The Scarlet Sharer :: essays research papers

The Secret Sharer written by Joseph Conrad, centers around a character of a sea captain. Its title of respect 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 sacrament 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 bring becoming a functional member of a society. The novella may be single fifty pages long but its words speak volumes.The starting signal indication of a course that a novel may take is its title. The three little words contained in the title give rise to legion(predicate) interpretations. An image generated by the title could be that of a gossip. Since a gossip is someone who tells peoples cloak-and-daggers, or in other words is a secret partaker 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, so 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 briny 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 sprightly 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.