Duality of the self in Fyodor Dostoevsky s The Double and Joseph Conrad s The Secret Sharer

Many writers have focused on the investigation of the psychological aspects of duality of the self within a single self which results in the conflict between conscious and unconscious life, the constant menace of personal disintegration which apparently threatens us all and loss of identity consequent both upon mental disorder and the necessity that the character masks his internal life by creating roles to play. Morbid fears of absence or lack of identity that according to Jacque Lacan s Mirror stage says is caused by negation of all secret instincts and desires of the self that helps to the constitution of the double through liberation from repression. This essay examines as to how The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad and The Double by Feyodor Dostoevsky have borrowed the notion of self-duality within the self which results in two completely different outcomes. In Dostoevsky s The Double, the irresolute Golyadkin is oscillated between the search for individuality and self-esteem. Hero s longing to be or not to be ends in fragmentation and break down of the self. But in The Secret Sharer, Conrad displays a communication between the hero and his double that ends in reintegration of the personality, recognition of the necessary balance between the order and freedom.