What Are Leggatt's Perception Of Oneself In The Secret Sharer

The feeling of being unsure of oneself is a strong emotion that is normally very unpleasant and most individuals try their hardest to become confident with themselves. For some people however it is not that easy and they need certain events or actions to happen to help them ensure confidence in themselves once more. This could even mean summoning the darker sub conscious of their inner self in order to provide company and reassurance. In Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Sharer the Captain feeling highly insecure with his crew and his ship makes the mistake of letting his crew go to sleep while he took the first watch. Upon doing so he can’t help but think about the mistake he could possibly be making agreeing to take this ship back to England. Then
Such as in the beginning of the story where he is stressed about being captain of a crew and a ship that he doesn’t know at all. Leggatt represents the subconscious that is buried deep within all. This function is revealed to the reader through many ways. The first point that emphasizes this is Leggatt's utter lack of rationality contrary to the Captain's descriptions of him as intelligent and sane. In his own element, the fishlike Leggatt loses even the appearance of rationality: "With a gasp I saw revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid back immersed right up to the neck in a greenish cadaverous glow. He was complete but for the head. A headless corpse!"(Conrad pg.142). If Leggatt symbolically lacks a head then there is little surprise in his finding the narrator's hat useless when at the end of the story he returns to his native element. Also, the fact that he was a naked swimmer when he was discovered is of importance because that symbolizes that he is stripped to his basic being. However, because his color is "pale" and he is immersed in " a greenish cadaverous glow," in Conrad's terms means that he is generally an evil person being pale and having a lack in color. However, the light coming from him indicates the possibility of something good evolving from him in the end, that is, the
The item also represents the physical parting of the captain and Leggatt who have throughout the story fused into one. For example even the grammar eventually refers to Leggatt and the captain as one person and the name Leggatt is used very infrequently throughout the book. The hat was the pinnacle of this language and the captain's identification with his secret self. When he justifies giving the hat to Leggatt he says "I saw myself wandering barefooted, bareheaded, the sun beating on my dark poll. I snatched off my floppy hat and tried hurriedly in the dark to ram it on my other self."(Conrad pg.187). That he leaves the hat is significant, because it symbolizes the parting between the two. More significantly, and ironically, however, the hat literally points the way to the Captain's successful maneuvering of his ship to a safe place, an act that insures his acceptance and the salvation of himself, his ship, and all those aboard the ship. The implication, then, could be that by pitying our "dark selves," by accepting and helping them to grow, we help ourselves, forgive ourselves, and enable ourselves to escape their