At first while reading the Secret Sharer I got the sense that Leggatt was the narrator’s doppelganger, meant to inspire him to become a captain who would boldly take action. Although this is a viable argument, I was increasingly convinced about the love aspect of their relationship in our class discussion. I thought that the relationship between the men was a stretch. However, as I looked more closely at the text, Conrad’s diction definitely suggested intimacy between the narrator and Leggatt. I now feel like he aimed to disguise a story about homosexual love due to the extreme controversy it would cause during his time period. This seems to make it a more complex and powerful story than I originally thought. The end of the story reinforces this point for me because he takes a major risk for Leggatt, reinforcing the love between the two men.
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