The Secret Sharer written by Joseph Conrad, centers around a character of a sea captain. Its title and opening paragraphs forecast a story of mystery, isolation, duality, darkness and silence. The novel proves true these predictions reveling thematic and image patterns directly proportional to them. The opening of the novel further reveals dialectics in the novel. The clash between the private and the public world or man versus society, in other words is the primary dialectic.
The journey theme or the rite of passage theme also reveal themselves. We see a young and inexperienced captain grow and explore himself and the world around him, and in the process becoming a functional member of a society. The novella may be only fifty pages long but its words speak volumes.The first indication of a course that a novel may take is its title. The three little words contained in the title give rise to many interpretations. An image generated by the title could be that of a gossip. Since a gossip is someone who tells people's secrets, or in other words is a secret sharer if the word secret is taken for a noun, it is a possibility that this image might come to mind.
Another image is that of a person who shares in secrecy, therefore becoming a secret sharer, if the word secret is taken for an adjective. This could be an image of a miser, who generally does not share his wealth, but does so only in secrecy. A secret sharer could also be an imaginary friend. It would be a person who is secretive, and you share your thoughts with them. A Biblical interpretation of the secret sharer could be that of the snake in the garden of Eden. Since the snake shares the ultimate secret of knowledge with Adam and Eve, it could be considered a secret sharer.The connotations of the two main words in the title show a contradiction.
A secret has a mysterious somewhat evil connotation, while a sharer has a benevolent and good connotation. This gives rise to a possibility of a good and evil dialectic. The denotation of secret is something kept private, sharing is, however, a public act. This brings to light the dialectic of the public versus the private world.The opening paragraphs bring to life the world of the work. The place where the characters move and have their being is a sail ship in this novel.
This novel allows the reader to gain many different point of views from narrators within the 34 items in the book. Strange Objects depicts a variety of issues in a perceptive manner, promptly delivering Steven Messenger’s and other characters’ mental states, their character traits and the links between them. In Strange Objects it is clear to see that this novel deserves the awards that it has won, as it is a novel that has an effective way of combining different elements, summoning discussion and analysis of the many aspects within it, and engaging the audience by doing
This part is divided into two sub-topics. The first sub-topic offers a summary of the book and contains spoilers. The second sub-topic summarizes the film. Both summaries incorporate key events in both form...
The story unfolds in the form of letters written between the principal characters, giving it a unique literary texture. By using this style, de Laclos is able to give the reader a shockingly intimate look at these people as they divulge their most intimate secrets and bring to fruition their sinister plans.
"The Minister's Black Veil" is an allegorical narrative in which the agents of setting, symbols, characters, and actions come in a coherent way to represent non-literal and metaphorical meanings about the human character. The black veil is without doubt the most important symbol used in the story. It comes to represent the darkness and duality of human nature, adding thereby a certain undeniable psychoanalytical angle to the short story. The black veil represents the sin that all men carry secretively within their heart as M...
The theme of this book is that the human capacity to adapt to and find happiness in the most difficult circumstances. Each character in the novel shows this in their way. For instance, their family is randomly taken from their home and forced to work but they still remain a close nit family. In addition, they even manage to stick together after being separated for one of their own. These show how even in the darkest time they still manage to find a glimmer of hope and they pursued on.
The narrator portrays her degrading identity through her cultural detachment from Europe and Africa. The novel does not only tell the story through the exile she has suffered. At times, the narrator’s nocturnal writing offers the reader her inner thoughts, but it also displays her initiative to confide within her exile through nostalgia and lyricism. An analysis of multiple passages - regarding writing and geogra...
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness ; And, The Secret Sharer. New York: Signet Classic, 1997. Print.
At the outset, an insightful reader needs to draft the general boundaries of allegory and symbolism in the story. To put it most simple, the problem of distinguishing between good and evil undergoes a discussion. It is not difficult to notice that the Grandmother stands for good and the Misfit for evil. But such a division would be a sweeping and superficial generalisation, for both the characters epitomize good and evil traits. Moral evaluation is a very complex process and it is not the human who is to decide on that. There are rather various degrees of goodness and evil, both interwoven, also in their religiousness. Th...
The myth of Orpheus and his descent into the underworld is paralleled in Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer," revealing a common theme, the narrator's self-fulfillment through the conclusion of his symbolic and inward quest. This parallel, which may be called archetypal, serves to increase the reader's sense of identification with Conrad's narrator, and it lends an otherworldly tone to the work as a whole. Likewise, these echoes of Orphic material lead the reader through three stages. These are a modern and secular rendition of the descent into the unknown, followed by a symbolic rebirth or rejoining of the fractured portions of the complete self, and finally the parting with the previous 'self' that ostensibly existed in the initial state.
John Mayer, an American personality psychologist, who majors on personality issues, explains on the negative and positive sides of character traits by proposing that the negative one is based on unreasonable, timid, and apprehensive attributes, while the positive side concerns logical courageous, and gallant traits. It is important that a person identifies his or her different characteristics, and try to balance them so as to avoid getting various mental aberrations. “The Secret Sharer” is a story about a sailor with two-sided personality attributes as narrated by Joseph Conrad. In order for the audience to comprehend about distinct identities, Conrad incorporates the theme doppelganger in his story. According to the story, a young captain possesses a cowardly character, which is not good for a captain commanding a sailing ship. People who are meant to “lead others or be their boss should have fearless, heroic, and domineering characters” (Mayer 215). Due to his uneasy character, the captain first refuses to introduce himself to Leggat who he saves from the sea. The narrator states that "I thought the time had come to declare myself ‘I am the captain’” (Conrad 2). The statement shows that the captain is reluctant to reveal himself because he is aware of his spineless nature, given that he is the captain. According to Mayer, “Most people who possess leadership positions with weak character traits are often afraid to disclose their status to others” (Mayer 273). As the two sailors talk about their experiences, the captain starts to change his current personality and acquire that of Leggatt. The raconteur asserts that "I had become so connected in thoughts and impressions with the secret sharer of my cabin that I felt as if I, personally, were being given to understand that I, too, was not the sort that would have done for the chief mate of a ship like the Sephora. I had no doubt of it in my
Without personal access to authors, readers are left to themselves to interpret literature. This can become challenging with more difficult texts, such as Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. Fortunately, literary audiences are not abandoned to flounder in pieces such as this; active readers may look through many different lenses to see possible meanings in a work. For example, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness may be deciphered with a post-colonial, feminist, or archetypal mindset, or analyzed with Freudian psycho-analytic theory. The latter two would effectively reveal the greater roles of Kurtz and Marlow as the id and the ego, respectively, and offer the opportunity to draw a conclusion about the work as a whole.
In the story, the narrator is forced to tell her story through a secret correspondence with the reader since her husband forbids her to write and would “meet [her] with heavy opposition” should he find her doing so (390). The woman’s secret correspondence with the reader is yet another example of the limited viewpoint, for no one else is ever around to comment or give their thoughts on what is occurring. The limited perspective the reader sees through her narration plays an essential role in helping the reader understand the theme by showing the woman’s place in the world. At ...
Throughout its entirety, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness utilizes many contrasts and paradoxes in an attempt to teach readers about the complexities of both human nature and the world. Some are more easily distinguishable, such as the comparison between civilized and uncivilized people, and some are more difficult to identify, like the usage of vagueness and clarity to contrast each other. One of the most prominent inversions contradicts the typical views of light and dark. While typically light is imagined to expose the truth and darkness to conceal it, Conrad creates a paradox in which darkness displays the truth and light blinds us from it.
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a great example of a Modernist novel because of its general obscurity. The language is thick and opaque. The novel is littered with words such as: inconceivable, inscrutable, gloom. Rather than defining characters in black and white terms, like good and bad, they entire novel is in different shades of gray. The unfolding of events takes the reader between many a foggy bank; the action in the book and not just the language echoes tones of gray.
* Conrad, Joseph. “Heart of Darkness” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, M.H. Abrams, general editor. (London: W.W. Norton, 1962, 2000)