SOURCE: Schaffer, Carl. “Conrad's Leggatt and the Jewish Golem: Where Parallel Lines Meet.” In Joseph Conrad: East European, Polish and Worldwide, edited by Wieslaw Krajka, pp. 201-13. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Schaffer contends that the character of Leggatt in “The Secret Sharer” is a figure drawn from the Jewish legend of the Golem.

Conrad's novella “The Secret Sharer” has been widely recognized as an allegory of a descent into the self, a remarkable story so resonant that Albert Guerard places it “among the first—one is tempted to say only—symbolist masterpieces in English fiction” (Guerard, 14-15). Whatever the final evaluation may be, certainly the strongest symbolic component is the compelling and elemental figure of Leggatt himself—a luminescent stranger who emerges, almost as if invoked, from the depths of the sea, an outlaw befriended by a young captain on his first command...