Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

 

Everyone knows the story, I suppose. A young sailor with romantic visions of how valorous he will be in trying situations behaves badly. He deserts a ship full of passengers when it is in danger of sinking rather than doing what he could to save the passengers, or barring that, going down with the ship. He seems to have fled in sort of fugue state—either that or he has simply repressed the incident due to his great shame. He is unable to recall what led him to do such a thing, and is appalled to think it might simply have been  fear.

This young sailor, Jim, while being tried for his dereliction of duty, meets Marlow who, as he does in Heart of Darkness, tells us the story. In this case the story is Jim's life: his attempts to flee from his shame, his near success, his ultimate failure. There is also, however, an omniscient narrator, which means that for most of the novel it is not the story of Jim's life, but rather a story about Marlow telling the story of Jim's life. This method of narration at one remove that Conrad so often employs fascinates me, because I'm not quite sure how it is that this use of Marlow as proxy reader—we see Marlow's reactions to the tale even as we react ourselves—is so effective. 

As in Heart of Darkness, there are reflections on colonialism: the passengers in the ship that Jim abandons are pilgrims on their way to Mecca; later, while attempting to flee his shame, Jim becomes, not unlike Captain Kurtz, a sort of "White Savior" on a remote island until, once again, he fails.

And there is a bleak existential philosophy. Jim's romantic ideals and the horrors to which they give rise lead to questions about how one should live when facts cancel ideals, because, as Conrad puts it, "the language of facts . . . [is] so often more enigmatic than the craftiest arrangement of words."

I look forward to more of Conrad's crafty arrangements of words.