The Secret Sharer
1910
On his first command, a young captain newly arrived in the Gulf of Siam finds himself adrift in more ways than one. He is a stranger to his own crew, untested in the loneliness of absolute authority. Then, one night, he discovers a man swimming naked in the darkness. The swimmer is Leggatt, former first mate of the ill-fated Sephora, who killed a crew member in what he claims was self-defense. The captain shelters him in his cabin, and the two men forge a bond that cracks open the captain's understanding of himself. Leggatt is a mirror, a shadow, the embodiment of everything the captain has never dared to confront about his own capacity for darkness. When the authorities grow suspicious, he must choose between duty and his deepening identification with this doomed stranger. The Secret Sharer is Conrad at his most psychologically precise: a compact, relentless excavation of identity, the secrets we keep from others, and the terrifying freedom of recognizing that the line between law and justice, between command and complicity, may be nowhere near as solid as we believe.
