SOURCE: "The Secret Sharer," in Joseph Conrad: A Study in Non-conformity, Philosophical Library, 1959, pp. 135-38.

In the following essay Andreas discusses Conrad's treatment of the individual versus society in "The Secret Sharer.'

Official society, represented by government officers and those in authority charged with law-enforcement, [had] been appearing at least in the background of several Conrad stories immediately preceding "The Secret Sharer". In this story, however, official society and its opposite, the outlaw, take the foreground. Conrad's earlier stories dealt with outcasts in conflict with orthodox groups, but a progression has occurred from Almayer and Willems through Lord Jim, Gaspar Ruiz, Verloc and Razumov to Leggatt, the murderer and outlaw of "The Secret Sharer."

This is of course a natural progression, since the archetype of all groups is the ruling governmental society of any land, and the extreme type of the outcast or the deviant individual is...