Lord Jim 303past) would be yet another act of cowardice and
self-delusion. And yet, letting Brown go is, of course,
ironically the ultimate act of self-delusion in that he
convinces himself Brown will leave peacefully. Fate
will not allow this to pass unpunished, and Jim dies
as a result. A novel about dreams, delusions and the
prosaic reality of the modern world, Lord Jim offers
an intriguing exploration of the snares and uncer-
tainties of the concept of fate.
Eli Park Sorensen
HerOism in Lord Jim
Romantic sea stories of heroism draw Lord Jim’s
main character, Jim, toward the sea at an early age.
However, during his first meeting with the forces of
the sea, Jim is injured. Failing to show his courage
and heroism on this occasion, he is given another
chance on his next ship, the Patna, which is car-
rying 800 Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. During the
journey, he watches the vast ocean while dreaming
of heroism. Suddenly, the Patna is hit by something,
and while checking the damage, Jim realizes that
the Patna may sink at any minute. Watching the
crew struggling to loosen a lifeboat, he is paralyzed.
One of the crew members suddenly dies of a heart
attack, and after some confusing moments, Jim finds
himself in the lifeboat. In the dark night, the other
crew members have confused the identities of Jim
and the dead officer, and they mock Jim for having
stayed on the Patna. The sudden death of the officer
seems to create an empty slot which Jim has filled
by jumping into the lifeboat, but the slot was not
originally meant for him, and in a symbolic sense,
Jim, or rather his heroic identity, dies or is suspended
in that fateful jump.
The Patna does not sink but is saved by another
ship. The ship’s crew are guilty of appalling derelic-
tion of duty, and they are summoned by the naval
court on charges of cowardice. Only Jim, however,
courageously stands up to the charges in court and
accepts punishment (being stripped of his officer’s
certificate). But his real punishment is the shame of
being associated with cowardice.
During the trial, Jim meets Captain Marlow,
who becomes the narrator of his story. Marlow
constructs an image of Jim as a decent young man
except for some fundamental, existential flaw of
judgment. Jim dreams of becoming a hero but fails
when he gets the chance; subsequently, he insists
on acting as a fallen hero, attempting to atone in
a tragic-heroic way for his previous errors. Jim acts
heroically when he should not and does not when
he should have.
Besides Jim’s ambiguous identity as a hero, Lord
Jim presents other kinds of heroic characters. There
is the heroic figure of Captain Brierly, a highly
respected and successful officer, who mysteriously
commits suicide shortly after Jim has been tried,
because of a shameful secret. Another figure is the
French lieutenant who helps save the abandoned
Patna, but only out of professional duty. Like
the lieutenant, the two Malay steersmen similar
do what Jim ought to have done—namely, stay
onboard the damaged ship, but only because they
were told to do so. Heroism in these cases seems
to be diminished by a prosaic, contradictory factor.
Even more subtly, there is the heroism of the nar-
rator, Marlow, whose altruistic attempt to “rescue”
Jim, like a wrecked ship, exposes the gulf between
ideals and real life.
Marlow eventually persuades the wealthy trader
Stein to hire Jim as manager of a place called Patu-
san, where Jim becomes renowned for his courage
and heroism. All is bliss in this unreal, romanticized
world until the pirate Gentleman Brown arrives. Jim
is aware of Brown’s evil character, but because the
latter appeals to Jim’s heroic ideals, Jim lets him go.
Before the pirate runs away, however, he kills Dain
Waris, the son of a local chief and Jim’s best friend.
Burdened with guilt, Jim courageously visits Dora-
min, Dain Waris’s father, who kills him.
It seems as if Jim finally, at this stage, is ready
to accept the heroic death for which he had been
destined ever since that fateful jump from the Patna.
And yet the novel’s ending, as told by Marlow years
later, is shrouded in ambiguity: The narrator reflects
on the meaning of Jim’s fate and whether he has
redeemed himself through his tragic death, but he
never quite reaches a conclusion. In the end, incon-
clusiveness gets the last word in Lord Jim’s heroic
exploration of the abyss dividing words from actions,
ideals from reality.
Eli Sorensen