The Matter of Conscience in Conrad's The Secret Sharer

Abstract

In spite of the critical attention that it has received, Conrad's The Secret Sharer continues to present mysteries that usually affect our understanding of the story's climax in which Leggatt, the murderer and fugitive, is given his chance to escape while the ship hovers on the edge of disaster. Clearly enough, in its broadest aspects, the story is framed by a question and its answer. The narrative opens by presenting an uninitiated captain, a stranger to his ship and to himself, wondering how far he “should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one's own personality every man sets up for himself secretly.” It closes with the answer that through self-knowledge and self-mastery the captain has achieved “the perfect communion of a seaman with his first command” (p. 143). But between these two points, knowledge and self-mastery are won only after the disconcerting ordeal of protecting Leggatt and the strange exposure of the ship to near destruction, for the dangers from which the captain is allowed to extricate himself seem unnecessary ones of his own making. In turning towards the rocks of Koh-ring, he has done what he “certainly should not have done ... if it had been only a question of getting out of that sleepy gulf as quickly as possible” (pp. 132–133). Moreover, in shaving the land “as close as possible,” he has approached disaster far closer than necessary if it had been only a question of testing his authority or granting Leggatt a reasonable chance to escape.