The Secret Sharer
The works of James Phelan (Reading Secrets) and Michael Levenson (Secret History in 'The Secret Sharer') both take a look at Joseph Conrad's short story, "The Secret Sharer", from two different critical perspectives. Phelan discusses "The Secret Sharer" from the reader-response perspective, and Levenson from the new historicism perspective. It is hard to do direct comparisons on their work because they look at the story from totally opposing views. Phelan and reader-response critics derive the meaning of a story from its psychological context based on the reaction of the reader. Levenson and new historicists choose to ignore a story's psychological context and derive the meanings of the story from a historical event, or events, that lead Conrad to write "The Secret Sharer". In this essay, we will discuss how well each writer represented their critical view in their essay by comparing the thesis of their respective essays, and how well they supported their claims. In an attempt to get an overall idea of how Phelan and Levenson interpret the story, we will look at and compare the theses in their essays. In Levenson's thesis, he very clearly states that he will address the story based on its historical context and not on it
This is a manner in which the author determines the meaning of the text, although he does recognize the fact that some readers may interpret the story differently. He discusses the role of the readers further, where he divides readers into two groups: those that agree with the readers assumptions, and those that don't. The second reference to history is Conrad's life at the time. The first reference is to events that took place aboard the Cutty Sark in 1880. He did not falter and go into any discussion of and psychological effects that the text may have on us. Phelan starts his essay off with a quote from the story of Leggatt talking to the captain. This event was the basis of Conrad's story, where he revised it to include a second ship. The fact that they are described as being very close to each other in all these situations, and often sharing a bed, denotes a homosexual content to their relationship. The first is the uneasy relationship amid the captain and his crew. In Contrast, Phelan's essay was less clear. He also makes reference to matters of telling and listening in regards to the narrator, narratee, and Conrad himself as three audiences in the story. This allowed Conrad to incorporate leniency and compassion into his story, two things the captain felt were missing aboard the Cutty Sark. He argues that the story is being told by the captain an unspecified number of years after the events occurred, making Leggatt's existence a figment of his imagination that may have been created by the captain in his mind as a result of Archibold's visit to his ship; Although he does point out that there are contradictions that may disprove this theory, such as the captain's hat in the water at the end of the story. At the time just before he wrote this story, mass publishing was introduced and Conrad faced financial hardships.
Common topics in this essay:
Phelan Levenson,
Detecting Secrets,
Cutty Sark,
Secret Sharer,
Contrast Phelan's,
Gay Movement,
Leggatt Conrad's,
Michael Levenson's,
Joseph Conrad's,
secret sharer,
cutty sark,
Secret History,
aboard cutty sark,
aboard cutty,
essay discuss,
phelan's discussions,
story respect,
homosexual content,
reader-response critics,
captain leggatt,
events story,
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Acceptance Essays
