Abstract

This chapter focuses on Joseph Conrad's short story ‘The Secret Sharer’. The thematic tendency of Conrad criticism is evident in several of the most influential essays about ‘The Secret Sharer’. Such discussions frequently employ terms such as ‘parable’, ‘archetype’, ‘symbol'/symbolic’, and ‘psychological’. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the main narrative characteristics and peculiarities of ‘The Secret Sharer’, to attempt to discern essential thematic functions of these characteristics, and to indicate how the ambiguous thematic of the short story is shaped through its interplay of narrative devices, functions, and effects. As one of Conrad's densest stories, ‘The Secret Sharer’ illustrates well his ability to use not only authorial but also personal narrative to achiever thematic pregnancy through textual concentration.

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