SOURCE: "Stories During the Years of the Great Novels," in Conrad's Short Fiction, University of California Press, 1969, pp. 123-71.

Graver is an American educator, biographer, and critic. In the following excerpt, he asserts that the psychological aspects of "The Secret Sharer" are widely overemphasized and the story's greatest significance is its emphasis on moral conflict.

In 1903-1904, while working on Nostromo, Conrad had gone two years without writing a short story, and only a request from the Strand magazine brought him back to the form. In 1909 a similar situation developed.

Except for the revision of his first story, "The Black Mate," he had not written a short work since the spring of 1907. Then, without warning, he received a visit from Captain C. M. Marris, recently back from the Malay Seas. As Conrad explained to [his agent, J. B.] Pinker:

It was like the raising of a lot of...