Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

Inspiration is a funny thing: I find that my motivation for reading Joseph Conrad came more from the Alien series of movies (Ridley Scott named his spacecrafts after ships in Conrad's novels) than it did from the more conspicuous Apocalypse Now (a modernised vision of Heart of Darkness).  And I chose to read Lord Jim after I saw a cartoon drawing of some castaways floating on a raft.  Yes, sometimes my choices are as capricious as that!

Lord Jim is a story of redemption.  The eponymous protagonist of this story (we never do learn his last name) is confronted with a crisis and then has a serious lapse in judgement.  The consequences of Jim's actions are twofold: firstly,  he is publicly humiliated and branded a coward; secondly, he has to try to reconcile the person he knows himself to truly be with the man who panicked in a crisis, and this eventually leads to his death and to his redemption.

Conrad's narrator Marlow ( who appeared in Heart of Darkness) spends the greater part of the novel dissecting and re-dissecting Jim's action, character and mental state.  It is as though he is in pursuit of the true and tangible core of any human being; however, he finds nothing but doubt and mystery.  Marlow's motivation for doing this is simple: in Jim he recognises himself and his audience.  On at least six occasions he says of Jim: "he was one of us".  Sailor? Whiteman? Human?

While the unrelenting analysis of Jim's character and situation did get a touch wearisome, Conrad was able at times to produce intense prose capable of lifting the reader out of the narrative and onto new planes of thought.  Here are two examples:

To fling away your daily bread so as to get your hands free for a grapple with a ghost may be an act of prosaic heroism ... and men who had eaten and meant to eat every day had applauded the creditable folly ...  He was indeed unfortunate, for all his recklessness could not carry him out from under the shadow.  There was always a doubt of his courage ... but what I could never make up my mind about was whether his line of conduct amounted to shirking his ghost or to facing him.  (Page 147)

 Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust but your minds.  I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies.  I do not mean to be offensive; it is respectable to have no illusions -- and safe -- and profitable -- and dull.  Yet you, too, in your time must have known the intensity of life, that light of glamour created in the shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck from a cold stone -- and as short-lived, alas! (p.166)

I am very glad to have read this book by Joseph Conrad.  I found it challenging and thought-provoking, and the prose was a joy to read.