SOURCE: "Comic Elements in Conrad's The Secret Sharer," in Conradiana, Vol. VII, No. 1, 1975, pp. 51-61.

In the following essay, Burjorjee demonstrates the presence of comic elements in "The Secret Sharer."

    Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
For know there are two worlds of life and death:
One that which thou beholdest; but the other
Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit
The shadows of all forms that think and live
Till death unite them and they part no more…
 Prometheus Unbound

The Earth's adjuration to Prometheus in Shelley's lyrical drama reflects the solemnity of much of the criticism on Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer." Certainly, the best of these criticisms are oriented towards, and succeed in, eliciting those psychological, symbolical, and metaphysical dimensions in "The Secret Sharer" which give...