Ship's Captain Archbold example essay topic

The Secret Sharer Joseph Conrad THE NOVEL THE PLOT A young captain in the British merchant marine has just set out on his first command, starting through the Gulf of Siam (Thailand) and heading home. He was hired unexpectedly only two weeks before. So, while his men know one another well, he's the only stranger on board, and he's nervous about the impression he " ll make, especially on his first mate, a fussy and not very bright seaman, and his sneering second mate, who's the only man aboard younger than the captain. The captain volunteers to take the anchor watch, staying on deck late to watch for the wind they need. While alone there, he's astonished to discover a swimmer clinging to the ship's ladder, and he takes him aboard. The man's name is Leggatt, and he's a fugitive from the Sephora, another British ship anchored nearby.

Leggatt was the ship's first mate, and during a terrible storm he killed a mutinous sailor. He was being held to await trial on shore. The captain immediately develops a deep sympathy for him, an identification so strong that soon he's calling him "my second self". He agrees to hide him in his stateroom. The next day a search party arrives from the Sephora, headed by the ship's Captain Archbold. Archbold is neither bold nor intelligent, and according to Leggatt he's such a poor leader that he went to pieces during the storm.

The captain protects Leggatt, despite Archbold's suspicions. Hiding Leggatt proves to be a terrible strain. In order to protect him, the captain has to behave so oddly and give so many peculiar orders that the crew- whose opinions he was so worried about in the first place- begin to think he's crazy. For his part, he becomes so involved in the identity of the secret sharer of his cabin that he finds it difficult to function when he's away from him. One day, after almost being discovered by the steward, Leggatt seems to have disappeared.

The captain is more distressed at the prospect of losing his double than of having him found out. Finally they agree on an escape plan. In carrying it out, the captain demonstrates the bold and resolute action that previously he wasn't sure he was capable of. One night, under the pretense that he's hunting for land breezes, he brings the ship dangerously close to shore. Leggatt escapes, but the crew is terrified.

In the darkness the captain can't judge the movement of the ship in relation to the water- until a floppy hat he had given Leggatt comes floating by, showing him that the back of the ship is moving too fast. At the last minute he's able to give the order to change direction, and he saves the ship. [The Secret Sharer Contents] THE CHARACTERS. THE CAPTAIN-NARRATOR The young captain who tells the story is the embodiment of self-doubt. His lack of resoluteness is a serious shortcoming in a ship's commanding officer, and he's aware of it. This may be the reason he grows so quickly attached to Leggatt: Leggatt knows his own mind and is utterly resolute.

But in deciding to hide Leggatt, the captain puts himself in a situation that almost drives him over the edge into insanity. Because he's young and unsure of himself and on his first command and a stranger to the ship, the captain is overly concerned about the opinions of his crew members- he worries so much about what they " ll think of him that he almost freezes up. But at the same time he believes firmly in the principle of hierarchy: his word is law, and not to be questioned. When he starts giving senseless and, ultimately, dangerous commands in order to protect Leggatt, he puts his crew to a difficult test: how obedient should you be to a captain who seems determined to sink the ship? The special irony here is that after wanting his crew's good opinion so much, the steps he takes to protect Leggatt make him look like he's going out of his way to lose it. But though he's not completely admirable, he's a sympathetic figure- partly because the story is told from his point of view.

He's far more intelligent than the rest of the crew or Captain Archbold, and as a result he's contemptuous of them in a way that's amusing to read about but would be less amusing if you were a crew member. (Probably we can catch a glimpse here of Conrad the Polish aristocrat surrounded by the boorish sailors of the British merchant marine.) Nevertheless, in tough situations the captain handles himself, and his ship, like an expert. And he knows how to handle other sailors, too, for example, the rough-mannered Captain Archbold (whom he unnerves with politeness) and the insolent second mate (whom he sharply rebukes). In the final scene, he shows terrific competence by maneuvering his ship out of danger (even though he got it into danger in the first place). It seems clear at the end of the story that he " ll make a fine and capable captain...

LEGGATT Unlike the captain, Leggatt is a fully self-possessed young man. He knows his own mind and he knows how to take bold and courageous action- as he does during the storm on the Sephora, when he takes matters into his own hands and sets the sail that saves the ship. And he's straightforward about himself: he doesn't try to excuse or soften the impact of his crime (the murder of a mutinous sailor) when he tells the captain about it. (The captain does the excusing for him.) But he has a clear conscience and he's eager to escape. He accepts the captain's help without questioning it or feeling guilty about the nightmare he puts the captain through as a result. He doesn't suffer, as the captain does, from looking at things too deeply.

If anything, Leggatt is too impulsive. We can admire the directness with which, during an emergency, he knocked down an insolent sailor who was endangering the lives of the crew. But strangling the man to death is a different matter. Since we see Leggatt only through the captain's eyes, though, it's difficult to get a clear picture of him. We may get a sense that the captain is willing to excuse too much in him, but we can also sympathize with the isolation of this hero-criminal from the rest of his crew, and be moved when he tells the captain how much his understanding has meant to him. Leggatt's personality is convincingly drawn.

But what does Leggatt mean? The more than fifty references to doubling, the notion that Leggatt is somehow a part of the captain-narrator's self, have tantalized readers ever since the story was first published. Some readers think that Leggatt is the captain's moral conscience; others, that he represents the unconscious impulses below the surface of the captain's mind. Some argue that he symbolizes the criminal side of the captain, the vicious impulses he has to master and dominate; others insist that he stands for the captain's ideal image of himself. And some exasperated readers have decided that all this symbolism is no more than an intellectual tease. According to them, you should enjoy "The Secret Sharer" as the fine adventure it is, and not worry yourself with digging for hidden meanings.

You " ll have to decide for yourself what you think Leggatt stands for- or if he stands for anything. Whatever meaning Conrad had in mind, he didn't provide us with enough evidence to produce a firm and final interpretation... CAPTAIN ARCHBOLD Captain Archbold, the commanding officer of the Sephora (the ship from which Leggatt escapes), can be summed up by the adjectives "spiritless" and "unintelligent". If we can believe Leggatt's story (and Archbold's own version seems to confirm it), Archbold lost his nerve in the middle of the terrible storm, and it was Leggatt who saved the ship. But because Leggatt killed a man, Archbold is unwilling to give him any credit; he attributes the ship's survival, rather dishonestly, to the hand of God, not Leggatt. He adheres to the letter of the law, not granting that there were unusual circumstances around the crime.

He's really more concerned about the embarrassment the crime will cause him than the merits of Leggatt's case. He suspects that the young captain may be hiding Leggatt, but his plodding, stupid nature is no match for the younger man's cleverness; the captain easily gets rid of him (though there's a hint that Archbold knows the captain has made a fool of him). Conrad emphasizes his ridiculous side. Thus, even though the captain-narrator's interview with Archbold is tense, it's also funny, because Conrad makes Archbold the butt of several jokes... CHIEF MATE The chief mate, with his "terrible growth of whisker" and his honest devotion to the ship, might be a lovable character in another context.

But seen through the contemptuous eyes of the captain, he's an "imbecile" with "the 'Bless my soul- you don't say so' type of intellect". There's certainly nothing vicious about him, just irritating, but circumstances (the captain's decision to hide Leggatt) turn this simple man into a threat. He behaves badly in the crisis, becoming so unhinged (he raises an arm "to batter his poor devoted head") that the captain has to shake him like a child, but he manages to recover himself before the end. (In certain respects- dull intellect, lack of fortitude in a crisis, whiskers- he resembles Captain Archbold.) If the story were told from a different point of view, the mate's position as chief officer under a captain who appears to have lost his mind would make him a more sympathetic figure...

SECOND MATE The captain continually chides the second mate (the officer next in line after captain and chief mate) as a "cub", emphasizing his youth and inexperience; he's the only crew member younger than the captain himself. He's rather sour and unlikable. Early on the captain catches him sneering at the chief mate, and soon he's sneering at the captain as well- unpardonable behavior in a subordinate officer. But he gets a stern dressing-down before the end of the story- an important act of self-assertion for the captain, and a much-needed bit of discipline for the second mate... STEWARD The steward (the officer in charge of provisions, and the one who cleans the captain's stateroom) isn't developed as a character, but his predicament provides some of the funnier moments in the story.

The captain keeps giving him incomprehensible and ludicrous commands in order to keep Leggatt well-hidden in his stateroom, until the bewildered man is at the point of despair. [The Secret Sharer Contents] OTHER ELEMENTS SETTING The action takes place in the Gulf of Siam (also called the Gulf of Thailand), bordered by the Malay Archipelago on the west and Cochin-China (part of Indochina) on the east; the ship sails out of the Meinam River (better known today as the Chao Ph raya) that flows by the city of Bangkok at the very north of the gulf. (When Conrad took command of the Otago in 1888, he, too, sailed from Bangkok.) The ship sails down the Cochin-China coast, and Leggatt makes his escape to the island of Koh-ring, off the coast of Cam bodge (Cambodia or Kampuchea). The shipboard setting emphasizes the isolation of the crew, as does the description of the gulf, which opens the story; the captain has left his friends behind, and he's the only stranger aboard. It's also noteworthy that so much 'of the story- in particular, Leggatt's arrival and escape- occurs at night, the time for dreams, the domain of the unconscious. To further the association, both Leggatt and the captain wear sleeping suits.

THEME "The Secret Sharer" portrays the friendship of two men during a time of strain and crisis. Each is able to offer the other something he needs. The captain offers the escaped killer Leggatt both protection from the men who are pursuing him and, eventually, escape. Leggatt gives the captain something less tangible- a lesson that he badly needs in self-possession, self-reliance, and self-control. In the course of the story, the captain learns, largely from the example of the secret sharer of his cabin and his life, how to be a good leader. In protecting him, he has to stop worrying about the opinions of others and assert himself.

But firmness isn't the only quality in a good leader. He needs to be able to act resolutely, too, to give orders when necessary without terrifying himself over what the consequences might be. Captain Archbold is an example of a leader who can't act in a crisis: during the frightening storm that besets the Sephora, he can't make himself give the order to set the sail that's their last hope, because he's afraid of losing it. But the young captain maneuvers his own ship through hair-raising danger along the shallow coast in order to help Leggatt escape. After this crisis, he's clearly in full possession of his abilities. STYLE Conrad's style here is clean and direct, much simpler than the digressive, garrulous narrative in Heart of Darkness.

"The Secret Sharer" is a different kind of story; since it employs a more traditional first-person point of view, Conrad doesn't need to imitate the speaking voice of the narrator. But whatever he loses in complexity he gains in directness: the story is suspenseful and exciting in a way that the dense prose of Heart of Darkness wouldn't convey. His impressionist method is still in evidence. And when the author pauses for a picturesque description, for example, of the Gulf of Siam and the "swarm of stars" above it in the opening pages of the story, the effects are rich and lovely. POINT OF VIEW Imagine what it would be like to have the story narrated by the chief mate, or by Captain Archbold: our sympathy for both the young captain and Leggatt would vanish.

A different point of view would create a very different story. If the story had an omniscient narrator who could see into the minds of the various characters, we would lose the fascination of what we don't know- Leggatt's motivation. (Is he, essentially, innocent or guilty? Has the captain acted foolishly or wisely in protecting him? There's evidence on both sides.) Finally, imagine the story from Leggatt's point of view. How would he see the young captain- as a true friend, or as a dupe?

The captain bears a certain resemblance to the young Conrad, who sailed his first command under similar windless conditions in the Gulf of Siam (though apparently without stowaways). But unlike Marlow in Heart of Darkness, the captain is such a fallible narrator, that is, so untrustworthy in much of what he perceives, that we can't assume he's a stand-in for the author. And, unlike Marlow, he relates events without thinking deeply about them. Marlow is always ruminating, judging, trying to find the meaning in his own tale; the captain-narrator tells his story as if he were unaware that it had any meaning at all. He doesn't guide us in interpreting his tale, and Conrad has kept himself so distant that it isn't clear what he thinks of the events, either. So interpretation rests, even more fully than in Heart of Darkness, with you the reader.

FORM AND STRUCTURE Like the style, the form of the tale is simple and straightforward. There isn't the experimentation, the jumping around in time and space, that you find in many of Conrad's other works (including Heart of Darkness). The action all takes place on one ship (except for the brief section in which Leggatt tells his story), and it moves from beginning to end without flashbacks or flash forwards. In structure, there's a forward movement from ignorance to knowledge- in this case, the captain's self- knowledge. (In this respect, the structure resembles the structure of Heart of Darkness.) The young captain is a different and better man- or at least, a better leader- at the end of the story than he was at the beginning. However we ultimately judge Leggatt, it seems clear that the captain has profited by knowing and aiding him.

Part I Summary The story begins on a nameless ship, anchored at the mouth of the River Meinam in the Gulf of Siam. The narrator, a nameless young captain who has only been in charge of the ship for a fortnight, stands onboard his ship, gazing off the side of the vessel. On the left, the captain sees a cluster of rocky islets and on his right, two clumps of tress mark the river's mouth and puffs of smoke show the path of the tug ship that recently guided the ship down the river. The captain watches, almost regretfully, as the tug ship leaves him alone on his ship in the middle of complete silence, "an immense stillness". While he is alone on board, the captain sees another ship in the distance, something that he is extremely surprised to encounter.

The sun sets and the captain descends to his quarters, along with his mates. While eating dinner, he mentions seeing the ship off of the coast. The chief mate begins to speculate on how the boat came to be there, his conclusion being that she was a ship from home lately arrived. The second mate, however, interrupts and says that the ship's name is Sephora and she carries coal. He learned this information from the tugboat skipper, when he came onboard the ship to deliver mail. Throughout the whole conversation, the captain emphasizes to the reader that he was both " a stranger to the ship" and "a stranger to myself".

As the crew begins to leave, the captain directs the chief mate to let all "hands turn in without setting an anchor watch". Instead, because the men were tired and had been working hard, the captain himself would take the anchor watch. While unusual and the men are surprised, they go to bed leaving the captain alone with his thoughts. He is worried because he is on a "ship of which I knew nothing, manned by men of whom I knew very little more". While he is smoking a cigar, in his nightclothes, the captain realizes that a rope ladder is still hanging down one side of the ship. Realizing that it is his fault because he told the men to abandon the watch, the captain tries to reel the ladder in but is met with more resistance than he expected.

Looking over the side of the ship, he sees what he thinks is a headless corpse attached to the ladder. Frightened, he looks further and realizes that the body is not dead, nor headless, and the captain yells at him, "What's the matter?" The man answers, "Cramp" and then says, "no need to call anyone except for the captain". The captain answers that the man is in luck, he is the captain of the ship and as the man climbs aboard the ship he introduces himself as Leggatt and the captain leaves to retrieve some clothes for the man. As the man dresses, the captain observes that he is a young man, probably not more than 25 years old. Leggatt reveals that he was a mate on the Sephora but that he killed a man, although he justifies that the man was very evil.

Realizing that the are both Conway boys, Leggatt confesses that his father is a parson and he could never stand trial for what he had done. As he tells his story, the captain is surprised because the man "appealed to him as if our experiences had been as identical as our clothes". Moreover, the captain "knew well enough also that my double was no homicidal ruffian". Although the captain did not ask for the details of the crime, Leggatt begins to recount his story. On a dark and stormy night, while the men on board were setting a reefed foresail, a crazed Leggatt "felled him like an ox". After a brutal struggle, Leggatt managed to strangle the man to death.

Because of the murder, the captain relieved him as his duties of an officer, imprisoned him in his cabin (for over six weeks) and was preparing to take him to trial when the ship landed. Without any statement regarding his story, the captain merely tells the man that he should slip down to his stateroom. After going to the stateroom, the captain calls for his second mate to take over the watch. Entering his stateroom, the captain explains to the reader that his room was in the shape of an L, the door being within the angle and opening into the short part of the letter. Anyone opening the door had no view of the long part of the letter, the majority of the room, a significant advantage given the "recent arrival". Walking into his room, the captain, speaking extremely quietly, inquires on how the man came to hang on the side ladder of his ship.

Leggatt explains that about three weeks ago, he asked to speak to the captain and kindly requested that he leave the door of his cabin unlocked when they could see land, in order that he could make a break swimming for it. The captain, however, refused, a man that was afraid of both the men on the ship and his second mate. The wife of the captain is also onboard the Sephora. The night before, however, the steward left the door open after bringing him his supper. Leaving his room and walking on the deck, Leggatt through off his shoes and dived overboard. Hearing the splash, the rest of the crew came running and tried to search for him in the water but they were unable to find him.

Seeing the light of the ship in the distance, he swam desperately for it because the islets (where he originally landed and disposed of his clothes), offered no escape, no water, and no food. On his last leg and about to drown, he was surprised but extremely grateful to find the ladder down because he was not capable of swimming as far as the rudder around the other side of the boat. Warning the captain that he thinks the Sephora's captain will come to the ship and look for him, the captain puts Leggatt into his own bed. Drifting into his own thoughts, focusing on his double, the captain falls asleep and before he realizes it, the steward is knocking on his door bringing him his morning coffee.

The captain acts strangely, but the steward leaves without searching the cabin. The captain proceeds to go above deck and orders the men to "Square the yards by lifts and braces before the hands go to breakfast", his first real order while he has been aboard the ship. After presiding over breakfast very harshly, the captain returned to his room and wakes up his "secret self" and instructs him to vanish into the bathroom. While he is in the bathroom, the captain instructs the steward to clean his room while he is having his bath. The steward follows the orders and cleans the room while the captain bathes and Leggatt stands straight up, still in the bathroom. After the steward leaves, the captain lets the second mate get a good look at the cabin and then closes the door.

He sits and his desk, "his secret self" in front of him, hidden from the door, but they do not speak, as it is not safe during the daytime and the captain "could not have stood the excitement of that queer sense of whispering to myself". At the conclusion of the chapter, a voice yells, "there's a ship's boat coming our way, sir". The captain yells "All right. Get the ladder over" and, hesitating, went on deck without saying a word to Leggatt. Analysis A major theme that Conrad explores in the Secret Sharer is the relationship between the land and sea, elements that he also compares other places in his writing. On one hand, Conrad rejoices 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. In this train of thought, "The Secret Sharer" begins with a beautiful view of the sea and shore, and than progresses to other dualities, psychological and political, that the captain must both experience and comprehend. In the first paragraph of the story, the captain looks at the OE flat shore joined to the stable sea". It is significant that in the opening images the captain can scarcely discern where one element begins and the other ends.

He himself is at a faintly discerned dividing line between immaturity and maturity; between landsman and seaman. A duality also exists aboard ship, for our new captain, not yet at ease about his ship, or about himself, prepares for his first cruise under the watchful eyes of a skeptical crew. His officers were all accustomed to the ship and to each other; they knew their roles. The captain was a stranger to the ship and a stranger to himself. "The Secret Sharer" is also a story concerning the obstacles to be overcome in the process of maturation, or in becoming "good enough" to those around here. For the captain, his inadequacies concern his lack of confidence in his own capabilities, a fear of inadequacy, and a fear of ultimate failure.

Even before we meet his double, a motif that obviously addresses these inadequacies, Conrad lays the scene, again emphasized by the important physical description that begins the book. The captain sees, "two small clumps of tress, one on each side of the only fault in the impeccable joint, marked the mouth of the River Meinam we had just leftS and, far back on the inland level, a larger and loftier mass, the grove surrounding the great Paknam pagoda, was the only thing on which the eye could rest form the vain task of exploring the monotonous sweep of the horizon" The insignificant twin clumps of tress observed by the captain suggest the dyadic aspects of the captain's personality, which Conrad develops fully in the double motif. The captain's youthful lack of confidence in himself and his abilities, and his fearsome awe of his ship are presented explicitly and implicitly. The most obvious manifestation of his insecurity is his decision to stand the anchor watch himself, a task not usually assumed by a chief mate, to say nothing of a captain. It is of this feeling of inadequacy, this split between what he knew he should become and what he feared he was, that the captain must rid himself. Having progressed beyond this initial immature state, he would have attained the higher ground of self-knowledge, symbolized by the "larger and loftier mass, the grove surrounding the great Paknam pagoda", standing on higher ground than that on which the "two insignificant clumps of trees stand", one on each side of the only fault in the "impeccable joint" of land and sea.

One of the important, but subtle, symbols within this chapter is the scorpion that the chief mate finds in his cabin. In the story, the mysterious creature causes the mate much speculation as why it chose his particular cabin and drowned itself in his inkwell. As the story progresses, the same questions can be applied to Leggatt, as the scorpion in the mate's cabin and Leggatt in the Captain's cabin have one similar aspect in common - they are extremely dangerous. The dramatic progression in the book, however, begins when Leggatt first comes aboard, a progression which moves from the menace of invaded privacy in the captain's cabin, to the menace of discovery of this dual self by the ship, then to the stress of possible discovery by another captain, and finally, the menace of the unknown self as the captain exercises his newly won command. It is important to note that the captain does not consciously decide to conceal the fugitive - there is no debate in the action that will cause him considerable grief on the ship. As soon as he sees the stranger, he reflects later: "A mysterious communication was established already between us two.