The Unshared Ideal of Self: An Outcast of the Islands

Abstract

An Outcast of the Islands is concerned, like The Secret Sharer, with ‘that ideal conception of one’s own personality every man sets up for himself secretly’, but it begins when the ideal has already been once betrayed: When he stepped off the straight and narrow path of his peculiar honesty, it was with an inward assertion of unflinching resolve to fall back again into the monotonous but safe stride of virtue as soon as his little excursion into the wayside quagmire had produced the desired effect. It was going to be a short episode — a sentence in brackets so to speak — in the flowing tale of his life: a thing of no moment, to be done unwillingly, yet neatly, and to be quickly forgotten.1 KeywordsSecret SharerIdeal CodeIdeal ConceptionGroup CommitmentNarrow PathThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.