The edition that I have been reading for almost a year (yes, I was painfully slow, I know it) is close to breaking apart from its spine.

A few pages have already started slipping out and the entire volume, even at only three hundred pages or so, seems to be struggling to keep intact. I had bought it as an old but fairly readable edition from one of my beloved pavement bookshops in Bombay.

While I can understand my own deliberate pace at reading it, it is telling that the book was frequently thumbed and dog-eared in the passage of a year, thus indicating that it has been mulled over a lot.

To be honest, "Lord Jim" was perhaps, for me, the most difficult and excruciating book that I had ever read from Conrad.

Normally even as the plot becomes too obscure or even ponderous (as it did in "The Secret Agent"), the writer's gift for hypnotic, haunting imagery has an indelible impression, almost vivid and surreal, on the reader's mind.

But even those things seem to run out of steam, fade out of sight in the middle of this novel which simply, at a point, refused to move or budge.

Not such a good thing to say about a fairly well-recognised novel, isn't it?

That said, like all of Conrad's stories, "Lord Jim" begins brilliantly.

Right from the first page, we are introduced to the titular character himself, the life and soul, no matter how elusive, of this novel.

He is a young, idealistic man, full of great hopes and aspirations of heroism from a career in sea.

And yet right in the beginning of his career, all his dreams and heroic fantasies are nipped in the bud by his own blundering outburst of fear.

As the HMS Patna, carrying a shipload of pilgrims of "an exacting faith" is thrust in the danger of sinking, Jim abandons ship to save his life, thus tainting himself forever with the disgraceful mark of cowardice to bear like a cross throughout his life.

And yet even as Conrad demonstrates all his customary skill in orchestrating the immensity, the catastrophic significance of this incident, as well as his well-known skill in describing men at the mercy of an unforgiving sea, it should be pointed out here that what could have been very convincingly described with enough detail and succinct style in the matter of fifty pages or so is drawn out, almost protracted so relentlessly that soon we begin, which is rather odd to say about Conrad, to lose our interest in the importance of the situation.

It does not help too that the writer flicks and switches too randomly, too impulsively between differing points of view; the story is largely narrated by Marlow but this is too consciously drawn attention to throughout the book and he never gains the resonance that the narrator ideally should acquire, so that we listen or read his version of events with sufficient interest.

It further hampers the effect that once we are explained, at great, almost frustrating length, about what really happens on that fateful night and how Jim condemns himself with his impulsive act of afraid betrayal of his duty, we long for when he would finally be given his chance at redemption but that takes awfully, almost depressingly, too long to arrive.

Marlow begins to dawdle and ponder and pontificate about every contrasting ideal on sight - age and youth, duty and disloyalty, courage and cowardice, imperialism and even right and wrong - and as his voice starts sounding didactic and even condescendingly preachy.

We are compelled, rather rightfully, to believe that Marlow is worldly and wise and Jim is something of a wet-behind-the-ears fool who has to be taken care of at all times.

That is indeed true, at least in the first-half of the novel, but Marlow's wisdom, always so compelling before, begins to feel burdensome here because Conrad himself starts stumbling in his despair to create a very believable contrast between the two men, as opposed to how Greene superbly did it in "The Quiet American", pitting the unassailable fanatic against the vulnerable cynic in a compelling tale of love and intrigue.

Surprisingly, even Conrad's normal gift of rendering the scene of the novel in stirring, surreal style is missing in these parts.

There are a lot of protracted, pointless conversations and a few characters, essentially caricatures of the imperialists of the time, stumble in and out of the story without making a difference.

A lot of this middle segment, of about sixty or seventy pages, is a sludge through which it is extremely tiresome for the reader to wade through.

Yet, one must finally forgive all these problems - disturbing as they are - once Conrad steers the novel into its third act, its final hundred pages which lifted this sprawling story single-handedly from its turgid meandering to something tense, captivating, enthralling and emotionally devastating in equal measure.

Once Jim ships out to Patusan, a fictional Malay country, almost hidden out of sight of the Empire builders from Europe and torn into two by the warring factions of the wizened, decadent Rajah Allang and his greatest foe, the formidable Doramin, the novel soon inherits the mysterious, mesmerising magic of Conrad's greatest works and once again, Marlow's soliloquies and reflections on Jim, his inner dilemma and his yearning for redemption and romance, become exquisitely thoughtful and worldly again.

Moreover, Jim himself evolves into a fascinatingly enigmatic character, a ragged outcast for the exotic land where he has found himself who transforms, when compelled by a new mission of righteous intent, into a rousing hero for these people whom he defends and unites with his romantic and generous spirit of decisive courage.

Conrad's writing rarely misses its rhythm here, alternately beautifully between the quieter, more introspective moments of reflection and the emotionally charged sequences of heroism and bravado and at all times, the sense of exotic flavour, of something unusual and mesmerising and unmistakably human, seeps into the prose, lending a majestic sweep to the proceedings, as they become more and more enthralling by the turn.

Yet, "Lord Jim" is far from Conrad's greatest work.

It lacks the hypnotic, almost feverish intensity of "Heart of Darkness", the eye-widening wonder of "Youth" and the tense, crackling emotional atmosphere of "Gaspar Ruiz" - three novels that rank in my opinion as three of the finest works of English literature and also a testament to the fact that longer narratives were always going to be difficult for this author, frequently prone to digressions, to navigate.

Like "The Secret Agent", this is quite rambling and ungainly in parts but while that novel, set in a grubby Edwardian London, was intentionally gritty and sordid to match its bleak milieu, there are many times in this vast, expansive saga where the seams show quite ignobly - there is a richer, more mesmerising and enchanting novel inside its pretensions at realism and it only rears its head when it is already well past its halfway mark.

Conrad claimed that he wanted to write a yarn, and that people in the tropics do talk almost as long as Marlow keeps on narrating the story, filled with his own digressions and parallel thoughts and observations but this only disturbs and upsets our potential enjoyment of the many places where the more romantic, more swashbuckling tale of Jim's defeat and ultimate redemption emerges brilliantly to the surface.

For there is a very simple, even predictable story running through the dense layers of prose - essentially of a man's fall, rise and then his dramatic redemption.

Yet, when a great storyteller as Conrad falters, the result is still nothing short of compelling, even in its failings.

"Lord Jim", after beating around the bush with its numerous convolutions, superbly picks up the speed and acquires its customary elegance and the last forty five pages deserve to be read to be experienced in their devastating dramatic intensity.

There are scenes here of treachery, menace, malice, betrayal, loyalty, heroism and villainy that are rendered so convincingly that even the sensational, melodramatic quality of these elements become something poetic and deeply resonant.

The end arrives without warning, Jim heads towards his predestined fate like a noble warrior and even the most skeptical reader, who would have fretted, like how I did, over the slump in the middle, would be shaken and stirred by this tumult of emotions and passions.

This is the classic tale of redemption.

A man, haunted by a momentary act of cowardice that brings him lasting shame, flees from himself.

He embarks on a journey that leads him to the depths of the Eastern jungles, where he begins to atone for his past misdeed.

The story is brilliantly plotted, with each twist and turn keeping the reader on the edge of their seat.

The writing is beautiful, painting vivid pictures of the jungles and the emotions of the characters.

However, there is an undertone of white supremacy that sometimes strikes a sour note.

This detracts from the overall enjoyment of the story and makes one question the author's perspective.

Despite this flaw, the tale of redemption is still a powerful one, showing that even the most flawed of us can find a way to make amends and start anew.

It is a story that will stay with you long after you have finished reading it.

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet. His build was powerfully muscular, and as he advanced straight at you, there was a slight stoop of the shoulders, with his head forward and a fixed from-under stare. This stare made you instantly think of a charging bull, full of strength and determination.

His voice was deep and loud, and his manner exhibited a kind of dogged self-assertion. However, this self-assertion had nothing aggressive about it. It seemed rather a necessity, as if he was constantly reassuring himself as much as he was presenting himself to others.

He was spotlessly neat, dressed in immaculate white from his shoes all the way to his hat. In the various Eastern ports where he earned his living as a ship-chandler's water-clerk, he was extremely popular. People were drawn to his neat appearance, his confident yet non-threatening manner, and his deep, booming voice. His popularity in these ports was a testament to his character and the way he carried himself in his daily life.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5658

I was perusing my old books when I chanced upon this paperback edition of Lord Jim. I had bought it in 1966 when I was a freshman in high school.

Why on earth would a 14-year-old girl purchase, as one of her very first book buys, Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad?

It was because as a girl, she had adored the Classics Illustrated Comic book story of Lord Jim.

The old paperback's red cover vividly reflects the intense emotion of the scene illustrated: the solitary light of the ship before the crew loses sight of it, the single lifeboat fleeing from the Patna with the cowardly crew, and Jim scowling and defensive about the shame of having abandoned the ship. The comic shows the youthful Jim, always clad in clean white apparel, his blond hair almost white against his tanned face. The paperback cover depicts Jim's moment of disgrace; the comic, his moment of honor and atonement, leaving his beloved Jewel to face the consequences of his actions.

The girl, me, found Jim both heroic and tragic. As children, we envision magnificent feats of glory and righteousness. Catching the flag before it touches the ground, pacifying the murderous intruder with music that soothes the wild beasts. Jim has retained that childlike dream of heroism and lofty ideals into his twenties.

"He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf...When all men flinched, then--he felt sure--he alone would know how to deal with the spurious menace of wind and seas."

Then, at age 23, Jim's opportunity arrives, and he fails to live up to his own exalted self-image.

The plot unfolds thus: Jim ships aboard the Patna, whose jaded crew he deems far beneath his parsonage-rooted high values. "I loathed them. I hated them," Jim tells Marlowe, the narrator of the story.

The Patna strikes something in the ocean, likely a floating hulk. Water fills the holds. The crew, in a panic, abandons ship without a thought for the lives of the 800 Muslim pilgrims on board, as there are not enough lifeboats. Jim wants no part of this until the last moment. The captain and crew shout "jump, jump," and Jim's primal brain opts for survival---and Jim jumps. He despises himself from that moment on.

"Äh! What a chance missed! My God! What a chance missed!"

The ship does not sink. Jim alone faces trial while the others flee. The entire crew loses their credentials.

"I may have jumped, but I don't run away."

Marlowe was in the courtroom. Afterwards, a man in the street comments on "that yellow cur," a dog, but Jim assumes the comment is directed at him and turns on Marlowe, whom he believes uttered the words. Marlowe ends up listening to Jim's story and finds him employment with Stein. Stein understands immediately: "He is romantic."

"There were his fine sensibilities, his fine feelings, his fine longings--a sort of sublimated, idealized selfishness. He was--if you allow me to say so--very fine; very fine--and very unfortunate. A little coarser nature would not have withstood the strain; it would have had to come to terms with itself...a still coarser one would have remained invulnerably ignorant and completely uninteresting."

Jim rejoices in being given a fresh start and performs his job exceptionally well, becoming Stein's protégé and surrogate son. But the moment someone recognizes him, Jim, in shame, flees deeper into the Malaysian islands. Marlowe finds Jim employment where he will never be recognized, on Patusan, an island in the remote district of a native-ruled state. There are three factions vying for trade, and only one other white man on the entire island, Cornelius, whom Jim is sent to replace. Cornelius is not fine, and he despises Jim.

Jim has been given the opportunity to bloom into the kind of man he always knew he was and wanted to be. He assists the native ruler Doramin in fending off the Rajah and becomes a local hero. The natives respect him, tell tales of his magical powers, and call him Tuan Jim, or Lord Jim. Jim takes responsibility for their well-being and considers them his people. It is a microcosm of Colonialism in its most idealized form. Jim realizes, however, that this adulation is false, that there is another truth, the real truth, of his fallen nature and cowardice.

"He was like a figure set up on a pedestal."

Several years later, Marlowe visits Jim. He attempts to persuade Jim not to hide from the world, exclaiming, "that it is not I or the world who remember...It is you---you, who remember." Jim no longer deems himself worthy of life within the white world. He believes he has found his calling and place.

A Buccaneer named Brown comes to the island in search of food. The natives capture Brown and wish to kill them. Jim understands that good men can do bad deeds and who is he to condemn anyone? He tells Doramin that the pirates were evil-doers, but their destiny had been evil, too. He convinces the natives to let the white men return to their ship with food.

"He was ready to answer with his life for any harm that should come to them."

Cornelius is convinced the pirates plan to take over the trade themselves. On their way to their ship, the pirates attack and kill Doramin's son. Jim realizes that he has brought about his own downfall. Jim presents himself to Doramin, who shoots him through the chest.

Marlowe calls Jim's act exalted egoism, tearing himself from the arms of the woman who loves him to "celebrate his pitiless wedding with a shadowy ideal of conduct."

I have read the novel numerous times. I no longer feel a kinship with Jim's high romantic idealism. I appreciate the novel on other levels: Conrad's magnificent writing, the psychological exploration of human nature.

We know today how the human brain functions on two levels: the primal brain that determines flight or fight, and the higher brain that logically assesses the consequences of our actions. Jim's jump was primal. His presentation to Doramin was a conscious act of accepting justice---a rare virtue in any era.

We are labeled the "me generation." We are a society in which we take all we can get, and shirking responsibility is regarded as shrewd. We have omitted the prayer of confession from church services because we desire religion to be personally uplifting, and the idea of all being sinners is a downer. Personal responsibility has become passé.

I suspect Romanticism is completely dead.

Perhaps it was even when Conrad wrote this novel. Marlowe and Stein both view Jim as possessing a great egoism. No one understands what compels Jim to hide, why he cannot forgive himself, and why he does not realize that his jump means little to others. We can think of celebrities and politicians who committed serious personal errors, which were soon forgotten or forgiven by the public, and whose careers continued.

I recall hearing that when we are young, we think everyone is watching us; when we are middle-aged, we no longer care that people are watching us; and when we are old, we understand that no one was watching us in the first place. Jim represents youth with all its anxiety, its search for identity, and need for approval. As a child, I loved the tragedy. As a girl, the high ideals. And as old age approaches, I realize that Conrad has captured the high idealism of self-conscious youth in the character of Jim. And that atonement is a personal matter that no one else will ever fully understand.

I have a profound love for redemption arcs and flawed Romantic heroes. There is something truly captivating about seeing a character grow and transform. However, what I detest with every fiber of my being are racism, colonialism, and sexism. In this novel, the overpowering presence of the latter completely drowns out any possibility of savoring the former.

Jim, a seaman serving under a corrupt captain, was involved in an incident where a significant portion of the crew abandoned a ship filled with religious pilgrims, believing them to be dead. Oh, but surprise, they didn't actually die. Marlow, the same observer and sometimes narrator from "Heart of Darkness," attends Jim's trial. While officially condemning his actions, Marlow becomes fixated on helping him because he deems Jim as "one of us," part of "our kind." Here, "us" and "our" have an incredibly narrow definition, limited to "white, straight, upper or upper middle class, male, English." Marlow's actions give the impression of people pleading for a white male athlete who has committed a rape or other violent crime to be granted a second chance because he has "such a promising future." Yuck.

I am aware that some people defend "Heart of Darkness" by claiming that Conrad was actually critiquing and deliberately exposing the dark side of colonialism. But I really didn't perceive that in this work. He appears to be genuine in his contempt for colonized people, all people of color, and especially women. He seems sincere in his belief in Jim's "civilizing" rule over them once our titular irresponsible character manages to ascend to a position of command on a remote isle. He also seems to hold some very regressive and damaging views regarding masculine duty and worth.

I in no way advocate for discarding the great masterpieces of traditional literary studies. Instead, I usually think that the canon should be expanded to highlight the diversity that did exist but was not previously given the same level of attention. However, this particular work? Maybe it can be let go.

Okay, so I'm not the world's biggest Conrad fan. Chinua Achebe's essay on Heart of Darkness pretty much explains why. But Conrad's on the list, so Conrad I read! I'm wishing now I'd stuck with The Secret Agent, which I read for a 20th Century British Literature course a few years ago--but no, I had to be adventurous and pick one I hadn't read before.

First off, Lord Jim is confusing. The first seventy pages, it's made very clear that something terrible has happened, that Jim was involved in an awful moral failing, but we don't know what it is. It's described in fitful bursts that talk around the bad event but never describe it. (Little did I know at this point that was because Conrad would be spending the next hundred or more pages describing this one event that happened in about an hour. Really dwelling on it. Sigh.) Second, the structure of storytelling didn't work for me at all. After a meagre attempt at third person, the rest of the novel is told by Captain Marlow. That means every paragraph for two hundred odd pages starts with quotation marks. Marlow rambles. Like an awful jokester, he goes back in time to explain things that he forgot to explain earlier. He veers off on tangents to describe what he and another person thought of all these events years later (STILL BEFORE TELLING US WHAT THE ACTUAL EVENT WAS.) For instance, there's a whole diversion about how this one captain committed suicide three days after sentencing Jim, because this captain just couldn't live with it. What is \\"it\\"? I still don't know. Live with sentencing Jim? Live with the idea that some sailors are moral sinkholes? Live with the knowledge that such an event--STILL NOT DESCRIBED--could even happen? I don't know.

Anyway, finally we get to the event. Jim was the first mate on a passenger steamer. The steamer was packed to the gills with pilgrims to Mecca. Halfway there they hit a submerged wreck that bangs a great big hole in their outer hull and a dangerous bulge on their inner hull. The ship starts taking on water. Only Jim and the other officers know about it. There's nothing they can do to fix it (they think). There aren't enough lifeboats for everyone. The other officers rush to abandon ship on one of the very few boats before the passengers riot in terror at the idea of sinking. Jim wants to stay and help and be a hero, but he's terrified of the possibility of a riot and of drowning. So he abandons ship with the rest of them. They concoct a story to say they tried to save the ship valiantly, but it sank despite themselves. Except it doesn't--the ship is rescued by a French navy ship. So all the officers are stripped of their navigation certificates for dereliction of duty, but mostly for cowardice.

Jim is a romantic young guy who believes that he is or ought to be a hero. He always thought he'd have amazing adventures as a sailor that would prove his resiliency and bravery and just general HEROICness. So the fact that he did this reprehensible thing, leaving eight hundred people to drown without a backwards glance, really gives him manpain. POOR JIM, seems to be largely the message. Captain Marlow feels bad for Jim because Jim looks like--that is, has the physical appearance of--a steady, reliable person. The inference is, because Jim's white and British, he is \\"one of us\\"--a sailor--and while Marlow doesn't want to agree that there's nothing else Jim could have done, because he's completely repulsed by Jim's actions, he still decides to give him a second chance in the form of letters of introduction to other employers now that he's been drummed out of the sailoring trade. So basically, Jim is saved by his privilege.

But he can't accept it. Or himself--not until he does something truly Heroic (TM) to redeem himself in his own eyes. (No one else really cares.) So Jim moves to an island where he's the only white man in residence, and he helps one village in a war against a neighbouring, oppressive village. When they win, Jim becomes the de facto lord over all these native people, because they just can't solve their own problems the way a white interloper can. And Jim's all like, I can never leave, because then who would take care of these poor native villagers? They certainly can't take care of themselves! And I'm like, barf.

Well, long story short, European pirates come by for rape and pillage, and they're stopped by the villagers and under siege when Jim gets there. Jim decides to offer them safe passage back to the sea. But of course they decide to kill people on their way out instead. So Jim offers himself as a sacrifice to the king of the village, because the king's son was killed by pirates after Jim gave his word that they'd leave peacefully. And presumably this shows that Jim had honour and bravery all along, and wasn't some trumped up idiot living high on his own romantic notion of himself all along.

I'm having a really tough time with whether this book can be said to reinforce or critique the British empire and the relationships of whites with indigenous people. Because on the one hand, Jim's pretensions of heroism are constantly undermined. But on the other hand, it seems right to everyone around him that he should be helped out and that he got kind of a raw deal, just because he made this one bad decision once. And on the one hand, Conrad sort of mocks the men who rely on their whiteness as their only necessary route to power. But on the other hand, all the indigenous characters are childish, cowardly, irrational. The best of them is the prince of Jim's village, who could \\"fight like a white man\\", that is, using tactics and strategy. I don't know, I felt like we were supposed to feel sorry for Jim in the first half, and agree that he'd achieved his redemption in the second half, and throughout I was just like, ugh I hate Jim. So I mean there's that.

It was a weird read, both really fast and really superficial. Because of the storytelling structure, and all the tangential rambling of Marlow, I was constantly tempted to skim, but I suppose I was meant to read slowly and thoughtfully and really think about all the nuances of the situations. Instead I was like, \\"this is a stupid situation and I don't care what five different people thought about the nuances at five different times and places.\\" Like, Jim's moral quandary was put forth as this incredibly complex and difficult situation, which I suppose in a way it was--can any of us say we'd stay on a sinking ship in a probably hopeless situation when we might otherwise escape?--but on the other hand, it's a stark choice, a very simple choice in the end, not one that requires chapters and chapters of dissection. So I kept rolling my eyes and trying to read faster and faster, which meant I probably lost some of the nuance. Also I was sometimes confused about who was speaking and who was being described, so there's that.

Bottom line, don't think I'd like to read this one again, but I'd certainly use it if I had to in any sort of essay on post-colonialism.

It's an extremely challenging task to determine which one of Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness is superior.

I award both of them five stars as they are absolute mainstays of English literature, despite being written by a Pole! They serve as strong pillars, propping up the rather pompous Romanticist period (ugh, agrarianism! double ugh, pre-raphaelites!), and laying the groundwork (alongside Tolstoy, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Mallarmé, Ibsen, and Schopenhauer) for the significant transition into Modernism.

This was almost undoubtedly the first great novel of the 20th century (published from 1899 - 1900). Conrad's snubbing by the Nobel committee, along with Tolstoy's, constitutes the first two major blunders of that institution.

I'm well aware that I'm far from being the most erudite person. Out of approximately 180 semester hours to date, only 10 were from outside math and the hard sciences (History of Composers 1450 - 1750, HoC 1750 - Present, The American Novel, and a James Joyce study).

Nevertheless, I'm only familiar with a single Nobelist from 1901 - 1919, and that's the bucolic Kipling. What a load of rubbish.

There is a very beautiful book, but it is rather difficult and complex, and in an extremely inexplicable way. I assume it is because of the storytelling method. The thoughts are complex, there is a lot of subconsciousness that is difficult for us to understand, stories within stories, and dozens of characters. The language is extremely rich (I'm not quoting exactly, but "the wound gushes like an open sore" is one of the most wonderful things I have ever heard or read), but also abstract and somewhat illogical. And since the entire novel is saturated with this richness, one has to be especially concentrated to understand it well and correspondingly enjoy it to the end. And regarding the questions that Joseph Conrad poses to us, one really needs to think a great deal. I'm afraid that every person on this earth is exposed to the danger of being like Lord Jim. If one is sincere enough, of course.

This book presents a unique challenge and reward. The complexity of the plot and the depth of the characters require the reader to invest a significant amount of time and effort. However, the beauty and power of the language make it all worthwhile. It forces us to confront our own beliefs and values, and to question the nature of morality and human behavior.

Overall, it is a remarkable work of literature that will continue to be studied and debated for years to come.

Lord Jim, a novel by Joseph Conrad, was originally published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900.

The story begins with the abandonment of a distressed passenger ship by its crew, including a young British seaman named Jim. This act leads to his public censure. The novel then follows Jim's attempts to come to terms with himself and his past.

Jim dreams of a life of adventure and becomes a mate on an old ship that transports passengers. When a storm hits and the ship is on the verge of sinking, Jim succumbs to the fear that lies within every human and flees with three others on the only available boat, leaving the ship and its occupants behind. Miraculously, the ship is saved by a French warship.

Jim, who fares worse than his companions, is disgraced in this incident. An old and kind man named Marlow sets out to discover the secret of Jim's cowardice. He wants to help Jim rebuild his life and introduces him to several of his friends who live in the East.

The hero of the story travels from one port to another, unable to settle anywhere as he wishes to remain anonymous. Eventually, he meets a German trader named Stein who sends him to Patusan, a remote island in the Malay Archipelago that is the site of a civil war.

Jim narrowly escapes death several times and then takes on the leadership of Dain Waris, an old friend of Stein's. He manages to defeat Ali, a greedy man, and earns the trust of the locals. Jim's power and courage soon spread by word of mouth, and love smiles upon him in the form of Jewel, the daughter of a Malay.

However, Jim's past comes back to haunt him when a white man named Brown, who is being chased by a Spanish ship for illegal trading, arrives in Patusan. Brown, with the help of Cornelius, who has a grudge against Jim, betrays the trust of the locals and kills many of them, including Dain Waris's son.

The end of Jim's story is very sad. He realizes that he has once again lost the trust of humanity. He ignores the pleas of Jewel and his other friends and makes no attempt to prove his innocence. Instead, he appears unarmed before Dain Waris and takes his own life in a touching manner.

This story, told entirely in the words of the old Marlow, may sometimes tire the reader. However, its style is in perfect harmony with the sufferings of the hero. The author's remarkable interest in the hero of the story, even in his worst moments of decline, makes this work one of the most outstanding portrayals of the human race.

Lord Jim is one of Conrad's best novels. Perhaps the most important one. For me, it surely is. It transported me, as a child at that time, towards the readings of adulthood without me even realizing it. And the character of Tuan Jim has remained for me the paradigm of a certain way of being a man, exemplary and emblematic. He returns to my thoughts like a friend and periodically, for decades, also in my re-readings.

Lord Jim is the story of a great flight. An impossible flight. Jim flees all his life from the image of himself that he saw reflected in the eyes of others, because of a disaster at sea that in the end was only such for him. An obsession from which he will never free himself. He flees until he manages to put himself outside the civilized world, in a sort of isolated and unreachable elsewhere, where he has the illusion of having finally built an image that corresponded to his own ideal of himself.

And it is there that Evil reaches him. The true Evil and not a reflected image. The Evil of the world in the guise of a man, of the Other in flesh and blood. “That man was one of the emissaries with which the world he had renounced pursued him in his refuge – white men of that place where he was not considered worthy of living”.

At the center of it all is the reflection on shame and on the fragile boundary that separates it from honor and success, from the full realization of oneself. A boundary along which necessity, chance or destiny, human weakness, fear, and the awareness that we all feel of a mystery, of an abyss,肆虐 and run wild. The vice and the greatness of this gigantic character lies in recognizing in Evil something that also belongs to him, “unsettling allusion to a possible common guilt, to a secret knowledge, a bond of their minds and their hearts”.

All bound by a dark and mysterious force, inscrutable to all. “They were Wicked, but also destiny had been wicked with them”.

Whoever is interested in Lord Jim, in these themes and in Conrad will find something more here. https://scarabooks.blogspot.com/2019/...

AB/PB|

The reason why I've picked this book last was because of curiosity and interest for the author. His previous work, ''The Heart of Darkness'', has had such an influence on me.

Plus, the fact that the movie adaptation, ''Apocalypse Now'', is one of my top 16 favorite movies from English speaking areas. I wouldn't say that my expectations were that this will surpass or be equal to it. Although it's much larger and it shares some similarity, I at least hoped it would be interesting and able to stand on its own.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Due to its too long narration, two plots that don't seem connected and discussions that are so squeezed within its pages, it made me fall asleep at the wrong moment.

The themes are excellent. There is the clash of romanticism, critics to the oppressor against the oppressed and the harsh reality the man finds himself when dealing with the truth. Also, making the titular character a myth within his story through the narration of someone who has met him is a great concept.

But the execution is such a mess that it looks like I'm reading two separate books from two different authors within the same universe it transpires. I would like to give it a try for a reread in some future. Also, I will give a chance for this author to show me more of some of his other works, which I will get during the upcoming years.