SOURCE: "The Rebirth of Leggatt," in Literature and Psychology, Vol. XIII, No. 3, 1963, pp. 74-81.

Day is an American educator, editor, and critic. In the following essay, he maintains that "The Secret Sharer" contains a double narrative that depicts both the maturation of the narrator and the rebirth of Leggatt.

Whenever possible, we like to see a work of art from a single point of view, as a harmonious whole. Anything extraneous to the desired pattern leaves us uneasy. Thus the mysterious figure of Leggatt has been a stumbling block for critics of Conrad's "The Secret Sharer." For example, [in an introduction to Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer, 1960] Albert J. Guerard, Jr., sees the story as a dramatization of the archetypal "night journey," in which the protagonist makes a "provisional descent" into darkness and the primitive, emerging with a new self—knowledge and a new maturity. Guerard...