Self Identity In The Secret Sharer And The Demon Lover

Who are you, what defines you, how did you become who you are, how do you self-identify yourself? Self- identity is a key moment in life. It makes people who they are, and it's hard to figure out but in these stories get a glimpse of how two people figure it out."The Secret Sharer" is about a captain who finds a man in the sea who helps him find himself more than he thought possible through helping the man escape death, "The shadowy, dark head, like mine, seemed to nod imperceptibly above the ghostly gray of my sleeping suit. It was, in the night, as though I had been faced by my own reflection in the depths of a somber and immense mirror"( The Secret Sharer 10). "The Demon Lover" is about a British woman who left her British home with her
In "The Secret Sharer" a lonely captain is stuck on his ship sailing across the ocean with a crew who doesn't know or trust him. This causes him to be in isolation leaving him with his thoughts and imagination, but also with trying to impress the crew he has to show a more leader-like personality to get them to like him. Social isolation can lead to feelings of loneliness, fear of others, or negative self-esteem. The captain is isolated from other people. He longs for a friend and when a random naked man shows up on his ship, it causes him to imagine a friend who acts like he wants to be. A man just like the captain, but more free, suddenly appears in his life of showing the captain who he really is. “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” (Conrad 3). This quotes gives a quick description of what the captain was going through, where he was, and how the only thing he was left with was his own