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Revision Notes A Level English "Lord Jim"
Revision Notes A Level English "Lord Jim"
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Lord Jim – Joseph ConradSummary of the novel:
Jim is a chief mate on the steamship, Patna. During a voyage towards Mecca, with its cargo of
pilgrims, the ship strikes a submerged object. Watching the small crew lowering a lifeboat to
save their own skins, Jim appears to be an idealistic onlooker but then, impulsively; he jumps.
The significance of this action is the pivotal point of the novel. The action moves to Aden, where
the narrator, Marlow, observes Jim at the Court of Inquiry. Ironically; and contrary to the crew's
belief, the Patna had not sunk; Jim is the only one, among the entire crew, who has decided to
face the official ramifications of his actions. Marlow is interested in Jim's private consciousness
of disgrace; being stripped of his Master's certificate proves to be a public, but not a spiritual
atonement. With Marlow's assistance, Jim moves through a variety of jobs ashore, but the
promise of real freedom 'talkers' (those who know of his blemished reputation) is provided only
by a position as agent at the remote trading post of Patusan.
Jim's life at Patusan, recalled by Marlow, has an active and practical perspective: to the
people, including the elderly chief Doramin, he is Tuan, or Lord Jim. His relationship with the
woman he calls Jewel, stepdaughter of his corrupt predecessor, contributes to his partial
happiness. This is violently disrupted by the arrival of Gentleman Brown and his fellow thieves.
Jim vows to Doramin that Brown will leave the island without bloodshed; he is proved horribly
wrong. Doramin's son is killed as a result of Jim's misplaced trust in Brown. Taking
responsibility for his action, Jim allows himself to be shot by an angry and grieving Doramin.
…………………………….
An example of Writing with embedded or integrated quotations:
joseph Conrad’s fourth novel, is the story of a ship which collides with “a floating
derelict” and will doubtlessly “go down at any moment” during a “silent black
squall.” The ship, old and rust-eaten, known as the Patna, is voyaging across the
, Indian Ocean to the Red Sea. Aboard are eight hundred Muslim pilgrims who are
being transported to a “holy place, the promise of salvation, the reward of
eternal life.” Terror overwhelms the captain and several of his officers, who jump
from the pilgrim-ship thereby wantonly abandoning the sleeping passengers
who are unaware of their peril. For the crew members in the safety of their life-
boat, dishonour is better than death.
Beyond the immediate details and the effects of a shipwreck, this novel portrays,
in the words of the story’s narrator, Captain Marlow, “those struggles of an
individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity
should be…” That individual is a young seaman, Jim, who serves as the chief
mate of the Patna and who also “jumps.” Recurringly Jim envisions himself as
“always an example of devotion to duty and as unflinching as a hero in a
book.” But his heroic dream of “saving people from sinking ships, cutting
away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line,” does not
equate with what he really represents: one who falls from grace, and whose
“crime” is “a breach of faith with the community of mankind.” Jim’s
aspirations and actions underline the disparity between idealism and reality, or
what is generally termed “indissoluble contradictions of being.” After the
transgression he becomes a man in search of atonement upon achnowledging
that his “avidity for adventure, and in a sense of many-sided courage,” and his
dream of “the success of his imaginary achievements,” is illusory. Jim’s leap from
the Patna instigates within him a severe moral crisis that forces him to “come
round to the view that only a meticulous precision of statement would bring
out the true horror behind the appalling face of things.” It is especially hard for
Jim to confront this “horror” since his confidence in “his own superiority”
seems so absolute. The “Patna affair” compels him in the end to scrutinise his
deepest self and then to relinquish “the charm and innocence of illusions.” The
Jim of the Patna undergoes “the ordeal of the fiery furnace,” as he is severely
tested “by those events of the sea that show in the light of the day the inner
worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal
the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not only to
others but also to himself.” Clearly the Patna is, for Jim, the experience both of a
moment and of a lifetime.
Throughout the novel the focus is on Jim’s life and character, on what he has
done, or failed to have done, on his crime and punishment, his failure of nerve as
a seaman. It is, as well, the story of his predicament and his fate, the destiny of his
soul—of high expectations and the great “chance missed,” of “wasted
opportunity” and “what he had failed to obtain,” all the result of leaving his post,
and abdicating his responsibility. Thus we see him in an unending moment of
crisis, “over- burdened by the knowledge of an imminent death” as he imagines
the grim scene before him: “He stood still looking at those recumbent bodies, a
doomed man aware of his fate, surveying the silent company of the dead. They
were dead! Nothing could save them!”
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