11/18 - Conrad

“On my right hand there were lines of fishing-stakes resembling a mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could reach.” (109)

If Conrad’s desire is to make me see before all, then he has sufficiently exercised his power in “The Secret Sharer.” From the moment of confusion at the beginning, as I wondered whether the fishing-stakes were the lines on the palm of his right hand, to the feeling of loss I experience along with the narrator as his “comfort of quiet communion” with his ship (note the alliteration) as other “disturbing” sounds are heard, dragging him from reverie into narrative. (110) I did not want to go anywhere. Seeing what the narrator saw, I was as loath to leave it as he.

The description manages to be journalistic and lyrical all at once. From it, one could take a pencil and draw what he is seeing in the opening, but in the moment of reading, a complex feeling is transmitted as well. The language is sensuous, that is, of the senses. The narrator is describing what he saw and experienced then. The opening to “The Secret Sharer” is neither a geographical textbook nor a pamphlet about running a ship. From the first person, past tense point of view, the narrator provides information because he is remembering, not instructing. It does not seem that a reader is necessary at all, because of how reflective the piece is.

The repetition of sibilant “s” sounds and their alveolar counterparts echoes the title of the story. The sounds in “The Secret Sharer” repeat themselves constantly, in internal alliteration as well as homonym spellings. “Division,” “ocean,” and “crazy” are only three examples of words that, with other spellings, echo the major sounds in the story’s title. The recurrence of these sounds is also a natural echoing of water as it laps on the banks of a river, or the sides of a ship. Conrad’s use of sonic cues creates a mood that is continued even when the narrator’s reverie is disrupted and more characters are introduced.

“She floated at the starting-point of a long journey, very still in an immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the eastward by the setting sun. At that moment I was alone on her decks. There was not a sound in her - and around us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe on the water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky.” (110)

Note the continued used of sibilant and alveolar sounds. Note also the touches of alliteration removed from the major sonic theme. “Flung far,” “setting sun,” “canoe... cloud.” In the first passage, there was also, “division... domain,” “fences... fishes,” and “human habitation.” (109) There are parallels between the things the narrator notices as a lack. “Nothing moved, nothing lived,” as if living is synonymous with movement, when the narrator himself is standing on the ship’s deck, and the ship, “She,” and he are both definitely alive, but both unmoving only for the moment.