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Wexler uses Conrad's story, "The Secret Sharer," to explicate Lacan's theory of "the subject's entry into the symbolic order." A Lacanian reading can account for both the story's rhetorical success and its limits. At the story's conclusion, the captain,
unable to gain mastery through the symbolic order, learns to imitate Leggart, his double whom he envies, by regressing to the preverbal mirror stage (the imaginary order) where he can more fully identify with the other. Conrad considered "The Secret Sharer," in which the written words fully conveyed his perception, a rare success in achieving full communication with the reader. However, the successful communication which the story describes is not at the verbal level. In the climactic scene, when the captain and Leggart perfectly understand each other's meaning, words are primarily reduced to gesture. The author concludes that Conrad's dream of a "common language" uniting reader and writer is impossible. "The Secret Sharer" demonstrates that complete communication can occur only with a double, and never by means of language.