Constant Reader discussion

Our next story is "The Secret Sharer" by Joseph Conrad. You can find it at the following link: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/220/2.... It's from Project Gutenberg. I think I found at least one typo on the first page, just two sentences that read as one but that may have been the writing style. I also had trouble reading the small print against that beige background on my iPad so I printed it out and did great.

If you have time, Joseph Conrad's Wikipedia page is worth reading. He's pretty fascinating. I won't even try to summarize it here. There is too much to know. Just a few things -- He was born in Ukraine to Polish parents. He didn't speak English fluently until his 20's. He worked on ships, primarily in the Merchant Marine, for 20 years from age 16 to 36.

It took me a bit to get accustomed to the wordiness of his writing particularly the first two paragraphs. I frequently have that problem when reading 19th century authors. But, in that first paragraph, there is some beautiful descriptive prose. I particularly liked:

I saw the straight line of the flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a perfect and unmarked closeness, in one leveled floor half brown, half blue under an enormous dome of the sky.

From the time, he discovered the sailor at the bottom of his ladder, it turned into a page turner for me. What a tense story! I expected the stowaway to be found out an any moment. I thought the most interesting aspect was the captain's increasing identification with the other young man as if their identities were fusing. This seemed like a very modernist take on the situation.

Does anyone here know much about ships and sailing? The whole situation when he took the ship so close to shore to allow the escape was supremely tense even though I didn't quite understand what was going on. I am assuming that the hat allowed him to gauge the flow of the current in the water? Also, the "...black southern hill of Koh-ring seemed to hang right over the ship like a towering fragment of everlasting night" had the desired effect of sending me racing through the following paragraphs but I couldn't quite picture how close they must have been.

All in all, it was a great story. I've only read Heart of Darkness by Conrad before and maybe another short story. I'm motivated now to read more.

I happen to have read a few things by Joseph Conrad. He is a fascinating character--so fascinating that I could not help reading a lot about him personally. And you well know how I normally avoid that, Barb.

The amazing thing is, like Nabakov, he was not a native English speaker. I, too, was a little put off by the style of those opening paragraphs. In the great "wikipedia" article, they say this:

He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language and although he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he became a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature.

I need to think about that and figure out what it means. And since I only just read this story today, I need to think further also about the doppelganger aspect of this story with the Captain viewing the fugitive as his double. It arises instantly upon their first meeting. Fascinating stuff.

If you are serious about reading more by him, I suggest Lord Jim for you next. (I cannot believe that I have to gall to tell you that, Barb.)

I see no clue here as to why the Captain immediately sees his own alter ego in the fugitive. Perhaps it is because they are both alienated from their own respective crews.

Barb, I know nothing of sailing. However, I am sure that with regard to the hat in the water, you are close enough for government work . . . 

Barb . . . ? Barb . . . ? Bueller . . . ?

Sorry, Steve, once again, I forgot to check the little box for notifications and wondered why you hadn't commented.

Actually, I had been thinking of nominating Lord Jim for the classics list. Thanks for the recommendation . And, I love that you've read biographical info on Conrad!

I'll try to look more into that hat in the water piece and the doppelganger aspect and get back here with whatever I find, if anything.

I am ready for the opinion of some "expert." I still have no idea what the secret sharer is sharing.

Ok, the problem with looking for "experts" these days online is that the sources are primarily study guides for students who don't want to come up with their own ideas. The best source I found, incredibly, was the article about "The Secret Sharer" on Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/educatio....

Thinking about the whole doppelganger question on my own today, I thought that because the narrator and Legatt had the same background and were roughly the same age with similar physical looks, the narrator was able to understand his motivation and excuse his actions in a way he might not have been able to do for someone else. The article concludes that this is why he decided to hide the young man. Doing that requires him to keep his decision secret which makes Legatt the secret sharer.

You were right, Steve, (at least according to the article) that they are initially bound because they are alienated from their respective crews. Both are young, relatively inexperienced in contrast to the crews and seem to need to prove themselves. The article quotes Lionel Trilling as saying that "the two young men are virtually the same person." There is also some reference to Legatt allowing the captain/narrator to explore darker sides of his own personality.

I'm still not sure about the technical aspect of what the drifting hat did. The best I can get is that it allowed him to see that the ship was still on water and that he had not drifted partially up onto land.

Finally, I read it! It is longer than we usually read. Then I read parts of the Wikipedia entry on Conrad. He had quite a life, didn't he?

Anyway, I too see Legatt as the secret sharer, since the Captain is not sharing secrets with anybody else on board. We seem to have no hint as to what all they discussed in whispers, but my sense was that it went well beyond the subjects of hiding, eating, getting off the ship somewhere.

I have explained here before that I 'see' what I read. I know that is not the case for everyone, but it is very exact for me. Often if I can't get the picture, I just can't appreciate the book or story. Or I can't like it, something like that. Now, in this case, what stands out at the end as I picture the ship finding a land breeze and successfully zipping out into open ocean (validating his risky maneuver, BTW) is that it is up to me to decide whether there was ever a stowaway onboard at all. Was the whole affair a mental episode to build his confidence and autonomy, readying him for his first command? Seriously, at the end of this movie, everyone is arguing whether Legatt is imaginary or real on their way out of the theater.

There is a lot of lead up to support the idea of an "imaginary friend," his feelings about the other men and so on, but a couple of important scenes are vital: 1st, how we are immediately made aware of their similarities in age, size, and experience, and 2nd, the scene when his steward has hanged his coat in his bathroom.
Had my double vanished as he had come? But of his coming there was an explanation, whereas his disappearance would be inexplicable.... I went slowly into my dark room, shut the door, lighted the lamp, and for a time dared not turn round. When at last I did I saw him standing bolt-upright in the narrow recessed part. It would not be true to say I had a shock, but an irresistible doubt of his bodily existence flitted through my mind. Can it be, I asked myself, that he is not visible to other eyes than mine? It was like being haunted.

Tell me if I'm bonkers.

Forgot to say, it seemed to me as I read The Secret Sharer (1909) that the narrator, who is around 25 years old, reacted to whiskers. He mentions whiskers a lot. This made me think of Philip in Of Human Bondage (1934), because at 19 he doesn't have facial hair sufficient to justify shaving.

Your comments were thought-provoking, Tonya. I did think about them and slept on them. I am going to continue to refer to the protagonist as "the Captain." I am going to continue to refer to the other as "the fugitive" simply because I am more comfortable with that for the time being than I am with "the Captain's little imaginary friend."

You have cited some appropriate passages that do seem to support your theory. Thank you. Constant Readers are commonly no longer in the habit of doing that.

Here is where I am balking. As I understand it, the Captain steered the ship dangerously close to the cliff and the coast of that island so that the fugitive would have a short distance to swim to the shore. The crew was terrified and apparently rightly so. The hat floating in the water told him that the fugitive had then dove in and was on his way . . . in addition to giving the Captain valuable information about the current there.

Now then, if the Captain endangered the ship and the entire crew for the benefit of a little imaginary friend, does not that make him mentally disturbed, to put it mildly?

This is quite a famous story. I wonder if that is so because other readers have found these questions fascinating and mysterious as well.

By the way, I am plowing on into the second half of Of Human Bondage and will return to that discussion soon.

Interesting, Tonya. I don't know if Study.com is to be seriously considered (God, there are a lot of these kinds of sites online now) but below is a quote from them.
Along with what you said, it makes sense as a possibility to me.

Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer", Leggatt is never confirmed to be real or not. It is likely, however, given the gothic influences in the story and because of multiple moments in the text, that Leggatt is a figment of the Captain's imagination. There are several points in the story where the Captain reflects that no one else is able to see Leggatt and Leggatt's original naked emergence from the water connects to consistent metaphors across Conrad's writing. Water, for Conrad, often represents the subconscious mind. Leggatt's emergence from that unconscious mind naked (which has always been synonymous for birth) is another strong argument in favor of Leggatt's nonexistence.

Okay then. I am perfectly willing to chalk up the Captain as a psychotic.

Steve said: "Now then, if the Captain endangered the ship and the entire crew for the benefit of a little imaginary friend, does not that make him mentally disturbed, to put it mildly?"

I am not qualified to speculate, obviously, but I'd guess that maneuver is less indicative of a mental condition than just having an imaginary stowaway on board. The crew understand he is hoping for a land breeze, his orders are not baseless or unsupported in ship captainry. And I think it is why, in my 'movie,' the ship finds the land breeze they need to finally get underway--he can leave his mental gymnastics behind for now and everyone else on the ship will call him a masterful commander.

But please believe me when I say, I don't know if Leggatt was real or not. I read the story and I'm still 50/50 on that. My point was just to say Conrad gives the reader a ton of evidence. I'll probably have to reread it since this only came to me late in the thing. In fact the most convincing evidence of his existence is that the other ship's Captain visits looking for Leggatt, and how could the narrator have known there was such a person prior to that?

I cannot decide if I want to look at Study.com. I guess I'm glad they don't think I'm bonkers, but I already assumed I'm not the only one who would question this. Everything is so carefully written to set it up.

I wondered about "Conway boy." She was a tough old booger, 1859-1953!

HMS Conway was a naval training school or "school ship", founded in 1859 and housed for most of her life aboard a 19th-century wooden ship of the line. The ship was originally stationed on the Mersey near Liverpool, then moved to the Menai Strait during World War II. While being towed back to Birkenhead for a refit in 1953, she ran aground and was wrecked, and later burned. The school moved to purpose-built premises on Anglesey where it continued for another twenty years.

Good point about the other captain who came looking for Leggatt, Tonya. That seems to negate the whole theory.

Almost, Barb. But I believe everything in the story is very carefully set to support the theory, if that is your inclination.

(For the record, I'm still 50/50.)

First, remember, the narrator is relating the story many years after the events that took place, but a tugboat had come to the ship earlier in the day--that was why the ladder was down. A reader may impute that the Captain overheard gossip among the crew of the fugitive Leggatt that this man had shared. It would naturally be all the talk! An onboard murder, daring escape, etc.

I reread the end part last night to get a better handle on the maneuver he ordered, and I really think I get it now. Both the real actions and how the (possibly imaginary) stowaway are crucial to everything that happened. I should probably check with Jerry to be certain, but for now I am satisfied.

I know how the movie would end. Because movies are not stories, they always have to fiddle with 'em. Already I decided that the captain's gamble was rewarded with a land breeze, so here is how it goes after that: the captain gives an order regarding sails and helm, and goes to his cabin. With a spacey, dreamy look on his face, he opens the drawer where his sovereigns are kept and stares in, but the audience never gets to see whether he is looking at 3 coins, or 6. Ah, hahaha! So Shyamalan!