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Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad

Summary
An unnamed captain, reflecting on an experience that happened years ago, tells his readers of his
first real command - when he was appointed to take a ship home to England, when the crisis of
imitation into knowledge of his ship and his crew was complicated by an unforeseen partnership
with an escaped criminal. The episode begins in the Gulf of Siam, just off the coast of Cambodia.

As a sailing ship awaits a favorable wind, darkness falls, and the captain surprises the crew by
taking the anchor watch himself. As he strolls the silent deck in his sleeping-suit, his serene
reverie is broken by his discovery that the rope side-ladder has not been hauled in. The captain is
astonished to find that a naked swimmer is floating at the end of the ladder. In the quiet of the
sleeping ship, the two talk and the man, named Leggatt, elects to come on board. The captain,
sensing "a mysterious communication" has been established between them, provides his
intuitively perceived "double" with an identical sleeping-suit.
As the dialogue continues, the captain is startled to learn that Leggatt, a young chief mate, has
killed a man at sea and has been held prisoner for weeks aboard the Sephora. As Leggatt relates
the particulars of the homicide, the captain finds that the fugitive appeals to him "as if our
experiences has been identical as our clothes." Leggatt tells how a seaman panicked during the
fury of a storm as they were trying to set a reefed foresail, how he fought the man - and later,
when the storm subsided, the seaman was dead and Leggatt was charged with his murder. As the
captain listens to the account, his identification with Leggatt deepens "I saw it all going on as
though I were myself inside that other sleeping-suit." He takes Leggatt to his stateroom, and the
grimly comic game of hosting his "secret sharer" begins.

Part 2 of the tale opens with a visit from Captain Archbold, skipper of the Sephora, who is
searching for his fugitive first officer. The narrator later will state that "I could not, I think have
met him by a direct lie" - and for psychological (not moral) reasons." But the narrator goes
beyond deceptive actions to protect his partner with saving lies. Although Captain Archbold
admits that Leggatt's reefed sail saved his ship in the storm, this self-righteous guardian of law
and order is determined to give his mate up to the shore authorities. Leggatt's protector goes
through the successful charade of showing his suspicious visitor over the ship, and at last
Archbold leaves empty-handed.
The ship makes its way down the east side of the Gulf of Siam and at last, among some islands
off Cambodia, the captain agrees to help Leggatt swim to freedom. To the surprise of the crew,
the captain tacks the ship and sails in dangerously close to the shore. He smuggles Leggatt into
the sail locker, and just before they shake hands and part, he places his hat on his "other self."

By now the crewmen are watching in awed silence as the ship moves toward the towering
blackness of Koh-ring. The captain, a stranger to his ship, finds it impossible to tell whether she
is moving safely away from disaster until in the gathering darkness he detects, floating near the
ship's side, the hat he had given to Leggatt. This "saving mark" confirms that the ship is sailing
out of danger. With the secret stranger gone, the captain is left alone with his ship at last,
enjoying "the perfect communion of a seaman with his first command." He walks to the taffrail
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and catches a final evanescent glimpse' of the white floppy hat, left behind to mark the spot
where the captain's "secret sharer," his "second self," had "lowered himself into the water to take
his punishment; a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny."

Secret Sharer Character List

Nameless Captain
The narrator of the story, this is a young man who only a fortnight before the story begins
receives his first command of a ship. Because he has been on the ship only two weeks, at the
beginning of the novel he feels like he is not only a "stranger to the ship" but also a "stranger to
himself." Deeply introspective, he is one of only two characters in the book that is fully exposed
throughout Conrad's story and the story revolves around his personal inadequacies and the
resolution of those same inadequacies. Once he rescues Leggatt, an escaped criminal, he feels a
deep bond with the man, like he is his "secret self," hence the title of the book. By hiding him
and assisting him to escape, the captain not only regains control of his own life, but he
overcomes his personal inadequacies, wins the respect of his crew, and most importantly, comes
to know himself much better.
Leggatt
An escaped criminal, it is his presence on the nameless ship that brings crisis to the captain and
his ship. Originally, a first mate on the nearby Sephora, during a storm Leggatt, in a just rage,
murdered an inferior, but in the process, saved the ship. Unappreciated, he is locked up for weeks
before he escapes the ship and swims to nearby ship on which the captain resides. Like the
captain, he is a young man and went to the same boy's prep school as his "secret self." While
onboard the ship, Leggatt's presence is not revealed to anyone but the cabin, because the man
hides in the captain's quarters, particularly in his bathroom, wearing a gray sleeping suit that is
identical to the captain. Coincidently, the man is the same size and build as the captain, as well
as having the same color of hair. After four days on the ship, Leggatt realizes that he cannot go
back to society (he is willing to accept the consequences of his actions) and so, with the captain
help, he is smuggled off the ship, never to be heard of again.
Captain Archbold
The captain of the Sephora, many critics believe that he is the true villain of The Secret Sharer.
With red whiskers, he is nervous and scared of all that is on his ship, including the first mate,
Leggatt, and even his wife. Harsh and unwilling to compromise or admit that he is wrong
regarding his stance towards Leggatt, he is a foil to both the captain and Leggatt as someone who
is strictly law obeying. During his conversation with the captain, he gives off an air of fussy
distraction, and in his most authoritative act sticks out his tongue to imitate the death mask of
Leggatt's victim. Archbold's solemnity is contrasted with the playfulness of the captain, who
fakes being deaf and happily leads his guest on a futile search of the ship.
The Chief Mate
Throughout the narrative, the captain refers to this character as "terrible whiskers," "frightful
whiskers," and "terrific whiskers." The captain considers every occurrence on the ship, trying to
figure out they why and how of things. Most identifiable, he is concerned with why a scorpion
chose his cabin to drown in an inkwell.
The Second Mate
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The only man on the ship who is younger than the captain, he is extremely critical and looks
down on the captain.
The Steward
His main function is plot, as the character who comes in closest contact with the captain, he is
most likely to discover the secret of Leggatt. Primarily because of this function, the captain
becomes rude and surly towards him throughout the course of the narrative.

Secret Sharer Themes

The Captain's White Floppy Hat
The symbol of the white hat, at the end of the book, is a symbol of good, of the captain's pity and
mercy for "his other self." The item also represents the physical parting of the captain
and Leggatt, who have throughout the story fused into one (even the grammar eventually refers
to Leggatt and the captain as one person, and the name Leggatt is used very infrequently
throughout the book). The hat was the pinnacle of this language and the captain's identification
with his secret self: when he justifies giving the hat to Leggatt he says "I saw myself wandering
barefooted, bareheaded, the sun beating on my dark poll. I snatched off my floppy had and tried
hurriedly in the dark to ram it on my other self." That he leaves the hat is significant, because it
symbolizes the parting between the two. More significantly, and ironically, however, the hat
literally points the way to the Captain's successful maneuvering of his ship to a safe place, an act
that insures his acceptance and the salvation of himself, his ship, and all those aboard the ship.
The implication, then, could be that by pitying our "dark selves," by accepting and helping them
to grow, we help ourselves, forgive ourselves, and enable ourselves to escape their reaches.
Sleeping Suits
These suits, which both the captain and the "secret self" wear, represent the place where the
"dark self" and the self-communicate. Their color, gray, further emphasizes the gray area where
the conscious and the subconscious meet. Furthermore, these symbolic pieces of clothing are
important because they clothe the two different men identically. That they are associated with
sleeping and the night, adds to the dream-like effect of the captain's encounter with "the secret
self." The association with the night also emphasizes the "darker self" or the subconscious that
Leggatt represents.
Leggatt
Clearly, the person of Leggatt is central to the story, and extremely symbolic. In one reading of
"The Secret Sharer," Leggatt represents a lawless, subrational side of the self which may lie
dormant until some moment of moral stress, and then must somehow be encountered. Another
similar reading holds that Leggatt represents the subconscious that is buried deep within all. This
function is revealed to the reader through many ways. The first point that emphasizes this is
Leggatt's utter lack of rationality (contrary to the Captain's descriptions of him as intelligent' and
sane'). In his own element, the fishlike Leggatt loses even the appearance of rationality: "With a
gasp I saw revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid back immersed right up
to the neck in a greenish cadaverous glow . . . He was complete but for the head. A headless
corpse!" If Leggatt symbolically lacks a head, as this description and his name imply, then there
is little surprise in his finding the narrator's hat useless when at the end of the story he returns to
his native element. Also, the fact that he was a naked swimmer when he was discovered, is of
importance, because that symbolizes that he is stripped to his basic substance, in his native
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element, the water. However, because his color is "pale" and he is immersed in " a greenish
cadaverous glow," in Conrad's terms means that he is generally an evil person (the pale' and lack
of color), however, the light coming from him indicates the possibility of something good
evolving from him in the end, that is, the captain's maturation.

Scorpion
One of the important, but subtle, symbols within the first part of the story is the scorpion that the
chief mate finds in his cabin. In the story, the mysterious creature causes the mate much
speculation as why it chose his particular cabin and drowned itself in his inkwell. As the story
progresses, the same questions can be applied to Leggatt, as the scorpion in the mate's cabin and
Leggatt in the Captain's cabin are similar - they are dangerous, they come from places that are far
removed from the boat, and they hide in cabins. The scorpion, therefore, symbolizes the future
intrusion of Leggatt on the ship and within the captain's cabin. The mate's speculation concerning
the scorpion, however, can also be applied to Leggatt - it is not that he has chosen specifically
the captain, but he is a more universal symbol of the subconscious and "darker self" that plagues
everyone, everywhere.
Captain Archbold
Captain Archbold, as discussed in the character summaries, represents the law and the irony
between doing what is right and obey the law. His unwillingness to be flexible concerning the
extenuating circumstances around the murder that Leggatt commits shows the difference
between the law and doing what is right.
Nameless captain and ship
The nameless captain and ship is surprising in this story is surprising, given the fact that they are
the central figures on the book. They, therefore, are symbolic of the universality of the tale. The
captain is every man and the ship is the journey that every man must make. By leaving these key
elements of the story nameless, Conrad emphasizes that each of us has a dark side that we must
confront at some time on life's path.
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Secret Sharer Summary and Analysis of Part I

Summary

The story begins on a nameless ship, anchored at the mouth of the River Meinam in the Gulf of
Siam. The narrator, a nameless young captain who has only been in charge of the ship for a
fortnight, stands onboard his ship, gazing off the side of the vessel. On the left, the captain sees a
cluster of rocky islets and on his right, two clumps of tress mark the river's mouth and puffs of
smoke show the path of the tug ship that recently guided the ship down the river. The captain
watches, almost regretfully, as the tug ship leaves him alone on his ship in the middle of
complete silence, "an immense stillness." While he is alone on board, the captain sees another
ship in the distance, something that he is extremely surprised to encounter. The sun sets and the
captain descends to his quarters, along with his mates. While eating dinner, he mentions seeing
the ship off of the coast. The chief mate begins to speculate on how the boat came to be there, his
conclusion being that she was a ship from home lately arrived. The second mate, however,
interrupts and says that the ship's name is Sephora and she carries coal. He learned this
information from the tugboat skipper, when he came onboard the ship to deliver mail.
Throughout the whole conversation, the captain emphasizes to the reader that he was both " a
stranger to the ship" and "a stranger to myself."

As the crew begins to leave, the captain directs the chief mate to let all "hands turn in without
setting an anchor watch." Instead, because the men were tired and had been working hard, the
captain himself would take the anchor watch. While unusual and the men are surprised, they go
to bed leaving the captain alone with his thoughts. He is worried because he is on a "ship of
which I knew nothing, manned by men of whom I knew very little more." While he is smoking a
cigar, in his nightclothes, the captain realizes that a rope ladder is still hanging down one side of
the ship. Realizing that it is his fault because he told the men to abandon the watch, the captain
tries to reel the ladder in but is met with more resistance than he expected. Looking over the side
of the ship, he sees what he thinks is a headless corpse attached to the ladder. Frightened, he
looks further and realizes that the body is not dead, nor headless, and the captain yells at him,
"What's the matter?" The man answers, "Cramp" and then says, "no need to call anyone except
for the captain." The captain answers that the man is in luck, he is the captain of the ship and as
the man climbs aboard the ship he introduces himself as Leggatt and the captain leaves to
retrieve some clothes for the man.
As the man dresses, the captain observes that he is a young man, probably not more than 25
years old. Leggatt reveals that he was a mate on the Sephora but that he killed a man, although
he justifies that the man was very evil. Realizing that the are both Conway boys, Leggatt
confesses that his father is a parson and he could never stand trial for what he had done. As he
tells his story, the captain is surprised because the man "appealed to him as if our experiences
had been as identical as our clothes." Moreover, the captain "knew well enough also that my
double was no homicidal ruffian."

Although the captain did not ask for the details of the crime, Leggatt begins to recount his story.
On a dark and stormy night, while the men on board were setting a reefed foresail, a crazed
Leggatt "felled him like an ox." After a brutal struggle, Leggatt managed to strangle the man to
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death. Because of the murder, the captain relieved him as his duties of an officer, imprisoned him
in his cabin (for over six weeks) and was preparing to take him to trial when the ship landed.
Without any statement regarding his story, the captain merely tells the man that he should slip
down to his stateroom. After going to the stateroom, the captain calls for his second mate to take
over the watch. Entering his stateroom, the captain explains to the reader that his room was in the
shape of an L, the door being within the angle and opening into the short part of the letter.
Anyone opening the door had no view of the long part of the letter, the majority of the room, a
significant advantage given the "recent arrival."

Walking into his room, the captain, speaking extremely quietly, inquires on how the man came to
hang on the side ladder of his ship. Leggatt explains that about three weeks ago, he asked to
speak to the captain and kindly requested that he leave the door of his cabin unlocked when they
could see land, in order that he could make a break swimming for it. The captain, however,
refused, a man that was afraid of both the men on the ship and his second mate. The wife of the
captain is also onboard the Sephora. The night before, however, the steward left the door open
after bringing him his supper. Leaving his room and walking on the deck, Leggatt through off his
shoes and dived overboard. Hearing the splash, the rest of the crew came running and tried to
search for him in the water but they were unable to find him. Seeing the light of the ship in the
distance, he swam desperately for it because the islets (where he originally landed and disposed
of his clothes), offered no escape, no water, and no food. On his last leg and about to drown, he
was surprised but extremely grateful to find the ladder down because he was not capable of
swimming as far as the rudder around the other side of the boat.

Warning the captain that he thinks the Sephora's captain will come to the ship and look for him,
the captain puts Leggatt into his own bed. Drifting into his own thoughts, focusing on his double,
the captain falls asleep and before he realizes it, the steward is knocking on his door bringing
him his morning coffee. The captain acts strangely, but the steward leaves without searching the
cabin. The captain proceeds to go above deck and orders the men to "Square the yards by lifts
and braces before the hands go to breakfast," his first real order while he has been aboard the
ship. After presiding over breakfast very harshly, the captain returned to his room and wakes up
his "secret self" and instructs him to vanish into the bathroom. While he is in the bathroom, the
captain instructs the steward to clean his room while he is having his bath. The steward follows
the orders and cleans the room while the captain bathes and Leggatt stands straight up, still in the
bathroom. After the steward leaves, the captain lets the second mate get a good look at the cabin
and then closes the door. He sits and his desk, "his secret self" in front of him, hidden from the
door, but they do not speak, as it is not safe during the daytime and the captain "could not have
stood the excitement of that queer sense of whispering to myself." At the conclusion of the
chapter, a voice yells, "there's a ship's boat coming our way, sir." The captain yells "All right.
Get the ladder over" and, hesitating, went on deck without saying a word to Leggatt.

Analysis

A major theme that Conrad explores in the Secret Sharer is the relationship between the land and
sea, elements that he also compares other places in his writing. On one hand, Conrad rejoices in
the great beauty, serenity, and immensity of the sea, compared with the squalor, anxiety, and
unrest of the land. Yet, from the land come the energies, some of them evil, which give meaning
to the climate of the sea. Geographical duality ultimately gives shape to the duality of the self.
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In this train of thought, "The Secret Sharer" begins with a beautiful view of the sea and shore,
and than progresses to other dualities, psychological and political, that the captain must both
experience and comprehend. In the first paragraph of the story, the captain looks at the Œflat
shore joined to the stable sea." It is significant that in the opening images the captain can
scarcely discern where one element begins and the other ends. He himself is at a faintly
discerned dividing line between immaturity and maturity; between landsman and seaman. A
duality also exists aboard ship, for our new captain, not yet at ease about his ship, or about
himself, prepares for his first cruise under the watchful eyes of a skeptical crew. His officers
were all accustomed to the ship and to each other; they knew their roles. The captain was a
stranger to the ship and a stranger to himself.

"The Secret Sharer" is also a story concerning the obstacles to be overcome in the process of
maturation, or in becoming "good enough" to those around here. For the captain, his
inadequacies concern his lack of confidence in his own capabilities, a fear of inadequacy, and a
fear of ultimate failure. Even before we meet his double, a motif that obviously addresses these
inadequacies, Conrad lays the scene, again emphasized by the important physical description that
begins the book. The captain sees, "two small clumps of tress, one on each side of the only fault
in the impeccable joint, marked the mouth of the River Meinam we had just leftŠand, far back on
the inland level, a larger and loftier mass, the grove surrounding the great Paknam pagoda, was
the only thing on which the eye could rest form the vain task of exploring the monotonous sweep
of the horizon" The insignificant twin clumps of tress observed by the captain suggest the dyadic
aspects of the captain's personality, which Conrad develops fully in the double motif. The
captain's youthful lack of confidence in himself and his abilities, and his fearsome awe of his
ship are presented explicitly and implicitly. The most obvious manifestation of his insecurity is
his decision to stand the anchor watch himself, a task not usually assumed by a chief mate, to say
nothing of a captain. It is of this feeling of inadequacy, this split between what he knew he
should become and what he feared he was, that the captain must rid himself. Having progressed
beyond this initial immature state, he would have attained the higher ground of self-knowledge,
symbolized by the "larger and loftier mass, the grove surrounding the great Paknam pagoda,"
standing on higher ground than that on which the "two insignificant clumps of trees stand," one
on each side of the only fault in the "impeccable joint" of land and sea.

One of the important, but subtle, symbols within this chapter is the scorpion that the chief mate
finds in his cabin. In the story, the mysterious creature causes the mate much speculation as why
it chose his particular cabin and drowned itself in his inkwell. As the story progresses, the same
questions can be applied to Leggatt, as the scorpion in the mate's cabin and Leggatt in the
Captain's cabin have one similar aspect in common - they are extremely dangerous.

The dramatic progression in the book, however, begins when Leggatt first comes aboard, a
progression which moves from the menace of invaded privacy in the captain's cabin, to the
menace of discovery of this dual self by the ship, then to the stress of possible discovery by
another captain, and finally, the menace of the unknown self as the captain exercises his newly
won command.

It is important to note that the captain does not consciously decide to conceal the fugitive - there
is no debate in the action that will cause him considerable grief on the ship. As soon as he sees
the stranger, he reflects later: "A mysterious communication was established already between us
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two‹in the fact of that silent, darkened tropical sea." Leggatt speaks of him as talking to him
quietly - "as if you had expected me." The closeness of this mysterious communication is
emphasized from the very beginning of their relationship, first beginning with their clothes.

Another interesting aspect of the narrative regards the fact that the reader, nor the captain, is not
concerned with the precise nature of Leggatt's offense, for there is no indication that the captain
feels any shadow of guilt specifically because the man he is hiding is a murderer. Leggatt is an
embodiment of his original feeling of being Œa stranger' to himself, of that fear that there are
parts of himself which he has not yet brought into the light of day and that these aspects of his
personality may interfere with Œthat ideal conception of one's own personality every man sets
up for himself secretly.' What disturbs him is that there is a secret sharer at all; for he brings to
light his own suspected insecurity.

Moreover, it is important that the man who helps a fugitive from the law is himself an officer of
the law, having just been appointed captain of a ship, his first command. The story, therefore,
also becomes one of the consequences and duties of class and authority. Why does the captain
conceal the criminal? Perhaps because the captain realizes that the crime that Leggatt committed
was a crime that in similar circumstances he himself might have committed. The murderer and
the captain had held identical jobs as mates on separate ships until a few weeks previous to
Leggatt's criminal act and the captain's promotion to his first command. The captain realizes that
instead of becoming a member of the ruling class on the high seas he easily might, like Leggatt,
have deviated into the class of the hunted outlaw. He therefore identifies himself with the
murderer rather than with the judges who would condemn Leggatt should he be brought before
them in a court of law.

There is, however, in Leggatt, a feeling of guilt, the knowledge that he has transgressed against
the code of society. He can speak of the man he has killed as one of the Œmiserable devil that
have no business to live at all,' but he is prepared to accept Œthe brand of Cain" business.' ŒI
was ready enough,' he says, Œto go off wandering on the face of the earth."

After the mysterious stranger comes on deck, it is significant that the captain fetches a suit of his
pajamas for the naked swimmer. Dressed, the two are doubles in appearance. They are identical
in height and weight, and have the same dark hair - they are even both Conway boys. The one
difference, however, is that Leggett has killed a man aboard his ship, the Sephora. He, therefore,
is a fugitive, but a resolute fugitive because he claims justice in his action. He tells the story of a
storm, of a command insolently disobeyed, and his righteous rage that resulted in the death of the
malcreant but in the saving of the ship. As the young skipper listens to Leggatt, he is convinced
of the absolute rightness of that action and knows that he would like to have done the same. The
fugitive seems his double in life crises as well; only he has already met his trial, has acted in
those matters that decide whether a man shall "turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one's
own personality every man sets up for himself secretly." Indeed, the idea of the double is firmly
implanted within the narrative itself - Leggatt is described as his Œdouble' or his Œother self'
more than twenty times in the course of the story.

Leggatt swum for the light, but even before he reached his destination he resolved to swim until
he sank rather than be downed by his bigoted and hostile superior officers aboard the Sephora.
There he was, like his double, a young officer newly aboard, hated because he had come in over
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men who considered themselves in line for the promotion; a stranger to the ship and to her
officers - but not to himself. The last quality is the thing that he will eventually convey to his
secret sharer.

The remainder of the first part of the story established the social and political tension of
concealing the double self from the ship's personnel. The routine of the steward must be charted;
the captain's cabin becomes a place of stealth and deception as the skipper hides his alter ego.
Orders for the command of the ship must be given, yet all the time, "the dual working of my
mind distracted me almost to the point of insanity. I was constantly watching myself, my secret
self, as dependent on my actions as my own personality."

In the first chapter, it is also important to note that in this story there are very few details or
characters that are not essential to the allegory that Joseph Conrad is attempting to paint. The
analysis of this chapter can be so long because every sentence is geared towards the major point
of the story, something that is far from this author's previous works.
One of the key literary elements of this story is also the universal quality of the message that
Joseph Conrad attempts to deliver. Having the ship, the captain, and everyone aboard that ship
remain nameless emphasizes the universality and applicability of the story. The captain can
represent every man, and the ship, every man's journey through life.

Summary and Analysis of Part II

Summary

The second part of the book begins with the captain of the Sephora, Captain Archbold, coming
aboard. The narrator describes the other skipper as having thin red whiskers, and being almost
afraid of what he was requesting. Refusing the captain's offer of liquor, he accepts water and tells
the captain "it's been tiring work - searching the islands around my ship." Politely and
inquisitively, the captain inquires why. The other skipper answers him, but in a muted voice and
in order for his double to hear every word, the captain of the nameless ship tells his visitor that
he is hard of hearing. After Captain Archbold recounts the details of the murder, the captain tries
to justify the action, claiming that maybe the sea killed the man. In response, Captain Archbold
sticks his tongue out at his host and claimed that if he had seen the sight, he would never forget it
as long as he lived. Trying to justify his doubles action, the captain volunteers "that reefed
foresail save you." While the opposing captain concedes this, he also claims that it was
not Leggatt's work but God's hand that helped him put the sail in the morning.
Trying once more, from a different angle, the captain volunteers that "you were very anxious to
give up your mate to the shore people, I believe?" Indeed, Captain Archbold claimed, he was, to
the law, after 37 virtuous years at sea he had some obligation. The captain then volunteers even
more information, that he was not responsible for engaging the murderer and he never did like
him. The captain then concedes that he must report a suicide, because there is no possible that
the man could have reached land.

From this point, Captain Archbold increased his questioning, pointing out that it was only
approximately a two mile swim to the captain's boat. At this point in the two men's conversation,
the captain takes Captain Archbold on a detailed search of the ship, staring with the bathroom
and including every room on board. Disappointed, the captain leaves the ship and as he is going
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down the same ladder that Laggard ascended he stops, questions again, but then returns to his
own ship. After he leaves, the mates tell the captain that they have heard of the horrid affair, it is
worse than things they hear happen on Yankee ships. With the conclusion of this conversation,
the captain realizes that he can confide in no one on his ship.

Before the captain can find out much more from the stranger, a mate comes to tell him that there
is enough wind for the ship to set sail. Excitedly, the captain rushes upstairs and launches the
boat. From there, during the sail there were certain scares on board. One day, the steward was
surprised to see the captain near the pantry because he was sure that he had just heard him in his
cabin. For the most part, the "double" stayed in the captain's bathroom, dressed in the gray
sleeping suit, for the majority of the day, because the two determined that this was the safest
place. Discovery, however, hung like "swords above their heads" at all times, the biggest threat
being the steward. One day, the steward went to the captain's room to hang up his coat in the
bathroom. The captain, naturally, is terrified of the steward's discovering the secret man in his
quarters but because Leggatt was able to duck far enough into the bath tub to escape detection.
After this close call, approximately the fourth day the man had been on board, the double tells
the captain that he must end this and he wishes to be marooned on the islands near the ship. At
first, the captain protests him leaving but realizes that this is merely selfish desire to have his
double there. In the end, he agrees but he argues that he should not leave until the night after
because he will be able to get closer to the land. After settling on this course of events, the
double proclaims that it is very nice that someone finally understands him.

At midnight, the captain turned the ship around and headed towards land, much to his mate's
surprise. As they get closer and closer to the rocky islands, the crew is surprised by the captain's
decision but the captain attributes it to trying to take advantage of the land breezes. Finding Koh-
ring, what the captain believes to be an inhabited island, he sets the ship to come as close to the
island as possible in order to give his double the best chance possible. The captain then orders
that the quarter-deck ports be opened, in order to eventually smuggle his secret self into a sail
locker, which communicates with the lobby of the boat. In the lobby, there is an opening that
connects directly with the quarter-deck and which is never closed in good weather. When the
ship is still, Leggatt will have ample opportunity to escape from the port using a rope to lower
himself into the water, thereby avoiding a splash.

After supper, the captain returns to his quarters nad pronounces it dark enough to begin the plan.
Exchanging their last whispers, the captain gives him most of the money he has onboard (only
keeping enough to buy fruit and vegetable for the crew from native boats in the Sunda Straits).
Telling the steward to retrieve hot water from the galley, the captain buys time for Leggatt to
sneak past the stairs and into the sail locker. As the double enters the sail locker, the captain
retired his floppy hat from his head and gave it to his other self. The crew is extremely worried
as the captain tries to get the ship as close as possible to land. As the captain is trying desperately
to keep his ship from sailing too close to the rocks, he seeks something to throw into the water to
see which way the ship is moving. Suddenly, he sees something white on the black water, his
floppy hat. As the narrator related "And I watched the hat - the expression of my sudden pity for
his mere flesh. It has been meant to save his homeless head from the dangers of the sun. And
no‹behold‹it was saving the ship, by serving me for a mark to help[ out the ignorance of my
strangeness." In the end, the captain saves the ship and steers he on the proper direction, and he
 11

watches his hat, something that marks the place that "a free man, a proud swimmer," begins
"striking out for a new destiny."

Analysis

At the beginning of Part II, the theme of duality is once again continued, as menaces continue to
plague the captain, his secret sharer, and the ship. The attack from within - the disabling
awareness of duality in the captain's cabin, the sanctum of command - is intensified by the
invasion from outside the ship. The skipper of the Sephora comes aboard in a suspicious and
doubting mood. In this role, he is the dramatic projection of the chief mate of the ship who "liked
to account to himself' for any departure from normal ship life. Such a quality menaces the not
only the status, but also the sanity, of the captain. Captain Archbold joins the hostile officers
aboard and prowls through the ship; even searching the cabin, in vain. His actions, however, are
not fruitless but serve to widen the area of stress. The entire ship is now aware of the situation - a
larger society has become involved. The third and most insidious menace invades the captain
when, after Captain Archbold has been shown off of the ship, the ship begins to move. The
awareness of the double in his cabin interferes with the commands he must give in order for the
ship to operate safely. His seaman's reflexes desert him and he is self-consciously aware that he
has no "feel" for the ship. His secretive habits in the cabin carry overtly to relationships with the
crew; he catches himself several times reaching up to the mate to whisper a command, to the
mate's utter astonishment.

The opening scene of Part II, in which the captain plays host to Archbold with Leggatt hiding a
few feet away, also further strengthens loyalties already established. Archbold, skittish and easily
out of temper, is a foil to Leggatt and to the captain as well. Throughout the interview, he gives
off an air of fussy distraction, and in his most authoritative act sticks out his tongue to imitate the
death mask of Leggatt's victim. Archbold's solemnity is contrasted with the playfulness of the
captain, who fakes being deaf and happily leads his guest on a futile search of the ship. For a
man quick to confess his dislocation, the captain is remarkably self-assured. In a revealing
exchange, he catches Archbold distorting his own action during the crisis, claiming more credit
than he was due. According the values of the captain, Archbold is clearly the villain of
"The Secret Sharer." Personally inadequate against the pressure of the storm, he refuses to admit
Leggatt's heroic role and retraces to an unthinking reliance on Providence. Instead of responding
flexibly to the exceptional circumstances of the murder, he becomes increasingly more rigid and
more mystical. Archbod's failure of imagination, his inability to see that the moment called for
charity not intransigence, testifies to the correctness and decency of the captain's response.
Clearly, the person of Leggatt is central to the story, and extremely symbolic. In one reading of
"The Secret Sharer," Leggatt represents a lawless, subrational side of the self which may lie
dormant until some moment of moral stress, and then must somehow be encountered. This is
revealed to the reader through many ways. The first point that emphasizes this is Leggatt's utter
lack of rationality (contrary to the Captain's descriptions of him as Œintelligent' and Œsane'). In
his own element, the fishlike Leggatt loses even the appearance of rationality: "With a gasp I saw
revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid back immersed right up to the neck
 12

in a greenish cadaverous glow . .. He was complete but for the head. A headless corpse!" If
Leggatt symbolically lacks a head, as this description and his name imply, then there is little
surprise in his finding the narrator's hat useless when at the end of the story he returns to his
native element.

The notion of subrationality is confirmed by other imagery throughout the short story - not only
is Leggatt "fish-like;" he is also like a terrier or its jungle counterpart ("I had him by the throat,'"
Leggatt tells the narrator, "'and went on shaking him like a rat'") and a "wild beast." The notion
of a regressive animalism, for example, is implied both in Leggatt's unflagging appetite and in
his instinctive alertness; "I had to shake him for a solid minute, but when at last he opened his
eyes it was in the full possession of his senses." His processes of decision are distinctly
subrational: "I just took it not my own hands and went away from him, boiling'"; and the narrator
formulates a significant distinction in his description of Leggatt's thinking out" his escape from
the Sephora: a stubborn if not a steadfast operation." Leggatt himself recognizes the impulsive
qualities of his motives: "I strolled out on the quarterdeck. I don't know that I meant to do
anything . . .Then a sudden temptation came over me. I kicked off my slippers and was in the
water before I had made up my mind fairly." When Leggatt finally makes his departure, he
returns to the two archetypal life sources standard in all of Conrad's fiction: the sea, and the heart
of darkness (Koh-ring, a "towering fragment of the everlasting night" among islands "unknown
to trade, to travel, almost to geography").

There are two or three details within the text that support the above reading of Leggatt as
subrational. Leggatt's language, as the narrator descries it, relates him to a deep primitive (such
as the finally inarticulate Kurtz in Heart of Darkness): "He told me the story roughly in brusque,
disconnected sentences." On his first appearance, Leggatt too, of course, is "mute." This
subrational and even subc-onceptual status explains Leggatt's resistance to the anxiety that grips
the narrator; since insanity is by definition a disruption of rationality, Leggatt cannot be
susceptible to it; there was "something unyielding in his character," the narrator reports, "there
was no agitation in his whisper." Leggatt is "sane" and "intelligent" - or appears so, to the
distracted narrator - only because the opposites of these terms have no meaning when applied to
him.
The subrational interpretation, however, is distinct from saying that Leggatt is merely a
"criminal" self and a predominantly negative influence on the captain, something that distorts
Leggatt's significance. He demonstrates, as noted above, the irrational or instinctive elements in
human nature but they can be a source of strength as well as weakness, good as well as evil.
Recognizing this ambiguity, the captain understands how "the same strung-up force which had
given twenty-four men a chance, at least, for their lives, had, in a sort of recoil, crushed an
unworthy mutinous existence." Leggatt's effect on the captain is similarly ambiguous, but
ultimately, probably more positive than negative.

In this reading, therefore, in the end, the "Secret Sharer" is a story of integration, rather than
conflict and repression. To "subdue" Leggatt would be a mistake; the narrator must instead fuse
Leggatt's subrational personality with his own rational and civilized one, to emerge as a
conceptually imperfect but effective moral agent. It is not that the Captain cannot be commander
of his ship until Leggatt has left it, but rather that until he has made his full and active practical
commitment to Leggatt - risked everything to guarantee Leggatt's freedom and survival, instead
of his repression - he cannot feel the self-assurance and practical force necessary to command
 13

either himself or his ship. In the conclusion of the story, therefore, the Captain fuses his dual
nature, and in so doing so makes the destructive part of himself serve his ideal ends.

The more common reading of Leggatt, however, is discussed and analyzed in part 1. This theory
holds that the presence of Leggatt is nightmarish not because he makes the captain aware of any
inadequacy or wrongness in his ideas and beliefs, but rather because the relationship between
them is itself an objective correlative so such knowledge. In "The Secret Sharer," unlike in Heart
of Darkness, the whole of the narrator's strangeness has been so completely embodied in the
person of Leggatt that it can seemingly be gotten rid of.

Leggatt can, in fact, be marooned on one of the islands that fringe the Gulf of Siam. But the
captain feels that he cannot do this easily, thus representing that he cannot be rid of Leggatt
easily. Although he knows that he may be endangering his ship by taking such a risk, he feels
that, as he says, "It was now a matter of conscience to have the land as close as possible."
Clearly, it is not physical considerations alone which determine this need; Leggatt can obviously
swim very well. It seems, rather, that the captain feels that to exorcise his other self he must ran
as close to disaster as possible, knowing all the time, as he says that "all my future, the only
future for which I was fit, would perhaps go irretrievably to pieces in any mishap to my first
command." Thus, finally the narrator and Leggatt are separated; even the hat which the captain
thrusts on the fugitive's head falls off in the water and acts as a mark by which he can gauge the
progress of the ship.

After the captain leaves the ship, but before Leggatt leaves the ship, the self-division within the
captain is significant, but not as significant as many critics write. The comic quality of this action
is also important to note. The adventures that throw the Captain into fits of nervous anxiety are
hardly sinister. He startles the steward who thought he had been below and then sends him
around the ship on incomprehensible errands. These actions, far from life and death, almost
remind one of a horror movie and not the dreaded actions that the narrator describes.

The symbol of the white hat at the end of the book is obviously extremely important and
powerful, as alluded to above. The hat itself is a symbol of good, of the captain's pity and mercy
for "his other self." The item also represents the physical parting of the two men, who have
throughout the story fused into one (even the grammar eventually refers to Leggatt and the
captain as one person, and the name Leggatt is used very infrequently throughout the book). The
hat was the pinnacle of this language and the captain's identification with his secret self: when he
justifies giving the hat to Leggatt he says "I saw myself wandering barefooted, bareheaded, the
sun beating on my dark poll. I snatched off my floppy had and tried hurriedly in the dark to ram
it on my other self." That he leaves the hat is significant, because it symbolizes the parting
between the two. More significantly, and ironically, however, the hat literally points the way to
the Captain's successful maneuvering of his ship to a safe place, an act that insures his
acceptance and the salvation of himself, his ship, and all those aboard the ship. The implication,
then, could be that by pitying our "dark selves," by accepting and helping them to grow, we help
ourselves, forgive ourselves, and enable ourselves to escape their reaches.

After the captain rids himself of his secret sharer, he is a changed man. His feeling of inadequacy
has entirely vanished and he takes charge of his ship and crew in full confidence that he can body
forth in his own person the full authority that he position he occupies demands. It is as though
 14

before the young captain could convincingly exercise authority to himself and to his men, he first
had to take the law into his own hands and symbolically flout the authority of those above him
before he could exert authority over those under him. In this reading of the book, it is as if
symbolically, the captain-narrator stands for the official group while Leggatt stands for the
deviant individual. By protecting him from the other members of his group, the narrator takes
Leggatt's sin on his own shoulders and thereby admits not only his own moral complicity but that
of society as well.]