essay 4

Essay Four – The Secret Sharer

  The setting of the story “the Secret Sharer” by Joseph Conrad takes place on a nameless ship at a sea near the Gulf of Siam.

  A major setting that the author explores in the Secret Sharer is the relationship between the land and sea, elements that he compares other places in his writing. On one hand, Conrad delighted in the great beauty, serenity, and immensity of the sea, compared with the squalor, anxiety, and unrest of the land. Yet, from the land come the energies, some of them evil, which give meaning to the climate of the sea. Geographical duality ultimately gives shape to the duality of the self.

  The nameless captain and ship is surprising in this story is surprising, given the fact that they are the central figures on the book. They, therefore, are symbolic of the universality of the tale. The captain is every man and the ship is the journey that every man must make. By leaving these key elements of the story nameless, Conrad emphasizes that each of us has a dark side that we must confront at sometime on life's path.