SOURCE: Schwarz, Daniel R. “Rereading ‘The Secret Sharer’.” In Rereading Conrad, pp. 134-65. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001.

In the following essay, Schwartz provides an overview of the critical reception of Conrad's “The Secret Sharer” as well as a psychoanalytic interpretation of the story.

I. Biographical Contexts

In December 1909 Conrad interrupted his work on Under Western Eyes to write “The Secret Sharer.” Commenting on Conrad's original plan to call the story either “The Second Self” or “The Other Self,” Frederick R. Karl wrote, “His psychological need to share his situation with those close to him is a personal manifestation of what he had just been writing. … He displayed now his familiar pattern of dependency, seeking supports as he was being deserted, first by [Ford Madox Ford], then by [his agent, James] Pinker.”¹

“The Secret Sharer” owes its origins to events that took place on the Cutty Sark in...