-narrator and Leggatt, the secret sharer of his thoughts and life. The social issues that might typically command significant attention are overshadowed by the Captain's moral journey. It seems that his intense focus on accurately depicting life in Tsarist Russia and the experiences of emigres in Geneva in Under Western Eyes led him to seek relief by returning to his own past and illustrating a personal awakening. In this sense, the story can be viewed as a commentary on Under Western Eyes, where humanity prevails over social issues, resulting in freedom rather than disaster.

• 1900s: Authors like Conrad and Henry James craft stylized narratives that focus on introspective and highly self-aware, though often unreliable, narrators.

  1990s: This tradition continues with writers such as V. S. Naipaul, frequently compared to Conrad. Naipaul is recognized for his psychological and social realism.

• 1900s: The science of psychology emerges in the late 1800s, with Sigmund Freud popularizing the concept of the unconscious mind and psychoanalysis. Human behavior is believed to arise from unconscious thoughts and conflicts.

  1990s: Psychology is now an established field, although Freud's theories are largely deemed unscientific. Contemporary theories aim to explain human behavior through organic and physical causes.

• 1900s: Life at sea is perilous but highly romanticized as a chance for adventure for working-class men.

  1990s: The allure of a seafaring life has mostly faded with the rise of affordable air travel and luxury cruises accessible to many.

This story draws from numerous literary sources, many of which can be found in Conrad's own works, with the closest example being Under Western Eyes. The theme of the double, or doppelganger, is a common element in Romantic literature of the nineteenth century. This motif appears in a variety of works, including Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1851), Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886).

Lord Jim (1900), a significant work from Conrad's early career, was released at the end of the nineteenth century, setting the stage for his most acclaimed works in the twentieth century. This novel introduced Marlow, Conrad's well-known narrator and alter-ego, and showcased his experimentation with chronology and narrative structure. The story, much like its central symbol, the ring, is intricately plotted to come full circle. Conrad's initial novels, Almayer's Folly (1895) and An Outcast of the Islands (1896), noteworthy in their own right, share a tradition of exoticism. These works contributed to Conrad's later success in portraying men under stress, foreigners in opulent yet decaying environments, and individuals on paths to their own ruin.

The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (1897), Conrad's first novel set on a ship, explores the crew's moral dilemmas regarding behavior, survival during a vividly described storm at sea, and the interpretation of evil in Donkin versus the genuine but hidden claims of James Wait. Singleton's sense of duty and practical approach foreshadow characters like Captain MacWhirr in "Typhoon" (1903) and the obtuse Captain Mitchell in Nostromo (1904).

In Conrad's later period, starting with the publication of "The Secret Sharer" and Chance (1913), he released Victory (1915) and The Shadow-Line (1917), which were well-received by the public. Victory examines evil through characters like Mr. Jones, Martin Ricardo, and Pedro; idealism and isolationism through Heyst; and features Lena, an idealized woman whose rescue leads Heyst out of detachment and ultimately to his demise. This novel, while ambitious, is uneven in execution and excessive in its depiction of passion and moral and social evils. In contrast, The Shadow-Line, Conrad's artistic triumph of his later period, revisits themes from "The Secret Sharer" and, in a negative sense, Lord Jim—the moral initiation and test that everyone must undergo to transition from youth or innocence to maturity or experience.

• "The Secret Sharer" was turned into a film by Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corp. in 1973.
• The film Face to Face adapts two short stories, "The Secret Sharer" and Stephen Crane's "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky." Released in 1952, the movie features James Mason, Gene Lockhart, Michael Pate, Albert Sharpe, Sean McClory, and Alec Harford.

Sources
Trilling, Lionel. The Experience of Literature. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

Further Reading
Baines, Jocelyn. Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography. McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1960. Baines offers an extensive analysis of all of Conrad's writings.

Dowden, Wilfred S. Joseph Conrad: The Imaged Style. Vanderbilt University Press, 1970. Dowden investigates how Conrad's style varies across his major works.

Gillon, Adam. Joseph Conrad: Rite of Passage. Twayne Publishers, 1982, pp. 153-159. This book includes guides for each of Conrad's significant works.

Graver, Lawrence. Conrad's Short Fiction. University of California Press, 1969. Graver studies all of Conrad's short stories and asserts that "The Secret Sharer" is a "widely acclaimed … psychological masterpiece and the subject of more fanciful interpretations than any of Conrad's other stories."

Lothe, Jakob. "'The Secret Sharer': Economical Personal Narrative." In Conrad's Narrative Method. Clarendon Press, 1989, pp. 57-71. This chapter provides a helpful introduction to Conrad's life and work, along with a meticulously argued analysis of "The Secret Sharer."