According to Merrion-Webster Inc. Dictionary, a doppelgänger is a double, an often ghostly or evil counterpart to a character. It comes from the German language, doppel- double + -gänger goer. It might be asked, “What does a doppelgänger have to do with a paper on Joseph Conrad?” The answer is a lot, especially if Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer” is being discussed. In this short story, the two characters, the captain and Leggatt, …showed first 75 words of 1514 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1514 total…in acknowledged by the evil within? At his greatest, that is Conrad’s theme. The captain finally recognized the evil within him when Leggatt, his doppelgänger, left. When he does so, he also finds the piece of himself that he needed to become a real commander on his ship. In other words, when he came to terms with the evil in himself, he transformed the destruction of “self” into the discovery of self (Daleski 171)