The Legacy of the Secret Sharer

Conrad's The Secret Sharer has received its share-perhaps, indeed, more than its share-of explications and commentaries. Almost without exception, however, criticism has concentrated upon the ethical and metaphysical dilemmas faced by Leggatt and the unnamed captain who narrates the story, overlooking the related question of how the story works, not what it means. This short essay will attempt, by a general analysis of the nautical background of the story and a close reading of its puzzling conclusion, to call attention to this often ignored aspect of Conrad's art and to suggest another perspective for interpretation of his writing. It is important to recall one fact about Conrad's life which, though known, is not usually assigned primary importance in interpreting his art: the fact that for better than fifteen years he spent his life at sea, and for many of those was in command of merchant vessels. That the colorful and often bizarre life he saw in his years at sea forms the anecdotal basis for his fiction has long been recognized; but that to this anecdotal basis he brings the perspective of many years of successful command has not been sufficiently emphasized.' As a result, the pervasive image of "the sea" in Conrad's writing is often interpreted as though it stands rather straightforwardly in contrast to "the land," and speculation about the meaning of Conrad's fiction has often assumed this implied polarity as basic to the symbolic structure of his writing. Without question, the sea and the land often do stand as implied opposites in Conrad's work; yet one wonders whether this polarity is so basic to his art as it is, say, to Melville's, and whether an interpretation based entirely upon it does not betray something of a landsman's expectations toward the significance of Conrad's symbolism. It might be noted in this context that Melville himself did not have Conrad's depth of experience with the sea, and that in addition his attitude toward his nautical material is more bookish and habitually more second-hand than Conrad's.2 In addition to using it as a foil for the land, Conrad also visualizes the sea as a place of testing, and his plots therefore often revolve around problems of command decision. Moreover, as in many other forms of adventure romance, Conrad's discussion of moral or ethical superiority is often presented in terms of the metaphor of competence in action; in his sea