“‘The Secret Sharer’, widely acclaimed as a psychological masterpiece, [is] the subject of more fanciful interpretations than any of Conrad’s other stories. Yet no one who has written on this problematical tale has given a wholly reliable sense of its peculiar distinction. Polemical and highly selective, the average reading of ‘The Secret Sharer’ is easily open to charges of partiality or distortion.”—Literary critic Laurence Graver in Conrad’s Short Fiction (1969)[16]
According to Baines “the point of the story”, dramatized through the intimate encounter between the captain and the fugitive first mate Leggatt “is to suggest that the fates of these two men were interchangeable, that it was quite possible for an ordinary, decent, conscientious person to…commit some action that would make him ‘a fugitive and vagabond upon the earth.”[17]
Literary critic Joan E. Steiner emphasizes the similarity in the two men’s personal history, careers, physical appearance and moral foundations inviting the young captain “to regard Leggatt as his double…”[18][19] Baines argues that Conrad’s captain is sympathetic to his double:
Conrad had no wish to condemn Leggatt but considered him an honorable man who had done something that other honorable men might equally well have done in similar circumstances.[20]
Baines denies that there is any “moral dilemma” that informs the relationship between the captain and his “doppleganger.” Leggett departs from the ship “...a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny.”[21]
Both Baines and literary critic Laurence Garland dispute Albert J. Guerard’s contention that the captain’s double must be “exorcized” as a threat to his freedom.[22] Graver rejects Guerard’s interpretation, writing:
Leggatt’s attractiveness is based less on some sinister appeal than on an obvious self-possession and strength…By the end, the captain has learned nothing about his own capacity for evil; he has learned only to assume confident command of his ship.[23]
Literary critic Edward W. Said concurs with Gueard’s analysis of “The Secret Sharer” that “Conrad’s basic theme is the conflict between the mariner [captain-narrator] and the outlaw [Leggatt]; between the man who seeks to establish control by finding his place among the hard, infallible objects of external reality and that other, darker figure who immerses himself in the destructive, chaotic jungle within and without.”[24]
According to Steiner, the doubling device, though not a Conrad invention, appears as the key image in the narrative. Indeed, the terms “my other self”, “my secret self”, “my secret sharer” appear repeatedly: the captain refers to his doppelganger, Leggatt, as “my double” a total of eighteen times.[25] The Leggatt double and his influence on the captain’s struggle for self-discovery is ambiguous. Rather than the “double” exerting an explicitly creative or degenerate influence on the captain, he serves to reveal that “irrational and the instinctive elements in human nature can be a source of strength as well as weakness, good as well as evil.”[26] Steiner tends to align herself with that of critics Baines and Graver namely, that Leggatt’s effect is “more positive than negative.”[27]
Steiner concludes that the departure of Leggatt signals “the re-submergence of the captain’s unconscious and the reintegration of his personality…the narrator has moved, with the assistance of his double, from immature and naive integration…to a more mature reintegration resulting from self-knowledge and self-mastery.”[28]
