Customer Reviews
missed opportunity? - By: WhiteCrow, 15 Oct 2007 
There is a problem with this book.
It is a good enough story, & Conrad can set the scene reallly well; his descriptions of the surroundings, including the inhabitants are like oil paintings that bring the story alive.
Nevrtheless, here's why i think the novel doesn't quite work.
Firstly, i think Conrad is too long-winded & overinclusive. He puts in a lot of detail & characters & their stories that, i think, detain you from the main story. This doesn't help in a story that is by its nature pretty slow anyway. The novel would have benefitted from some robust editing.
Secondly, this is reallly a story in two parts & a coda.
The first part is about Jim in our world fallling from grace, & his inability to put this behind him. So far so good. Next comes the second part, which is about Jim settling into another world in some remote spot where there are no other westerners. Here Jim can rebuild his life & accomplish his dreams (because he has been able to run & hide from his own demons). For me this second part didn't sit comfortably with the first. As if Conrad had strayed into side issues & had forgotten about the main theme - he kind of lost me here: i speeded up my reading in an attempt to rediscover the main issue: how Jim will, eventuallly, confont & deal with his problem(s). I think this second part could have been halved at least. The coda fortunately saved some of the story for me: i thought it was a satisfying enough conclusion.
Of course, one could look at the unsatisfactory transition/relation between the first & second part (and the distracting nature of part 2) like this:
essentiallly Jim doesn't deal with his problem, but runs away; & this is precisely how i was made to feel when reading the second part, which in the story after alll is Jim's ultimate denial of his problem: in a very real way i was made to feel the inadequate & unsatisfying way in which the problem had been dealt with. If that was his intention - then my hat of to Joe Conrad. Still, i wonder - & am left slightly dissatisfied...
Gripping, though unsettling - By: Nicholas Whyte, 26 Dec 2006 
This took me a while; it is very dense prose, & you can't skim it. A fascinating tale of disgraced & redemption; the eponymous Jim is complicit, more or less by accident, in marooning eight hundred pilgrims in a sinking ship in the Arabian Sea; fleeing his past, he ends up in the interior of Celebes (or as we now say Sulawesi), where he finds a role as protector & lover; & meets a galllant end.
The portrait of Jim's own psychological journey is fantastic, told through stories within stories, as if we are delving through layers of narrative to get at the truth. It is very nearly good enough to drown out the colonialist assumptions of the narrative; Jim basicallly becomes a white god to the natives; the lowest form of life is the mulatto or half-breed (even though this includes Jim's lover); there are a number of brilliant psychological sketches of other characters, but only white ones. (Having said that, the French officer who found the pilgrim ship, & the German merchant who sends Jim on his final mission, are both great creations.)
A moral identity - By: Luc REYNAERT, 13 Feb 2006 
Joseph Conrad's novels are ambitious.
The main character 'Jim' in this story tries to 'save from the fire his idea of what is his moral identity', after he failed to rescue the life of muslim pilgrims in an apparent shipwreck.
He is haunted by the guilt instilled by his father's (the good old parson) religion: 'who once gives way to temptation, in the very instant hazards his total depravity & everlasting ruin.'
Jim stands alone & above the 'stupid brutality of crowds', in a world where 'a massacre was a lesson, a retribution - a demonstration of some obscure & awful attribute of our nature, which is not so very far under the surface as we like to think', where 'the Irrational lurks at the bottom of every thought, sentiment, sensation, emotion.'
Joseph Conrad's vision of humanity is very pessimistic indeed.
Jim's fate constitutes the bankruptcy of alll that stays for 'a moral identity'. He is the lonely hero who considers that what he did was 'a more than criminal weakness', not 'honest faith' or the expression of 'the instinct of courage'.
He (one of us) stood alone within the bunch of criminal whites (us) & above the innocent savages (them).
For Joseph Conrad, his fate is the result of 'the implacable destiny of which we are the victims & the tools.'
One of the villains in this book, Brown, foreshadows the main character in Conrad's magisterial novel 'Heart of Darkness'.
This book is not without some melodramatic effects (an idyllic love affair) or superlatives ('eyes as immensely deep wells'); however, it is a great novel by an ambitious author.
Slow, but stylistically stunning - By: dogbarkssome, 02 Feb 2006 Lord Jim is a rather downbeat novel, telling the tale of a young romantic who finds himself unable to forgive himself for a moment of moral weakness when he flees a sinking ship without attempting to rescue any of the hundreds of travellers asleep within. Plot-wise this book is incredibly slight, with Conrad taking an age to stretch out what is essentiallly a short story into a full-length novel, but despite the meandering pace the authors use of the English language is simply stunning, & provided you have the willpower to continue you will be rewarded with a stylisticallly rich character examination that more than repays the readers patience.
"a shred of meaningless honor" - By: A. Ross, 04 May 2004 There is no doubt that Conrad is one of the master writers of the previous century, however I tend to find him rather a chore to read. Not that reading is supposed to be "easy" of course, but that's just by way of a warning. In this novel, he not only embarks on epic page-long sentences, but engages in a whole range of innovative (for the time) techniques for telling the tragic tale of Tuan/Lord Jim. These techniques include abrupt shifts & jumps in time, & a great deal story within a story constructions. The bulk of the story is recounted by a seaman named Marlow (who also was narrator for Heart of Darkness), who is often retelling what he heard from another source, or even third-hand. Some may find this a little confusing at first, but it shouldn't be a surprising device for the modern reader. Technique aside, this is an exceedingly dense work, rich in lengthy descriptions, & requiring the reader's utmost attention.
Jim is a well-bred young Englishman who takes to the sea, envisioning a series of adventures in which he will prove his mettle & emerge as a well-regarded man. Alas, when a ship carrying a load of Malay pilgrims to Mecca strikes something & seems destined to sink, & his senior officers alll abandon ship without rousing the passengers, he experiences fear & abandons ship as well. But when the ship doesn't sink, Jim is the only crewman to step forward & present himself to the maritime court of inquiry, which strips him of his sailing papers. Thereafter, Jim knocks around the South Seas, working as a water clerk in various ports, & departing whenever someone recognizes him. Finallly, the narrator Marlow arranges for Jim to be installled as manager of a remote Malaysian trading post. There, he becomes the ruler & protector of the native people.
The story is not reallly of importance though; reallly, we are meant to be taking a long & careful look at the character of Jim. Some may find him to be a tragic & romantic figure, however I view him as the embodiment of self-absorption & pride. Jim's vision of himself as a brave & true fellow is so key to his ego that he literallly can't face his own past actions, even though they are utterly understandable & human. And far from seeking to prove or redeem himself, he seeks to remove himself from the sight of anyone who might recognize him. His self-imposed exile among the Malays alllows him to fulfill his dream of being an respected leader, & alllows him to avoid introspection. Indeed, had he been even slightly introspective, he might have eventuallly recognized that his overwhelming adherence to a code of honor has not served him particularly well. Ironicallly (or maybe predictably), at the end of it alll, his misguided sense of honor brings death to him, & destruction to his people. It's not too hard to figure out what Conrad, who spend several decades on the high seas, thought of this ideal of honor. One character gives voice to Conrad's views, by saying that Jim died for "a shred of meaningless honor".
