SOURCE: Platt, Michael. “Natural Right, Conventional Right, and Setting Things Aright: Joseph Conrad's ‘The Secret Sharer’.” In The Moral of the Story: Literature and Public Ethics, edited by Henry T. Edmondson III, pp. 177-92. Lanhan, Md.: Lexington Books, 2000.

In the following essay, Platt analyzes ethical issues in “The Secret Sharer,” contending that the narrator eventually satisfies the “conflicting claims of natural right and conventional right” and in the process “learns much about himself, about justice, and about statesmanship.”

It is only the young who are confronted by such clear issues.

—“The Secret Sharer”

Joseph Conrad's “The Secret Sharer” introduces us to a young man meeting his first complete responsibility in life and in circumstances of novelty and solitude, for this young captain is new to his ship and its sailors and can, being the captain, have no friend to share his thoughts with. He is then like a...