On the Dark Side: Conrad's "The Secret Sharer" and Valenzuela's "La palabra asesino"

Abstract

Conrad’s famous “The Secret Sharer” and the short story “La palabra asesino” [“The Word ‘Killer’” in its English translation] by the Argentine Luisa Valenzuela both concern psychological self-exploration and selfdiscovery, through contact with a killer, a situation which challenges conventional moral standards. It is suggested that a comparison between the two stories may throw reciprocal light on both of them. In each story an act or acts of murder becomes a trigger which sets off a train of psychological events, somewhat different in the two cases. Discussion of the differences highlights the authors' priorities and the significance they attach to the darker side of the human personality. Both stories are highly ambiguous; but the ambiguity serves a different purpose in each case. Conrad is concerned with psychological doubling; Valenzuela with exploration of aspects of the human personality which in turn may be related to aspects of Argentina's collective personality as it expressed itself during the “Dirty War.” An examination of the different forces in play in the two stories improves our understanding of both. This article is available in Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol32/iss1/10 On the Dark Side: Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer” and Valenzuela’s “La palabra asesino” Donald L. Shaw University of Virginia most outstanding feature of Spanish American fiction in the second half of the twentieth century was the emergence of the “Boom” writers, headed by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. With the Boom, Spanish American fiction can be said to have come of age and to have taken its place in mainstream Western fiction, capturing a huge international audience. Since the Boom the most striking fact related to Spanish American fiction has been the emergence of a galaxy of women novelists and short story writers (the Boom group were all men) among whom the Argentine Luisa Valenzuela occupies a prominent if not a leading position, equidistant from the extreme reader-friendliness of Isabel Allende on the one hand, and the equally extreme experimentalism of her fellow Chilean Diamela Eltit on the other. Early in her career, Valenzuela seemed set to move in the latter direction, with El gato eficaz (1972), written (significantly) at the Writing School of the University of Iowa where several other major Spanish American writers of her generation honed their skills, and Cola de lagartija (1983). Both of these are very difficult and demanding novels in contrast to the much more accessible short stories of Cambio de armas (1982) which include “La palabra asesino,” translated as “The Word ‘Killer’” in Other Weapons (1985). In what follows I look comparatively at this very accomplished story and Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer” (1910) with which it has features in common. It is not suggested that Valenzuela knew Conrad’s novella, though the possibility cannot be discounted. Valenzuela was steeped in the writings of Borges, who was undoubtedly Spanish America’s leading Conrad fan and may 1 Shaw: On the Dark Side: Conrad's The Secret Sharer and Valenzuela's Published by New Prairie Press