The Secret Sharer

I love the ocean. If you know me, then this is redundant information, but it must be said. A good nautical tale makes me absurdly happy. There is something about the lonely character of a sea captain and the ample descriptions to be written about the expanse of the open ocean that totally do it for me. Add a dash of secrecy and a touch of heavy-handed symbolism and you get Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Sharer, my most recently read short story.

            I have never read anything of Conrad’s before (I’m sorry Professor Jeremy at UEA for not doing the assigned reading!) and didn’t quite know what to expect with his work. I’d heard about his better-known novel Heart of Darkness and when I bought my copy of that novel, The Secret Sharer was included in the edition. So I started off with this short story full of intrigue and duality and the sea. I enjoyed Conrad’s easy descriptions of his various characters. He would fleetingly mention the more boring details of countenance and stature and focus completely on the few things that really created a character in the person, such as the first mate’s absurd whiskers and blustering speech.

His narrator, the unnamed Captain is a brilliant personification of isolation, set apart from his crew and the reader. This isolation allows for Conrad to push the theme of duality to the breaking point with the introduction of Leggatt, the escaped murderer who the Captain feels an immediate bond with, often saying that looking at Leggatt is like looking at him in the mirror. There were wonderful moments in the story when the two men were alone, sitting in silence contemplating the other as much as they were contemplating their own person. There were also several funny moments when the captain in his zeal to keep his double from being discovered behaves erratically with his steward, inciting a chuckle as well as that lovely knot of tension deep in your belly.

The tension that Conrad built up in this story was perhaps my favorite element of all. I would only read it while I was on my break at work, so in twenty minute chunks at most, and I would be consumed with the desire to read faster because I felt as though something insane would happen at any moment. I had no trouble at all getting right into the story, for Conrad didn’t trouble himself with the exposition required for a longer novel, and thus each moment between the Captain and Leggatt was new and exciting and charged. As the reader I felt like I too was in on the secret, sharing with the two men who were bonded so closely over a seemingly random event.

Now to be as succinct as Conrad is. I loved The Secret Sharer for the sheer ease with which it was written, and yet the depth of the writing that was still evident. In the words of my dear friend Kris Conrad has “just enough nautical flavor to be slightly esoteric without being dickish,” something that any author attempting to tackle writing about the ocean and it’s distinct character should take note of.