SOURCE: "Conrad's The Secret Sharer," in The Midwest Quarterly, Vol. VIII, No. 3, Spring, 1967, pp. 319-30.

In the following essay, Gilley maintains that the action of "The Secret Sharer" is implausible.

Joseph Conrad wrote "The Secret Sharer" in November of 1909. It is a story about a bond between the narrator and the fugitive Leggatt; at the same time, it is the story of the narrator's response to his first command; and finally and more briefly the story of Leggatt's saving the Sephora and strangling a man.

In this tale the narrator is in a unique, though illusory, position of freedom. Whether it was a happy accident of his seafaring life or whether it was a more conscious choice of the artist, Conrad employs the young captain in "The Secret Sharer" to examine the personality of a partially free man in the great universe. Not only examine, but also test...