Lord Jim begins with the powerful physical description of a man "an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built." He has a deep voice and immaculate dress, being white "from shoes to hat," and he makes his living as a water-clerk in "various Eastern ports." He is "very popular." This image is layered with attributes that arise in a consideration of what is required to be a water-clerk of quality. Thus the reader learns that the man has "Ability in the abstract" and that he is able to apply it "practically." The man is called "Jim."

Jim comes to be known as "Tuan Jim" or "Lord Jim" among the Malays of the jungle village where he lives "incognito." Answering just how he becomes "Lord Jim" and just why he is "incognito" is the project of the tale. Jim is rootless, moving farther and farther east, escaping whatever fact of his history that seems to be following him. Born the son of a parson, he is answering the call of the sea. He is smart, physically fit, and a dreamer of danger and success.

The reader, however, now learns of a collision at sea where Jim leapt to his feet but was beaten. "Too late, youngster," the captain of the ship tells him, as the glory of the rescue falls like a wreath over the bowman, who jumped first, "a boy with a face like a girl's and big grey eyes." Jim is angry and frustrated with his missed opportunity to be a hero.

Two years of training and life on the sea pass, and Jim feels let down by the humdrum nature of his experiences. The sea, he feels, is not so full of the adventures he once imagined. Jim is "chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested" (12). He spends some time on his back because of an injury and is left at a hospital in an "Eastern port." When able, Jim descends into the nearby port town and studies the nature of men and life around him, all sharing the same calling of the sea. In time, he discards the idea of returning to England and chooses, instead, to become chief mate of the Patna, an old local steamer, manned by a vastly overweight New South Wales German captain. The steamer is headed for Mecca with eight hundred pilgrims led by an Arab leader in white, who offers a prayer. There are only five white men on board.

At night, as Jim contemplates the Arabian Sea from the bridge of the steamer, the speed steady, and the human landscape of passengers asleep, fathers and sons, beneath him, he considers his romantic dreams--"the success of his imaginary achievements" (18). The German captain appears with too little clothing; the second engineer complains. A conversation takes place regarding drink and being drunk, and then fear and courage, but "those men did not belong to the world of heroic adventure" (23). Suddenly, the three of them are lurched by the force of a disturbance beneath the boat. The sound is like the "faint noise of thunder ... hardly more than a vibration" (24).

Analysis

Lord Jim begins with a direct, close-up view of its subject: Jim. His physical description is at first powerfully impressed upon the reader, and then the reader encounters the mysterious manner in which he drifts through the world. He is a clean-cut, well-liked young man, but the mystery is that he is constantly trying to outrun or escape a fact of his past. The reader is brought into a state of curiosity. Who is this young man? Why is he trying to maintain himself incognito? Why is he a water-clerk, when he appears to be gifted with intelligence and talent? And, most importantly, what is the fact from which he is so energetically trying to escape?

The reference to Jim as having "Ability in the abstract" is crucial to the construction of his character in the novel. He is gifted with a kind of genius, but it only exists in an abstract way. The effort is then to realize this "ability" in the real world, to take action, to create change, and to realize the potential of such an "ability." It is further important to note that Jim is never given a surname throughout the narrative. In this way, the lone "Jim" strikes the reader as intimately present yet anonymous, illustrating precisely the kind of ambiguity for which Conrad is famous. When the reader is then told that Jim becomes "Tuan Jim" or "Lord Jim," Conrad drives the dramatic motion of the novel by causing curiosity regarding how Jim will attain this title.

The view in the narrative then cuts to a significant moment in his personal history, the occasion when he was too late in seizing the opportunity to rescue a person at sea. Angry with the lost opportunity, Jim expresses his romantic temperament; this part of the tale also allows us to see his motivations for pursuing a life at sea in the first place. He is a dreamer, and he seems to be confident of some aspect of his self as being more than capable of achieving his dreams. This dreaming quality is characteristic of much of the driving force for young men to pursue a life at sea, and in this way Jim becomes a quintessential example of youthful aspiration. A question is then immediately suggested: how will Jim mature? How will he move from being a dreaming young man to the man running from his past and then a man with the title "Lord Jim"?

One night, Jim observes his fellow crew members, thinking that they are not part of the world of "heroic adventure." Thus Jim differentiates himself: "he shared the air they breathed, but he was different" (23). Now, as the sudden and strange vibration occurs beneath the ship, the situation leads us to ask: will Jim be able to prove his difference?

The narrative jumps ahead a month or so, creating suspense regarding actually occurred on the Patna. Jim is now being questioned about the incident, via the official Inquiry of a police court in an unnamed English port town. He experiences an intense distance between the "facts" pursued by the assessors--one with "thoughtful blue eyes" and the other "heavy, scornful"--and his actual experience. Jim believes there was a collision with a "water-logged wreck," which created a "big hole below the waterline" (26). Jim says he was fearful of a great mob panic and certain the steamer would sink like a "lump of lead," and he now attempts to justify his actions and emotions at the time of the incident. For the reader, the real story is still cloaked in narrative mystery. As Jim scans the audience from the witness box, his eyes meet those of another man--who proves to be Marlow.

The narrative cuts to Marlow on a "verandah draped in motionless foliage and crowned with flowers" (29). He now lifts the thread of the preceding narrative by remarking, "My eyes met his for the first time at that inquiry," and he points out the notoriety of the affair, how it had been the subject of much talk (30). Near the harbor office, he sees the four men involved in the incident along the quay--his "first view" of Jim.

In the hospital visiting one of his men, Marlow realizes that one of the castaways from the Patna is a patient, a man with a "drooping white moustache" (40). Tempted by the possibility of a firsthand account of the affair, Marlow inquires gently. The man asserts, "I saw her go down." He seems delusional with his visions of reptiles (pink toads) filling up the ship. Marlow concludes that the man's account is not material to the inquiry.

Analysis

The narrative has jumped ahead in time and, while creating dramatic suspense, it also marks the beginning of Conrad's inventive "piecing together" of the story of Jim. As the storyline leaps from the moment of strange vibration beneath the steamship to Jim's place on the witness stand, and then as he is questioned about the occurrence, the reader wonders what happened on the ship. Did Jim prove his mettle, and what was the fate of the hundreds of Muslim passengers on board?

Despite the reader's position as inquirer, the narrator's perspective is omniscient, since the reader is told what is actually going on in Jim's mind as he offers his testimony about the facts. The disparity Jim experiences between the facts that the inquiry requires him to tell and his memory of the actual experience is crucial, and this difference is a fundamental problem that obsessively characterizes much of Conrad's work. Slim, cold facts can seldom provide more than a skeletal frame for any story or event or person. The rest of the picture is far more ambiguous and flexible, involving emotions, memory, and perception. These items can have a distorting effect on the facts, but they lend fullness to the understanding. Conrad apparently suggests that despite the risk of distortion, relaying the depth of experience is perhaps the best way to convey human truths.

The narrative experiences a profound shift in perspective from the moment Jim looks out from his witness box, and at this point Marlow appears in the reader's eye. The change happens at the moment their eyes first touch. Jim, the reader learns, has experienced a feeling of kindred spirit or of some kind of intelligent and understanding communion, as though he knows Marlow already. This moment of recognition foreshadows the close relationship that will form between them, and it reinforces the repeated statement to be made by Marlow that Jim "is one of us." The glimpse of solidarity at that moment is important to Jim, whose mental state is not unlike that of a "prisoner" or a "wayfarer lost in a wilderness." Though the reader is in suspense regarding the fate of the ship and its passengers, as well as how Jim has come to be in the witness box, the reader is led to a sense of trust in Marlow, precisely because of Jim's initial impression. From there, Marlow becomes the teller of the story, sitting at a verandah before an audience, relating how Jim's eyes first met his during the inquiry.

Marlow's perspective on Jim is both sympathetic and critical. When the novel shifts entirely into Marlow's voice, we infer that it is really Conrad's in a new guise, providing a kind of border-sphere around Jim's story.

Turning to the official Inquiry, Marlow describes the magistrate as "patient" and then dives into great detail about the assessor Brierly or "Big Brierly." Brierly seems bored (but, in fact, he is exasperated) with the entire affair since he, Marlow conjectures, had never made such a mistake in his life. Brierly is 32 years old, a success, and the commander of the Ossa, the crack ship of the Blue Star line. The mysterious thing, of course, is that Brierly later commits suicide, a fact that Marlow overlays as he tells of Jim at the Inquiry. Brierly looks contemptuously at Jim, so Marlow guesses that perhaps there has been some sort of parallel inquiry into the depths of Brierly's own heart--and the discovery of some guilt. Marlow adds that Jones, Brierly's first mate and witness to Brierly's death-leap into the sea, had told Marlow that the last words on Brierly's lips had been for the safety of his dog Rover. Marlow then moves toward the telling of his own final conversation with Brierly, tinged now in his memory with this known end. He remembers that they were talking about the Patna and that Brierly had been furious. He had judged it all a shame and a disgrace.

The discussion of Brierly is immediately followed by an account of Marlow's first personal encounter with Jim. There is an insult in the air, and Jim mistakes Marlow as the source; this misjudgment becomes the basis of their meeting. Jim is on the defensive, and yet, again, he seems "strangely passive" (57). He asks Marlow why Marlow was staring at him so particularly during the proceedings, and Jim's general sense of humiliation and disappointment is palpable. Marlow, apparently fascinated by his upfront view of the man, invites Jim to the Malabar House for dinner.

The dining hall of the hotel teems, and Marlow studies Jim further, noting "his frank aspect, the artless smile, the youthful seriousness." He concludes, as he will conclude time and again, that "he was one of us," meaning "of the right sort" (62). The reader now is afforded a more intimate view of Jim during this meeting. His father, Jim confides, must have seen it all in the home papers by then. Jim says he will never again be able to face him and, as if Marlow's own age and wisdom can stand in for the figure Jim feels he has lost, Jim now attempts to justify all of his fears--how he had not been thinking of himself in the boat incident, but of the pilgrims. There had only been seven boats.

Analysis

As Marlow observes the progression of the official inquiry, he comments that, with regard to the proceedings, "Its object was not the fundamental why, but the superficial how, of this affair" (46). In other words, the "how" indicates an attention to facts and details regarding the occurrence, while the "why" requires a deeper meditation upon the event in question. While the "how" limits itself to an outside objective view of the facts and visible actions, the "why" requires an exploration of the state of a man's soul: why did he act in such a manner? Why did he not act otherwise? This distinction refigures Jim's discomfort with discussing only the facts of the event, while his own inner life is a whorl of confusion. However, the nature of official legal proceedings and judgments is often, if only for the sake of efficiency and objectivity, strictly geared toward collecting the undisputed facts. The deeper and more subtle details of a story require just that: a story. Hence, the novel undertakes the task of the "why," which the Inquiry fails to address.

The significant minor character Brierly is an assessor of the proceedings involving Jim and the Patna incident. According to Marlow--though he is not at all certain, because he does not know Brierly's inner life at all--Brierly may have begun an inquiry into his own soul during the proceedings. What he might have found there is later suggested as quite disturbing, given his suicide leap into the sea. So, with Brierly, the reader is offered an objective view of the facts, a little conjecture, and the actions of a man, which again introduce the question "Why?"

When Marlow tells of how he and Jim first met, noting that the encounter is caused by a misjudgment on Jim's part, the incident shows how Jim continually misjudges or misreads a situation. It is also important in that Marlow, in the end, by telling Jim's story, arrives at a more complete picture and a profound and forgiving view of Jim's character.

Marlow notes that Jim "was one of us," and the statement assumes a variety of connotations throughout the novel. The root of the statement is the comment God makes in Genesis after Adam has eaten the forbidden fruit: "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil." The implication, perhaps, is that Jim is the one carrying a heightened self-awareness regarding his qualities, his shortcomings, and his potential, even though he perhaps has not been the best judge of his situation. In any event, his character assumes more depth and detail at this point. We learn that he was adamant to see the proceeding through, despite the humiliating gossip that would follow him afterwards. Through this awareness, and plagued by feelings of grief, Jim is "an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be" (64-65).

In another sense, the assertion that "he was one of us" binds Marlow more closely to Jim. Their joint presence in this novel, indicative of the level of common experience that binds humankind, may also hint that Marlow sees in Jim something of his own beginnings and youth--the same illusions, the same romantic ideals. The questions then become: how will Jim mature? What will Jim make of it all? What kind of man will he become?

Jim now tells his story to Marlow, who, in turn, is telling his audience. The boats, according to Jim, were tied all along the bridge of the Patna. He knew his duty, and he was considering it when a passenger, one of the Muslims, said something about "water," again and again. Jim feared that the worst was becoming known, but he soon realized that the man was asking for water for his young, ill son. Jim gave him the water and immediately regretted his own lack, wanting a drink then himself. The skipper said to "Clear out," and Jim stood frozen, indecisive. He did not know what to do, but he insists that to do anything, "you must believe there is a chance." He held little faith in the iron of the ship.

On the second day of the proceedings, one of the men with Jim began rattling off all the names of the dead skippers and ships he had known that had been lost--lost from life, but not quite from the memories of those gathered. That was a moment that struck Marlow. The story now returns to the dining hall, where Jim begins to laugh openly and with bitterness, drawing the attention of those around them. A silence falls, and Marlow chastises Jim, who responds that they will believe he is only drunk.

Marlow continues: according to Jim, he intended to cut the lifeboats so they wouldn't sink with the steamer. The others managed to push a single boat into the water, ignoring Jim's "passive heroism" (81). He was frozen by visions of the bodies, laid out for death--he asks Marlow, "What would you have done?" (83). (The conversation between Marlow and Jim takes on a kind of sparring quality here.) The other men jumped into the boat, and they were calling for George to jump also. Jim jumped instead, almost beyond his volition. After he tells Marlow that he jumped, he adds the perfunctory, "It seems"; he was aware that there would be no going back. He jumped into a well, "an everlasting deep hole" (87).

From the sea in the little boat, the yellow gleam of the steamer's masthead looked like the last star, and then it went out. On the little boat, the men were thinking of the ship sinking with all of its passengers, without a sound--sparing them the voices of human struggle in the waters. The man named George, they realized, never made it. He apparently had turned back for something and had gone down with the ship.

As the sun rose, Jim admits, he was deliberating with himself about whether or not he would die. The captain insisted that he would die; Jim countered that he would not.

Analysis

As Jim explains what happened on the night of the incident, he finds in Marlow an attentive listener. He explains, first, how the fear began to rise within him. Marlow notes that Jim does not want a judge or an "official Inquiry" but rather "an ally, a helper, an accomplice" (73). He is looking for sympathy, a sense that his reaction to the situation was a human reaction. In this way, his "testimony" to Marlow in their conversation contrasts with the testimony he gave earlier on the witness stand. This begins the more significant inquiry, the inquiry into Jim's soul, and this kind of inquiry, the novel implies, requires a kind of sympathy and understanding from the likes of "an ally" or "accomplice."

The steamship becomes a symbol, its iron metal something that Marlow refers to as being as "tough sometimes as the spirit of some men we meet now and then, worn to a shadow and breasting the weight of life" (77). In other words, the ship becomes representative of the human condition, struggling to survive, featuring both age and experience. The crew, including Jim, misjudges the steamship's ability to stay afloat, and the trick of the eye in the perception that the light of the ship was going out, together with the conclusion that the ship has sunk, stands for a series of misjudgments about human nature in the novel. When Jim leaps from the ship into the lifeboat, Marlow comments: "your ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the world that made you, restrained you, taken care of you" (94). In other words, the steamer, figuring "iron" as the metal of man's endurance, as well as the world that has "taken care of you," becomes a lesson regarding the strength latent in human beings. The key point is that the ship did not actually fail Jim. To the contrary, Jim failed his ship. For the remainder of the novel, Jim will attempt to rectify this misjudgment by maintaining a faith within himself that he is, in spite of it all, capable of doing something great with his life--capable of achieving his dreams.

The situation on the Patna is unique, however, and Marlow recognizes that no man knows how he would respond in that situation. Jim asks him pointedly, "What would you have done?" but what can one really expect of oneself in the hypothetical place of another? Brierly, the narrative implies, had imagined the situation himself and had arrived at an answer that had deeply disappointed him. In being absolutely honest with himself, he possibly had perceived a deep hypocrisy. Marlow, in contrast, simply does not answer Jim's question.

Another detail to keep in mind is that Jim's "jump" into the lifeboat is an action that is described as a kind of reflex. The instinct to survive may be strong enough to counter a possible display of courage. Does such an action then truly reflect a person's character? The ambiguity here seems to be that to stay behind and risk sinking with the ship would be counter to the human impulse to struggle and survive.

Jim thanks Marlow for listening to his story. He says it has done him good, and Marlow feels camaraderie with the young man. Jim insists that they are both "gentlemen," reinforcing the sense of a common experience between them. But Marlow grows dark in the retelling, stating that Jim "had robbed our common life of the last spark of its glamour" (101). The men in the boat had conjured a story to tell the world. Jim asks Marlow, then, "What do you believe?" and Marlow experiences a "profound and hopeless fatigue" (102).

The Avondale rescued the castaways, and they told their story. They related how they had freed the first lifeboat when the steamer had sunk like lead beneath them. Eventually, however, the irony of the incident is made clear to the reader, since the steamer never sank. Their imagination had been playing tricks on them. The light going out had only been the turning of the ship. A French gunboat discovered the steamer with its masses free of plague and with the fascinating corpse of a dead white man, George, on the bridge. Marlow had heard the real story from the lips of the very lieutenant who had stayed on the ship for thirty hours, signaling to the gunboat as it tugged the Patna to the nearest English port.

His chance meeting with the lieutenant had happened in Sydney, and Marlow remembers that the man had been irritated by the recollection. Their conversation, speckled with French in parentheses, arrived at the lieutenant's simple assessment: "And so that poor young man ran away along with the others" (111). Marlow was struck by the simplicity and truth in the statement, and the exactitude of its tenor. The Frenchman, however, then announced bombastically that he had never known of such a loss of honor. Marlow almost left his seat, but he was appeased.

Marlow's narrative than skips ahead to an episode when he saw Jim in Samarang, a port city in northern Java, working for De Jongh on Marlow's own recommendation, as a water-clerk--a dull occupation. Marlow begins to wonder then why he is so protective of Jim and why he has such an intense interest in Jim's fate. His memory flows into the past, past De Jongh's shop, to their conversations at the Malabar House. Jim had seemed a condemned man then, laden with guilt and touched by the inevitability of execution. As they had parted that evening, Marlow had been struck by Jim's refusal of help, despite being unsteady and unsure of himself, with so little faith. The parting was embarrassing, almost excruciating, and Jim was only twenty-four.

Analysis

As the relationship between Marlow and Jim deepens, and Marlow becomes the "helper" or "ally" Jim needs, Marlow is struck by a feeling of disappointment. Jim becomes the quintessential figure of youth and possibility--or, as Marlow refers to him, of a "beginning." There is wistfulness in his tone, not unlike the wistfulness those in their mature years feel in looking upon youth. Men all seek the life at sea for the same reason, perhaps; each may be driven by the same romantic dreams of adventure and honor and success. Most, however, eventually fall into a state of disenchantment, the natural state of maturity. For Marlow, the feeling of disappointment in Jim rises in such a way as to cause the comment that it had been as if Jim "had robbed our common life of the last spark of its glamour" (101). This comment serves to place Jim, then, in the position of needing to reclaim the "glamour." Though Jim may have failed in the Patna incident, there is no indication that he is disenchanted by the possibilities of his romantic dreams; he is only disenchanted with himself. Thus, when Jim asks Marlow what he believes, the suggestion is that Jim is still driven by his belief in adventure and romance and the imaginative wellsprings that drive men to the sea. Marlow, on the other hand, has grown. He probably has not tasted the life of glamor, or he has come to conclude that such a life cannot really exist. His response is a general tiredness, suggesting that belief, generally, becomes tested and thus insecure.

When the narrative illuminates how the steamship had not actually sunk, we become aware of the effects of illusion. The illusion of the light going out had been misread by the crew, and this illusion of the eye stands for a landscape of deeper human illusions. The realization of one's mistake or illusory misinterpretation of reality leads to disenchantment.

As the friendship between Marlow and Jim begins to develop, the reader sees Marlow become increasingly concerned about Jim's fate. But the narrative cuts then to a view of the French lieutenant, a significant minor character, who presents a model of conduct. The novel continually cuts back and forth among Marlow's observations, the perspectives he gathers from other sources, and pure imaginative conjecture, as he builds the case for an inquiry into Jim's soul.

The French lieutenant's conduct contrasts severely with the conduct of the crew of the Patna. Unlike them, he had ignored the dangers of the ship sinking and the possibility of pandemonium among the passengers; instead he remained with it for thirty hours as it was tugged to shore. Conrad's sensitive ear for foreign accents and dialect is also highlighted in his conversation, in that he speckles French throughout. (Conrad was fluent in French, and the international flavor of life at sea is intensified by his facility with language.)

The French lieutenant's statement that "One does not die of it ... Of being afraid" becomes key. It implies that fear is ultimately about self-preservation on a basic level, a point that was illustrated by the behavior of the crewmen of the Patna. The reverse of the statement would be that one lives well if one defeats fear and lives courageously without it--a paradox, since such a way of life confronts the possibility of death closely. This tension suggests the way that the novel unfolds and how Jim, having learned his lesson from the Patna, eventually learns to live in precisely this more noble manner. While living by reflex and instinct can lead to basic human survival, the ability to overcome these instincts is to live by something higher, an ideal of conduct and belief. In this way, a man becomes properly "one of us," in the Biblical sense that the mere man becomes something more than an unaware Adam and more like God.

When Marlow becomes defensive of Jim during his conversation with the French lieutenant, he asks himself why. This protective feeling is something of an enigma, even to Marlow, but it can be inferred that he again senses a commonality between them, and that the concern for Jim's fate relates directly to some important trait hidden inside Marlow.

Marlow, detained by his chief mate (who was waiting to receive a letter from his wife), attends the final day of the Inquiry, where the judgment is to be announced. The entire thing, he thinks to himself, has the sense of an exaggerated view of a common occurrence--where the crime was a very subtle, yet worse than a beheading. The judgments come in: the ship is deemed not to have been seaworthy, but it was navigated properly at the time of the accident. The result, for Jim, is that his certificates are cancelled; he is effectively exiled from the sea.

After the event, Marlow hears a voice behind him say, "man overboard" (123). The man is Chester, a West Australian "pearler, wrecker, trader, whaler" in search of a steamer to buy. He nods in Jim's direction and asks Marlow, "Takes it to heart?" (123). Marlow nods, and Chester, along with his partner Captain Robinson, an "emaciated patriarch in a suit of white drill" and a white beard, are together embarking in a sordid business scheme on a far-off island, to which Chester suggests that Marlow prod Jim to go and work. Marlow defeats the suggestion, offending Chester and Captain Robinson, but then considers it again in his hotel room as he writes his letters. Jim is with him there, like "a little child" (130). Marlow admits that he can't help but feel responsibility for the young man who, by that point, "stood on the brink of a vast obscurity, like a lonely figure by the shore of a somber, and hopeless ocean" (132).

The reader learns that Chester and his crew, en route for the sordid business, disappeared into a hurricane. The story continues with a storm, a growl of thunder, and Jim in Marlow's hotel room finally taking his seat. Marlow explains that the letter he is writing is to an old friend of his, one who will give him a home and good work. "You must let me help you," Marlow says. Jim likewise at first resists, but he eventually recognizes the value of chance and this chance. He is grateful, and the scene is described through a tangle of weather and emotion.

Six months later, Marlow receives a happy letter from his friend, the owner of a rice mill, who has been enjoying Jim's company thoroughly. Marlow describes it as an "active liking," though the friend is very curious about the nature of Jim's guilt (141). After a trip north, upon returning to Hong Kong harbor, Marlow finds another letter, this time carrying the news that Jim has gone. Yet another letter in the pile is from Jim himself, who explains that the second engineer of the Patna had appeared to take a temporary job overseeing the machinery of the mill. Jim could not stand to be near him, so he left, and he was now employed with Egstrom & Blake, ship-chandlers, as their water-clerk. Marlow eventually finds himself in those parts, and when he sees Jim, Jim expresses how bad he felt having deserted the man who had become "like a father" (143).

On his next trip to the region, however, Marlow finds that Jim left Egstrom & Blake three weeks earlier, when the Sarah W. Granger came in with pilgrims from the Red Sea. Marlow asks if there was talk of the Patna, and Egstrom, surprised, says that there was. Captain O'Brien called the incident a "disgrace to human nature," and he called all the seamen involved "Skunks!" (146). He followed this with the comment that "it stinks here now," an ambiguous insinuation that he knew exactly who Jim was, though Egstrom had not understood his meaning at the time. Just after the company departed, Jim set his sandwich down and announced that he would be off. Egstrom says it seemed as if he were running away, and at Jim's parting he said, "mark my words, if you keep up this game you'll very soon find that the earth ain't big enough to hold you" (148). Jim had been uneasy.

Analysis

The final judgment of the Inquiry is ironic in deeming the steamship not to be seaworthy, since it had proven its mettle in spite of the damage that had been done to it. Regardless, the result of Jim's commitment to telling the facts of the incident to the best of his knowledge is the cancellation of his certificates. In other words, he is exiled from work at sea. Confined to the land with a kind of death sentence--killing the dreams of romantic adventure Jim might have realized--he receives a chance at a fresh start when Marlow insists on offering him help.

The first opportunity that Jim has, however, and one that Marlow rejects for him, is an unpleasant one, and it would have led to a definite death at sea (since Chester's crew is lost in a hurricane). Marlow, then, figures as Jim's protector or guardian of his fate. The fact that Jim knows he can never face his father again calls attention to his need for another man to fill that role for him now. Marlow, in response, sends Jim to a friend of his with a job at a rice mill; since the man is a bachelor and without children, the hope is apparently that Jim will become an adopted son and inherit the rice mill. Then, when Marlow receives positive word from his friend that all is going well between Jim and the man, Marlow appears to have been right about Jim's worth: Jim has a good heart and a character worth preserving.

Jim's humiliation regarding the Patna incident, however, takes the form of a fundamental character flaw. This character flaw is more than an aspect of his personality; it constitutes a part of his personal history, and he is unable to release himself from the memory of his action and state of mind at a particularly distressing time. His personality responds to and obsesses over this failure, and Jim runs away from whatever life he is building if news of the failure penetrates the people around him. Thus he runs from Marlow's friend and his work, and he likewise runs from the ship-chandlers. In both places, he achieved an amiable intimacy with these other persons, but in both cases his "clean slate" is sullied. It is too much for him to bear when the second engineer from the Patna arrives at the rice mill for employment, and the ship captain arriving at Egstrom & Blake seems to recognize who Jim is by his comment that "it stinks here now." Having exhausted his other resources, Marlow soon will turn to his friend Stein for help.

Jim's behavior evinces a desire to seek and remain in a space that is "a clean slate," free of the memory of his failure. He seeks to be anonymous and to begin again. Chester's statement to Marlow was that Jim takes it all too much to heart, and this observation is correct: Jim's failure has become too much a part of his personality. Although Jim runs, the circulating nature of story of rumor in these colonial reaches means that word of mouth travels far--Egstrom even states that the entire earth will not be big enough to hide from the past. The question now is: How will Jim mature, given this flaw and the way it has been expressed through his actions?

Marlow notes that the irony of Jim's "retreat" is that he becomes famous for being an eccentric "rolling stone" who mysteriously disappears from his work at a moment's notice. In Bangkok, Marlow discovers, Jim is hired by the Yucker Brothers, who charter ships and deal in teak. Schomberg, an Alsatian hotelkeeper, who was boarding Jim, informs Marlow of what has happened to Jim in the city. There was a barroom scuffle with a cross-eyed Dane who was drunk; he had made some remark that had set Jim off. No one had heard what had been said, but Jim had pushed the Dane into the water, from the verandah of the bar. Marlow expresses concern about the possible degradation of Jim's character, so he arranges for Jim to have a position as a water-clerk at De Jongh's. He asks Jim if maybe he wants to head West or go to California for a fresh start. But Jim doesn't think there is any point to that. What he wants, more than anything, is another opportunity.

This is where Marlow decides to consult with his friend Stein, a wealthy and respected merchant and head of a large inter-island business called Stein & Co. The company consists of a small fleet of schooners and native craft, and it deals in island produce on a large scale. Stein is trustworthy and intelligent, with a student's face and a spirited personality, and is a collector of butterflies. Marlow describes him as "solitary, but not misanthropic" (157). His history had been that of a romantic, as well as tragic. Born in Bavaria and then becoming a revolutionary by the age of twenty-two, Stein traveled to Tripoli, and then he assisted a Dutch naturalist, collecting insects and birds for four years. The Dutchman had gone home, and Stein eventually met a benevolent Scotsman named Alexander M'Neil. The old trader had been friends with the queen of the native court of the Wajo States, and he introduced Stein as his son, so that he would inherit the trade in the event of his death. The queen passed, and during the political intrigues that followed with regard to the succession to the throne, Stein assisted the party of the younger son, his very good friend, "my poor Mohammed Bonso." Stein married this friend's sister, "the Princess," having a daughter with her named Emma. As quickly as a flaming match is extinguished--as Stein dramatically illustrates to Marlow--his friend was assassinated, and his wife and daughter both died of an infectious fever.

In a key scene of the novel, as Stein examines a seven-inch-long butterfly in one of his glass cases, an insect with white veins and a yellow-spotted border, he offers the story of how he came upon it. One afternoon, he was ambushed, and after successfully beating the men who had tried to kill him, he saw the butterfly. It flew. This story presents Marlow with his opening to discuss, instead, a specimen of man: Jim's case. Stein, after listening, concludes: "He is romantic." The following conversation discusses the subtle questions of how to be, how to live, and the nature of the "romantic." In the end, though, Marlow concludes that no one is more romantic than Stein.

As Marlow and Stein eventually turn to the practical matter of what to do about Jim, the narrative shifts, and Marlow asks his audience if they have ever heard of Patusan, the remote place where Stein sends Jim. Stein does know the intricacies of the place, and he explains to Marlow that there was a woman there, a Dutch-Malay girl, educated, who had a tragic history. Her unfortunate marriage to Cornelius, a man for whom Stein shows evident dislike, caused sympathy in Stein. He had made Cornelius the manager of the trade post in Patusan for his wife's sake. In the end, however, the appointment had been bad for business, and the wife had died anyway. The result of telling the story is that Jim is to be sent to Patusan to relieve Cornelius of the post.

The narrative then leaps toward an ambiguous assertion of Jim's success in Patusan. Marlow goes to visit him there, and upon seeing Jim he is struck by the change that has come over him: "He appeared like a creature not only of another kind but of another essence" (173). Jim states that his first day in Patusan had almost been his last, but that the chance was his at last. He had proved himself; he had achieved for himself a dream.

Analysis

When Marlow learns of Jim's barroom brawl, the implication is that Jim's obsession regarding his own failure has begun to express itself bitterly in moments of violence. This is not unlike the manner in which Jim's later foil, Brown, will be presented. In other words, at this point Jim, without prospect of another opportunity to prove his worth in the world, is in danger of slipping away from the positive category, "one of us."

Marlow, however, continually serves as Jim's ally and seeks help from his illustrious friend Stein, a colorfully romantic character who has lived a fairy tale, having been given odd opportunities that have flourished into a life where he was even married to a princess. Stein had a family, a best friend, and a high place with a native court, and the fantastical feel to his entire story is striking against the thus far relatively bleak picture of Jim's failure, life at sea, and uninspiring work. Stein, a romantic figure, is a good, solitary man, not friendless because he seems to be a close friend of Marlow. Although he has weathered tragedy, he has reemerged as a highly successful merchant. The poignancy of the scene derived from the vision of butterflies and from the look into a man's spectacular past, is offset by Stein's sorrow: despite it all, the most precious of his dreams were never realized.

The scene between Marlow and Stein is thus punctuated with a sense of illumination and beauty. Stein lights a match and then extinguishes it to illustrate the fleeting nature of his past, his family, and life itself. Fortune's wheel first spun in his favor and then just as easily reversed his luck. When the reader learns the fantastical story in which Stein defeats multiple men who tried to ambush him, the romanticism is soon replaced with the romantic flight of a mysterious and rare butterfly. That butterfly is now spread beneath a glass case, and when one considers its beauty and perfection--a perfection only the artist Nature can make--one is struck by the similarity between the specimen butterfly and the specimen man, perhaps recalling Hamlet's meditation upon the human skull in Shakespeare's play. Stein, indeed, refers to the words of "your great poet" (161). He states that the question for the romantic is not how to be cured, but rather how one is to live (161). According to Stein, the romantic seizes the opportunity, just as he had seized, in the wake of an ambush, a rare butterfly. To be cured is, in a way, to grow out of one's dreams and to set them aside, allowing for disenchantment in maturity. This is likely to be Marlow's as well as the general case, yet for Stein, in spite of his tragic experiences, the idea is to live and to remain a romantic at heart. Stein clings to the butterflies, to his dreams, fueling a merchant empire, continuing to live for his romantic vision. The question of how to live also echoes against the earlier statement by the French lieutenant that one does not die of being afraid. In conquering fear, one may die, but one may also continue to live in a higher fashion.

At the same time, Stein follows these considerations with something that takes on a maxim-like quality in the novel: "A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea" (162). Remembering the comment by Chester that Jim was a "man overboard," achieving the dream is like falling into the sea, a kind of death of the old self. At the same time, the image is not particularly hopeful; death appears inevitable.

The juxtaposition of the butterfly in the glass case as a specimen of Nature and Jim as a specimen of man is crucial, because it points to two particular artists. While Nature creates masterpieces, man, according to Stein, is not a masterpiece. Man is never perfect. The ultimate paradox of the novel, then, is that the novel functions as a masterful painting of the man Jim in all his imperfections, so intimately and delicately captured, with the fineness of detail expressed by Nature in its butterflies. In this portrait, the man achieves a kind of perfection nevertheless. The wholeness of a man, with all of his contradictions, spells the kind of truth art seeks to capture. While butterflies become increasingly fragile beneath their glass cases, indicative of the fragility of beauty and of illusion, the art of the novel, the art of language, and, ultimately, the art of life itself, impresses upon time a kind of permanence.

As Stein and Marlow discuss Jim in an abstract and idyllic way, Stein insists, in the end, on a practical solution. This refers back to the fact presented early in the novel that Jim has "Ability in the abstract." The problem is then how "Ability" is to be expressed in Jim's world. In Stein's case, the reader can assume that he has been quite successful reading his own situation, as well as expressing his abilities in the world, given his status and success. Hence, in the cyclical way that life seems to move in this novel, Stein passes an opportunity to Jim, reflecting the way that Stein himself had been visited by opportunity. Stein perceptively decides to send Jim to Patusan, a remote place where the news of his failure is unlikely to penetrate. Jim leaps at the chance. But knowing how Stein's dream had closed, readers see that the tragedy of Jim's new life in Patusan is already foreshadowed.

On his way to Patusan, Jim carries a letter from Mr. Stein to Cornelius, together with a silver ring common among natives as his introduction to Doramin, Mr. Stein's "war-comrades" friend. Doramin gave him the ring as a parting gift and promise of eternal friendship. Stein had saved Doramin's life at one point. Now Jim keeps the ring around his neck.

Set to leave, Marlow notices three books tumble out of Jim's valise: the complete Shakespeare. Marlow is struck by this choice of Jim's. He is also struck when Jim, taking the revolver Marlow has offered him, forgets the two small boxes of cartridges. Jim calls to Marlow: "You - shall - hear - of - me" (182).

Marlow visits Patusan two years later, and at the mouth of the river, the elderly headman of the fisher-folk village comes to board Stein's schooner and tells Marlow about a certain "Tuan Jim," the first white man he ever saw. As he goes down the river, he can see Jim going down the river for the first time, and the narrative subtly shifts to Jim's perspective: Jim is describing how he felt seeing the first houses, how the boat came onto the bank. A boat full of armed men behind him, people coming out of the gate straight at him, his revolver empty, he just stood there. He asked them what was the matter, and it stunned them. Kassim, the Rajah's counselor, announced that the Rajah wanted to see him.

The Rajah kept him prisoner for three days. He was a fearful soul who hated Doramin and was deeply afraid of Jim. Jim was held by the north front of the stockade which, on his third day in Patusan, he leaped over. His leap of escape was a flying one over the mouth of a muddy creek. Traveling by foot, he reached Doramin, as the women screamed and children cried. He produced the ring.

Doramin and his motherly wife were of the merchant class and were viewed with great respect and dignity. They were involved in a deep, factional fight regarding trade, since the Rajah had been pretending he was the only trader in the country. Doramin, fat, imposing, monumental, and motionless, was growing old, and the area was fraught with insecurity. The couple had had a son late in life, named Dain Waris. Dain Waris was very distinguished and about twenty-four or twenty-five. He was adored by his parents, and he would become Jim's best friend. Dain Waris understands Jim very well.

Jim next describes to Marlow the extent to which he has become a legend. Like a judge, he feels a keen responsibility for the social order. Many believe he has supernatural powers. An old man from a faraway village even came to ask Jim if he should divorce his wife. A key victory in war settled his stature and respect, having concluded a quarrel with the Rajah. A stockade that had already been knocked to pieces caused the story to circulate that Jim had thrown it down with the touch of a finger. Dain Waris had saved Jim's life at that time. There had been a hot five minutes in the stockade, and then all was clear. Jim cries that it was "Immense!" (204). As a result of the battle, Tamb' Itam, a stranger to Patusan who had been detained by the Rajah, bolted from him in order to become Jim's devoted servant. He was inseparable from Jim, like a "morose shadow" (204).

Analysis

The narrative scatters chronologically. The reader gets a brief view of Jim's success in Patusan, and we learn that Marlow visits him there. The narrative then returns to Jim's perspective, as he first learns about the opportunity Stein is giving him. The silver ring is a traditional symbol of the romantic quest, of which Jim's journey is an example: it takes him into the heart of an unknown place, where the ring will help him inherit the cultural and other ties that Stein made in those parts long ago. He has the opportunity to prove himself, while Stein plays the part of providing luck or chance. From then on, Jim is on his own.

The prospect of anonymity is, for Jim, a possible freedom. He discovers that he is not so bad after all, something Marlow had sensed from the beginning. Thrown into a whirlwind of self-confusion, Jim now proves his worth. It is not certain, however, that this success will help him reconcile with his previous failure, since his personality remains obsessed with a particular, fixed aspect of the past. While people can change generally, the past cannot. Hence, the question of Jim's fate ultimately turns on how he learns to live with his past.

When Marlow notes Jim's copy of Shakespeare, the scene resonates against the recent scene with Stein, who made reference to the poet's Hamlet. This detail provides a further sense of connection between the romantics, Jim and Stein, regarding the question of how one is to live. The search into literature for answers is Conrad's subtle hint, being an author himself, that his literary work endeavors to answer the complex questions of how to be and how to live.

From the moment Jim arrives in Patusan, he exhibits courage. His judgment is flawless, and he makes the correct leap from his imprisonment when he needs to. This contrasts with his leap from the Patna and with his earlier failure to leap at the best time. These successful leaps in Patusan, moreover, provide the seeds of the mythmaking that envelops Jim, who comes to be known as "Tuan Jim" or "Lord Jim." This romanticized "Jim" can fly. He cannot die. The story even trickles down to a faraway place where Marlow will hear that the legend has discovered a giant emerald.

When Marlow once again encounters Jim, he feels the pride of a father. He is glad that Jim has successfully made use of the opportunity he received. Something of the stammering, young, ineloquent man remains, but Marlow notes: "Now and then, though, a word, a sentence, would escape him that showed how deeply, how solemnly, he felt about that work which had given him the certitude of rehabilitation. That is why he seemed to love the land and the people with a sort of fierce egoism, with a contemptuous tenderness" (188). While Jim looks upon the land with one eye on possession, Marlow still concludes that "all his conquests, the trust, the fame, the friendships, the love--all these things that made him master had made him captive, too" (187). Marlow is coming to understand Jim very well. This understanding is reiterated: "Jim the leader was a captive in every sense. The land, the people, the friendship, the love, were like the jealous guardians of his body. Every day added a link to the fetters of that strange freedom" (198). In other words, the freedom he had sought, the freedom that comes with honor and power generally, must be held accountable to others. Binding oneself to others is constraining: you can't leap or run away. The responsibility is severe. Jim has inserted himself as a necessary and important part of the social fabric in Patusan, and, in this way, the community is not unlike that of a ship on the sea.

Thus while Jim is exiled from the sea, this new oceanic wilderness is isolating in a new way. He has assumed a position not unlike the one he had held on board the Patna as first mate. In Patusan, a name that resonates with the sound of "Patna," Jim is isolated even while he is in position to guide the community.

An important point to keep in mind in thinking about the communities on board the Patna and in Patusan is their "otherness"; both sets of people for whom Jim is responsible differ considerably from the Western figures who dominate the novel. The ship had been filled with Muslim pilgrims heading for Mecca, and Patusan is filled with a community of Southeast Asian islanders. Stein, also, had been intimately involved with a Malay community. In all these cases, though Jim and Stein had been relatively isolated insofar as they were white men, the white men achieved dominance and held a high stature among the population. This white ascendancy has been critiqued as problematic in much of Conrad's work, gaining some energy from being set in "exotic" locations. Note that Dain Waris "knew how to fight like a white man ... he had also a European mind"--which, from the perspective of the speaker, suggests the superiority of the Western presence in that part of the world, as well as the superiority of a native man who is like a white man (197). Though colonialism was a fact of the time, critics have argued that Conrad fails to render the native characters in his work with the subtlety and generosity he affords his white characters.

Past events are now referred to in passing. Sherif Ali, one of Doramin's competitors and an ally of the Rajah, was defeated and then fled. Old scores were settled. The Rajah reacted with fear. All felt confidence in Jim's wisdom. Marlow then describes how Doramin and his wife begin to ask him questions about Jim. Doramin is anxious; in his opinion, and perhaps thinking about Stein, white men have a tendency to come and go. Doramin's wife asks Marlow about Jim's past: is there anyone for him to return to, perhaps a mother who yearns to see him? This query brings Marlow, in his narration, to the story of Jim's love.

Cornelius's deceased wife had left a daughter (whose father is left unnamed). The mother had not been an ordinary woman; her white father was a high official. Jim and the woman's daughter come to share mutual intimacy; Jim refers to her as "Jewel." This name leads Marlow to comment on how he pieced a puzzle together, recalling how, 230 miles south of Patusan, he had heard a rumor of how a young man in Patusan had discovered an extraordinarily priceless emerald that could only be concealed on a woman who was young and insensible to the seductions of love.

Jewel's mother had taught her English and, according to Marlow, she spoke it having absorbed Jim's own manner of speaking. He observes that Jim was "jealously loved" (214). Marlow then reports seeing Cornelius for the first time. Tamb' Itam points him out, and Marlow notes that he is a slinking, dark, unsavory type, like a "repulsive beetle" (214). His presence seemed the one blemish on Jim's charmed life. Jim had discovered that Cornelius had embezzled from Stein's company, kept poor records, and left the house is disrepair, all the while blaming his dead wife for the failures. Jim felt deep sympathy for the girl whose mother had died and who had to suffer Cornelius's insults. The girl had said she would have killed him with her own hands, if she hadn't seen how wretched he was. This statement, for Jim, hinted at a complexity in her character that impressed him. Cornelius, eager to be rid of Jim, offered to smuggle him out of the area for a price, since it was widely known that the Rajah wanted him killed. Jim didn't respond. Later that very night, however, he arrived at a plan for overcoming Sherif Ali, and the girl proved useful in providing the necessary background information about Patusan affairs. When Cornelius again offered to help him out of Patusan, Jim stated his intention to remain. Cornelius responded that, then, Jim would die here.

Jim gives a speech in favor of "vigorous action" to the principal men of the community where Jim had been persuasive and eloquent, stirring the passions roused by Sherif Ali's last raid (some of the women had been carried off, and men haunted the marketplace wearing white cloaks, creating a general terror). That night, Jim had a dream, a great voice from the heavens commanding that he "Awake!" He did wake and see the flame of a torch and the girl holding it, in a white gown, with her long black hair. Jewel insisted that he get up, that there was a plan in place for his murder that night. Marlow reminds his audience then that this is a love story, and Jim admits to the strength of his emotion at the time: "that if I went away from her it would be the end of everything somehow" (225). Jim then sensed that his assassins were near and, in the end, killed a man. The three others surrendered.

The conclusion of this story is that Jim ordered the three would-be assassins to jump into the water. Jim then turns to Marlow and says that he loves the girl. The fact that his existence was necessary for another person provided a wonderful feeling. The community believed he was brave, true, and just. He was happy. Marlow then tells Jim that he will always be a mystery amongst them; he will never be fully known. This is almost a warning, but Jim replies that this situation is exactly what he wants.

Later in the night, Jewel approaches Marlow and seems to ask for an assurance from him that Jim will never leave her. She tells Marlow that her mother had warned her of such things before she died. Marlow was, himself, a signal of that Unknown from which Jim had come, so she hoped to learn something of it from him. Marlow, touched by the girl's delicate charm, tells her that it is not his intention to ask Jim to leave, and that Jim wouldn't leave anyway. Jewel says that she does not want to die weeping like her mother. She senses a strong feeling of dread, and Marlow is then strangely brutal to her. He tells her that Jim will never leave Patusan because he is "not good enough" for the world outside. The girl says that Jim said the same thing, and she protests, sobbing. She claims that Marlow is lying, and Marlow, regretful, says, "nobody is good enough." She exits.

Analysis

As the political situation in Patusan is elaborated, Jim's integral role in the defeat of Sherif Ali and his trustworthiness bring him the acclaim and status he has always sought. The intelligence of the plan proves his good judgment, and its execution proves his ability and loyalty. In the end, Dain Waris saves Jim's life, in the same way that Stein had saved Dain Waris's father's life. This parallelism does not exclude the possibility that a kind of reversal could take place: though Jim and Stein share a characteristic romanticism, events may work in the reverse for Jim compared to how they worked for Stein. At this point, however, Marlow observes the success Jim has made out of his opportunity.

The character Cornelius is more intensely drawn through Marlow's eyes, who sees him immediately as a "blemish." This corrupt presence in the midst of Jim's romantic life yields a sense of instability for the reader in that Cornelius, with his bitter loss of standing, as well as his general decrepit state, promises ill will for future events. Jim, however, like Jewel, considers him to be a sad wretch, not really worth worrying over or expending the energy to punish. This proves later to be a mistake of judgment on Jim's part. While so many aspects of his life in Patusan have been exquisitely assessed and judged and then acted upon, Jim's assessment of Cornelius becomes a mistake that will unravel his life with disastrous consequences.

When Jim's love story is introduced, the reader recalls the mysterious reference made by Stein to a Malay-Dutch woman who had died. The daughter of this woman is the one who becomes Jim's lover. The two share, among other things, in having isolated positions in the community. It is unclear whether Jewel is her real name or merely the name that Jim gives her. In any case, the allusion to Adam's naming of Eve is made clear. It is fitting that Jewel, in this romantic setting, completes Jim's fair picture of the charmed life with a beautiful girl. The girl herself attains the status of myth, like Jim. Jim protects the fabulous, enormous emerald he has found; she is his precious jewel.

Thus Jewel represents what women in the novel symbolize generally. Women tend to function as symbols of opportunity, in the sense that romantic Western men seek to wed their dreams to the reality of the Eastern landscape. Hence, a relationship with a girl from the East symbolizes the realization of the man's dreams. Stein had accomplished this wedding in actually having married a Malay princess. The suggestion here is that Jim will do the same with Jewel. Her mother's tragic end in life, however, foreshadows the sorrows that will fall over Jewel. The East-West romance, once realized, does not promise to be sustainable. It is, more often than not, untenable.

Jewel's love for Jim, in Marlow's observation, is a "jealous" love, not unlike the way he has described the community's love for Jim. Jim has become such an integral part of the community, as well as of Jewel's life, that the fear of being without him implies overdependence. They absorb him, in the way that Jewel absorbs even Jim's manner of speech. During the private conversation between Marlow and Jewel, Marlow seems jealous himself--of Jim's youth, of his success, and of this girl. This jealousy may explain why he brutally shares with Jewel the idea that Jim isn't good enough for the world beyond Patusan.

Regretfully, however, Marlow then revises his statement, showing that what was an initial passion of judgment can also be equally applied to all men: that "nobody is good enough." In other words, the romantic ideals of honor and manhood are not really possible for anyone, in view of man's countless imperfections. This reflection suggests, on the one hand, a general solidarity between Jim and the rest of the world and, on the other hand, Jim's distinct choice to go to a special place where he might possibly be able to achieve the ideal after all.

Chapter 34 begins with Marlow leaning against the balustrade amid the cane-chairs, his audience listening attentively. He continues with his story, describing the new vision he had of Jim: enterprising, energetic, and enthusiastic. Marlow felt sentimental and solitary. He now tells his audience that "He is one of us," and then describes how he had conceived of Cornelius as a dangerous element (244), while Jim thought Cornelius was too insignificant to be dangerous. Cornelius said to Marlow that Jim was "no more than a child" to Marlow (245), and Marlow responded that Jim would never leave Patusan.

Then Marlow forms a kind of collage of the characters of the story in Patusan, as if "an enchanter's wand" had immobilized them all except for Jim. Marlow states again, "He is one of us" (248). Jim's story continues. He says good-bye to Marlow, vowing, "I shall be faithful" (251). Marlow is struck by the romance of this statement, and he tells Jim that he should be heading home in about a year. Jim says to that, "Tell them ..." (252). He ends this parting word, however, with "No- nothing." As Marlow's ship pulls away from the shore, he watches Jim, wreathed head to foot in a kind of white veil. "And, suddenly, I lost him..." (252).

The narrative is at an end, yet Marlow's audience does not comment. The story is incomplete. How does the story end? Only one man among the listeners shows any interest in knowing Jim's fate. He is a "privileged man," living in a city, in the highest flat of a very lofty building.

He receives a packet in the mail from Marlow containing three enclosures. One is a letter from Marlow that informs him of how the story reached its conclusion. Something Jim had begun writing was also included; its heading reads, "The Fort, Patusan." Marlow highlights "the commonplace hand" and wonders: "impossible to say whom he had in mind when he seized the pen: Stein--myself--the world at large--or was this only the aimless startled cry of a solitary man confronted by his fate?" (255). There is also an old letter from Jim's father, received just a few days before Jim joined the Patna, beginning "Dear James" and containing news of home. The last enclosure is Marlow's story of the final events. Marlow has written it into a narrative, and he comments on its "profound and terrifying logic" (257). Marlow states that the "information is fragmentary," but that he has pieced it together to make "an intelligible picture" (257).

Analysis

As Marlow brings the story of Jim to a close, he tells the audience gathered around him on the verandah: "It is not Justice the servant of men, but accident, hazard, Fortune--the ally of patient time--that holds an even and scrupulous balance" (240). This rings true in life and in the world Conrad presents. Those deserving a favorable opportunity are not always offered it; rather, opportunities seem to arrive by chance. When they do appear, they must be seized. In the end, Jim was offered an opportunity by Marlow and Stein, and he seized it. He says to Marlow, in parting despite his other ties, "I shall be faithful" (251). He hints that he will live to fulfill their hopes in him of the romantic ideal, still being watched by Marlow. As they part in twilight on the beach, "the sea at his feet, the opportunity by his side--still veiled" (252), the romantic opportunity has yet to be fully identified and grasped. The image recalls the "Eastern bride" of opportunity, Jewel in particular, and the unsure possibility that a full life can be lived to its end in that romantic place. Still, the statement "I shall be faithful" has an acutely romantic resonance and, as Jim lives to be faithful and to accept his fate, Marlow will be faithful in return. Upon learning of Jim's fate, Marlow finishes the story.

But, for the time being, the story is incomplete. Marlow ends his story for his audience on the verandah without their knowing what is to come to be in Patusan. Marlow forms a collage of Patusan and all its characters, frozen as if by "an enchanter's wand." Jim, however, according to Marlow, cannot be frozen like the rest: "I am not certain of him. No magician's wand can immobilize him under my eyes. He is one of us" (248), in a sense uncapturable. This characterization of their relationship reinforces Marlow's storytelling role, and behind the guise of Marlow, Conrad himself figures as a kind of god who constructs the story, or at least a detective piecing together a complex account of the human condition. Jim is an exception because, for all his depth and subtlety, his acute awareness of his own shortcomings, and his desire to make something more of himself, he is Marlow's equal, on a level with the storyteller himself. They are of the same material. Jim, being the subject of this story, is the one studied to understand the man's inner life and contradictions. This has been an inquiry into his soul, as overseen by Marlow. But the audience has no comment. The story is incomplete. No judgment can be given, it seems, until the whole of the man's life has passed. Will Jim finally come to terms with his past?

The narrative then skips ahead in time, and the reader learns that there was one man who had expressed interest in Jim's fate, far after Marlow's telling of the story. Marlow now addresses him in a letter, and the boundary of Jim's story is again revealed. This time, however, Marlow has moved on from oral storytelling to the written word. First, he presents pieces of written evidence, and then, using the testimonies of others, he pieces together the story into a written narrative for this "privileged man," the "privileged reader." This unnamed reader, we learn, had not summarily approved of Jim, and in fact the reader had "prophesied for him the disaster of weariness and disgust with acquired honour," also commenting that he would regret having given himself up to "them" (meaning the natives). Marlow presents the completion of Jim's story by way of counterargument: actually "the question is whether at the last he had not confessed to a faith mightier than the laws of order and progress" (254).

The story resumes in Marlow's written form. Marlow explains in his letter that he encountered a man named Brown at the direction of Schomberg (a hotelkeeper in Bangkok). Brown is more than ready to tell his tale. He is a suspicious character, a thief, and a kind of figure of evil. The narrative then cuts back in time, creating additional suspense. Eight months prior to this encounter with Brown in Bangkok, Marlow had gone to visit Stein at his home, where he had found Tamb' Itam, Jim's Malay servant. Marlow had hoped that Jim was not far away, but the Malay had said quietly, "He would not fight" (260). Stein had appeared and told Marlow that the girl Jewel was also there, and that the two had arrived two days earlier. Jewel had said to Marlow, "He has left me" (261). She spoke in grief and shock. "He is false!" she cried. Stein protested: "True!" (263). The shock of the events "seems to have changed their natures. It had turned her passion into stone" (263). Tamb' Itam and the Malay boat-driver who had helped them to escape were both "over-awed by a sense of deep, inexpressible wonder, by the touch of an inscrutable mystery," echoing Marlow's own statement to Jim that Jim would always remain a mystery to them (264). The letter concludes with Marlow's signature.

Now, the "privileged reader" is able to focus on the "story" that Marlow has written of the last events. Brown (or Gentleman Brown, as Marlow enigmatically refers to him) has led a lawless life as a virtual "latter-day buccaneer." The story went, apparently, that Brown had once run off with the wife of a missionary, a very young girl, who had died of fever on board the ship. The girl had hoped to make a great conversion in the name of her husband. When she died, Brown had wept violently. His shipmate always comments on that scene. Brown had lost his ship on the rocks.

Soon after, Brown stole a schooner. His best man, a devoted Solomon Islander, killed two shipkeepers with a long knife, and Brown's sixteen men all rushed off to sea. They planned to cross the Indian Ocean, but were low on supplies and, out of the need to replenish their water and food, headed for Patusan. The big white boat carried the "assorted scarecrows" to the Patusan Reach, whence fourteen of them took to the river in a small boat. The headman of the fishing village, by this time, sent a warning to the town, and, when Brown's men arrived to see the flourishing community, shouting men fired from the mosque. There were armed men in the river, blocking their retreat. The natives fired, and Brown's men fired in reply. Brown saw the entrance to a narrow creek and established his men in the little knoll near the Rajah's stockade. As the sun set, they cut down the few trees for protection, and Brown lay on his back, in awe at the immensity of the place.

Brown's story turns to consider Jim's absence, although he has not yet met the man. Jim has been gone in the interior for more than a week, while Dain Waris has been leading the fight in his absence. Dain Waris, significantly, is not Jim: "He was not the visible, tangible incarnation of unfailing truth and of unfailing victory" (271). Dain Waris fails to compare favorably with Jim's mythical stature. Jim is the one everyone believes cannot die. He holds the store of gunpowder in Patusan, supplied by Stein, and Jewel takes charge as they wait. The council gathers at Doramin's, and the townspeople are disturbed that the Rajah's boat did not act when it could have. Kassim, the Rajah's diplomat at the meeting, is unreadable. Rumors fly about a large ship and many men. The danger of panic is in the air, and Doramin orders Dain Waris to take an armed party down the river, to make a camp and to blockade the stream with canoes. Doramin seems motivated most by a desire to keep his son out of harm's way.

Kassim goes into open communication with Brown, taking Cornelius with him to serve as interpreter. Brown, overjoyed to hear English words, demands food as a guarantee of good faith. The Rajah sends them rice, chillies, and dried fish. It becomes clear that Kassim intends to double-deal, however, given his unhappiness with the order of things and with Jim's power, and given his dislike for Doramin. He asks Brown to quickly send for his big ship and many men, and then to attack and defeat the Bugis settlement before Jim's return.

This is where Brown hears about Jim for the first time. He hears the story of Jim's accomplishments, how the whole area is basically his. Brown begins to get the idea of accomplishing something of the same. Cornelius urges him to kill Jim at the first opportunity. The men doze on the stockade, and Brown gazes greedily. Kassim presses Brown for his ship again, and Brown writes the message, "We are getting on. Big job. Detain the man." He sends this message to his two remaining men on the schooner.

Analysis

Marlow's letter to the "privileged reader" provides his sources for the conclusion of the events that help him understand his subject, Jim. First, he describes a man named Brown, who had communicated his part in the story to Marlow in Bangkok. Second, upon a visit to see Stein, Marlow finds Tamb' Itam, who is Jim's servant, and Jewel. From these three characters, along with his own imagination and understanding, Marlow builds the conclusion to the story.

Brown's character presents a foil against both Stein's and Jim's romantically charmed lives, particularly by way of the woman he is associated with. She is a missionary's wife who dies of fever, like Stein's wife and daughter. For Brown, however, the woman dies quickly, before there is a chance for Brown to know happiness. The forcefulness of his weeping, a poignant detail that adds depth and mystery to his character, suggests that, for Brown, fortune has always been tough. His "Eastern bride" of opportunity, also veiled in the hope of a more spiritual salvation, is lost to him before being realized. Therefore, Brown becomes decrepit, almost without hope, yet has just enough strength and anger at the world to continue to eke his way through it. Jim may very well have descended to resemble such a character, given his anger and frustration and feeling that he had been cheated of some of his opportunities, but Jim differs from Brown in that Jim was lucky enough to have found helpers in both Marlow and Stein. Brown had never come upon someone who had had this kind of encouraging faith in his underlying character.

Brown is a significant figure, particularly in comparison with Jim and Brierly. While Brierly had lived the length of his life committed to a particular ideal of honor, his honest recognition of something dishonorable in his heart had led him to commit suicide. Brown, on the other hand, with little comfort or faith in the world, struggles to survive with as much effort as Brierly had struggled in order to live a life of honor. These two characters therefore delineate two paths along which a man may live. Brown's abhorrent character is not unlike that of the crewmen of the Patna, who had leapt from the steamship in an act that privileged personal survival over honor. The reader, by this point, knows that Jim harbors this element within him, but at the same time desires to live a life of honor and ideals. The question presented by the events unfolding before the reader is, therefore: what kind of man is Jim; which path is he following?

Stein's character is also a mixture of the impulse to survive with the desire to live by ideals. This tension is expressed by his struggle to begin again--successfully, after the fantastical life of the Malay court falls upon him. He persists. Again, however, note that the parallels between Stein's and Jim's situations are often reversed: if this pattern of reversal continues, we might predict that Jim's end will go the opposite way compared with Stein's.

Therefore, when Brown arrives in Patusan, a sinister force has arrived: Brown is not there in order to prove himself capable of achieving romantic ideals, but he arrives in need of water and food. The opposition between the romanticism of Jim and Stein is therefore set against the Darwinian struggle to survive (and win) in Brown (recalling, likewise, the similar struggles of the German captain of the Patna and of Cornelius).

Brown's arrival thus has a profoundly destabilizing effect on the community in Patusan. Neither Jim nor his influence is present to adequately protect the community. This lack reveals the degree to which Jim had become the de facto leader, primarily because of his "racial prestige" (271). Dain Waris is truly "beloved, trusted, and admired," but he remains just one of the natives, in their view. According to Marlow, in contrast, "Jim was one of us," and by reiterating this statement, Marlow puts Jim in a superior category: that of Western men, men of good character, men who have remained committed to higher, romantic ideals. Without him, the community does not have such a leader. Marlow thus accentuates Jim's difference from the community of Patusan, recalling his claim that Jim would always remain a mystery to them.

The community has found stability and faith in the presence of a great mystery living amongst them. Fortune, however, has intervened. It is only by chance that Jim is not present at Brown's arrival, and the plot line implies that if Dain Waris had not been left to lead, the reaction to Brown might not have been a shower of gunfire, thickening the tension between Patusan and the white newcomers. When Jim had first arrived, in contrast, he had successfully diffused tensions and avoided conflict and death. Dain Waris, however, has reacted hastily.

Thus the plot thickens: Brown's arrival becomes an opportunity for the less trustworthy characters in Patusan--Rajah, Kassim, and Cornelius--to make their moves.

As Brown tells his story to Marlow, Marlow writes that he is struck by his impression of "an undisguised ruthlessness of purpose, a strange vengeful attitude towards his own past, and a blind belief in the righteousness of his will against all mankind" (278). In the battle, Brown was almost paralyzed by fear. The numbers were 200 to one. Fear among the people, however, had also begun to unravel the social fabric. One of Brown's men is shot down, so Brown shoots one of the Bugis three times in the stomach. Then, sounds of joy lift in the air. Cornelius tells Brown that Jim has returned, not afraid of anything.

When Brown sees Jim, he sees a man in European clothes, all in white, with a helmet. The two meet near the very spot where Jim had taken "the second desperate leap of his life--the leap that landed him into the life of Patusan, into the trust, the love, the confidence of the people" (285). Brown hates Jim on sight--for his youth and his assurance, his self-possession, his power and neatness. They converse, and Brown yells to him that it was hunger that had driven him to Patusan. Why had Jim come? The conversation strikes Marlow as a duel, and as if Brown, like a great man, had discovered Jim's weakest spot. He says, "if it came to saving one's life in the dark, one didn't care who else went--three, thirty, three hundred people" (290). Jim says nothing in response, and he is struck by "their common blood, an assumption of common experience; a sickening suggestion of common guilt, of secret knowledge that was like a bond of their minds and of their hearts" (291). With that, Jim turns away, telling Brown he will have a clear road or a clear fight (292).

The story now continues from Tamb' Itam's point of view. He describes the shock of Jim insisting that Dain Waris lead. Tamb' Itam is given the duty of sending word to Dain Waris to let Brown and his men pass. Jim includes Stein's silver ring as a sign of good faith and, at the same time, he sends Brown a note with Cornelius as messenger. The note says, "You get the clear road" (298). But, upon delivering the note, Cornelius remains with Brown and tells him that Dain Waris's party is downriver and lying in wait to lay ambush on him as they pass. Brown feels betrayed yet, strangely enough, he doesn't seem to believe it. To be safe, he takes the creek he had noticed upon his first arrival. Through the fog, he takes Cornelius with him in the longboat.

After Tamb' Itam approaches Dain Waris's camp and delivers the message with the ring, saying that all is well and that the trouble has passed, Dain Waris slips the ring onto the forefinger of his right hand. Brown's men land nearby and, though Cornelius tries to get away, force him to lead the way to the camp. No one had imagined that the white men would know of the creek. Fourteen shots ring out, and Dain Waris jumps up, running to the open shore. There, Tamb' Itam sees a bullet hit Darin Waris's forehead, and a great fear falls upon him. The white men disappear.

(A month later, the story goes, a white longboat is picked up in the Indian Ocean by a cargo-steamer. The men lie and say that their schooner had sprung a bad leak and sunk beneath their feet.)

Tamb' Itam sees Cornelius and shoots him twice, watching him die. He then hurries back to the town, knowing that it is important that he be the first bearer of the news. When he arrives, the town is festive. He seeks out the girl and reports what has happened. They go to find Jim, and he tells Jim that it is not safe for him to go out amongst the people. This is when Jim understands that it is all over: "the work of his own hands, had fallen in ruins upon his head" (306). Marlow believes it was then that Jim had tried to write to someone. He says to Jewel, "I have no life" (307). The girl insists that either he should fight, or they should run away. But he ignores her. Dain Waris's body is brought to Doramin, and as Doramin sees the wound in the forehead and then the ring on his son's forefinger, he begins to cry in fury. Jim walks to meet him: "There is nothing to fight for" (309). He tells Doramin that he has come ready and unarmed, and that is when Doramin shoots him through the chest. Jim, with a proud and unflinching look, falls dead.

The story concludes with Jewel in Stein's home, "leading a sort of soundless, inert life" (312). Stein has grown old and sorrowful. He feels himself preparing to leave "all this," and he "waves his hand sadly at his butterflies" (312).

Analysis

When Brown and Jim finally meet, Brown expresses hatred. This hatred is, on some level, understandable. He hates the world for never having given him the opportunity or the "clean slate" that Jim had been given. When Brown and Jim face each other, each sees in the other a vision of what might have been. The moment is one of recognition.

Brown, the reader can surmise from subtle hints in the narrative, is a quick man. He is charismatic enough to be a leader, albeit of an outcast group. Still, his eye sees the hidden creek and, in the way that a great man senses another man's greatest weakness, Brown hits Jim in his weak spot. He rouses in their interaction a sense of challenge. Jim, now the embodiment of a mythical romantic ideal, begins to collapse. The reason is less from a worry that Brown knows who Jim than the realization (perhaps only vaguely perceived by Jim) that Jim will never be able to escape his moment of weakness on the Patna: his choice is part of his character, and his history is an integral part of his personality. This history is not knowledge that is external to him, but something that has become deeply seated in his being. Brown is a personification of that hidden and rejected self-knowledge.

Jim likewise recognizes that Brown is a man who has potential or "Ability in the abstract." In an attempt to pass along to him an opportunity in the same generous spirit with which Stein and Marlow had aided him, Jim gives Brown "the clear road"--not quite a clean slate, but a chance to achieve his goals. This is an opportunity for Brown, though it is not nearly of the same quality as the one that had been given to Jim, because the clear road does not promise a realization of the romantic ideal, the achievement of the dreams of a life of glory and honor. Instead, it is an opportunity for Brown to persist in his merely Darwinian-style struggle to survive. The lesser opportunity here, however, is perhaps not so much a result of individual potential and character as it is a product of fortune or chance.

The tragic conclusion ensues in a fog of mistrust. Cornelius presses Brown to see the possibility of betrayal, though there is something in Brown that recognizes "that there could be no treachery intended" (298). Brown is an astute judge of character. Still, in the end, he acts mistrustful all the same, choosing to be retaliatory and violent. These actions do more to reveal the true nature of his character. Up the creek, and in secret, he wreaks havoc and death among Dain Waris's camp, and then escapes quickly.

We again meet fairly clear evidence of Brown's character, should the story be true, that he is found at sea in a lifeboat telling the same story that the Patna crew had told their rescuers: the ship had sunk beneath their feet. The irony in this tale, however, is that Jim had been one of them, as well as "one of us." Can Jim exorcise from himself the negative spirit that persists in Brown? The ambiguity of character suggests that all men are mixtures of potential characters: the romantic, the hopeless, the corrupt, and the cowardly. "One of us" can refer to being one more such complex being within the company of all men.

As for Jim's fate, Dain Waris's death extinguishes the flame that had charmed the life of Patusan. This parallel to Stein's best friend being assassinated is obvious, though in Jim's case, the death comes out of a failure of judgment on his part. The ring, signifying the promise of good will from Stein to Doramin, becomes a symbol of betrayal. Additionally, the death causes Jim's reputation and secure place in Patusan society to begin to crumble. He has no place in the world beyond, and now that his work in Patusan is finished, there is nowhere for him to go, except to be extinguished himself.

Therefore, as the reader recalls the vision of Stein blowing out a flaming match with the idea that all life is fleeting, Jim is compelled to do what is logically demanded at this climax. He cannot fight in the way Brown had--struggling for his life--because to do so would liken him further to Brown. Instead, he leaps in the direction of his fate. He does not fight it.

Jewel, representing the love that the community had felt for Jim and the delight of opportunity he had known, is discarded. His final atonement requires a clean break. Jim goes to meet Doramin with a calm face, in the same way that he had arrived, in the face of possible assault. Here, the assault is certain, and Jim dies in a manner that atones for his past failure at sea. This time, he goes down with the iron ship as it sinks. He does not run. He refuses to leap for a lifeboat to share with Jewel and Tamb' Itam. Instead he remains--as George had remained--aboard, to die.

The native audience looks at Jim's body, as the Muslim pilgrims had looked upon George's, with curiosity and fascination. The mystery man of Patusan is brought to an end. Jim is, after all, a man who dies, in spite of the myths of his immortality. Nevertheless, in true Conradian fashion and poetic tradition, Jim lives on through his show of action. He remains committed to his ideal and takes responsibility for what he has done and, in this way, Marlow finishes his story. This man's story is worth finishing. The inquiry into Jim's soul has been mysterious but it also has been fruitful, revelatory, and illustrative of what is human.

The novel concludes with a final view of an aging Stein and a broken, mute Jewel. The ring has been lost, and there is no one to inherit what Stein has built (just as, perhaps, no one could inherit Marlow's friend's rice mill). For Stein, the romantic tradition comes to an end. As his hands wave at the butterflies beneath the glass, we sense that Stein, Jewel, the butterflies, everyone, all etherized in their places, will soon disintegrate into dust.

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