The Secret Sharer Themes

The narrator of "The Secret Sharer" —the Captain—pretty much opens the story with a cry for help. He makes it very clear that he's lonely onboard his new ship, where all of the crew alread...

There's a reason Joseph Conrad sets "The Secret Sharer" so far away from the narrator's home in England. He wants us to identify with the feeling of being completely detached from human c...

Feeling totally isolated from your crew and spending months on the open ocean is enough to make any person lose touch with reality. You might even say that the central question of "The Secret...

It's tough having no friends, especially when you're travelling halfway around the world on a ship full of men who probably resent you. It's almost enough to make you create an imaginary friend…b...

Check out any Conrad book, and you'll find a lot of emphasis on people's appearances. There could be several reasons for this. For starters, Conrad might have felt that you could tell a lot about a...