Unbearable Light

"'it is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges
to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge’” (51).
Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim (1900)

Points for Reflection

Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim (1900)

chps. 1-15

1. Conrad quickly intimates that some as-yet-unnamed “fact” pursues Jim (8), yet refrains from immediately identifying that nature of that fact/event; he doles out details very, very slowly.  Does this create in the first-time reader a delightful sense of suspense, or is his reticence infuriating?  At what points does Conrad add key bits of information that help us complete this ghostly portrait of the novel’s core occurrence?
2. does the first narrator betray any opinions concerning his characters and their actions, or does he reserve judgment and remain detached?
3. what of our second narrator, Marlow; is his an unbiased perspective?
4. Conrad’s first and omniscient narrator suggests that the “Imagination” is “the enemy of men” (12 top).  Does this prove to be the case for Jim, or does his imagination empower him?
5. does this novel, filled as it is with carefully constructed passages and phrases, suggest that words can accurately and deftly convey truth?
6. does the novel suggest it is impossible to read another person’s appearance accurately?
7. are we to agree with Marlow's declaration--and the authorities' conclusion--that any evidence to be gained from the mentally unbalanced chief engineer is not "material" (37)?
8. is Nature beneficent or cruel, compassionate or capricious?  Does it guide or confuse?
9. why does Marlow talk so long (39-45) about the peripheral Captain Brierly?
10. what draws Jim and Marlow towards one another?
11. why does Jim share his story with Marlow?
12. why does Marlow desire to learn about Jim from the (now insane) chief engineer in teh hospital where Marlow discovers him while visiting one of his own men?
13. does Marlow consider Jim heroic or blameworthy? Does he believe he would have himself acted otherwise than Jim did during the crisis faced by the Patna?
14. does Nature appear more as a comforting mother in this novel, or a malevolent destroyer?
15. is Jim helplessly deceived about his deepest motivations and character, or does he accurately self-assess?
16. what do you think?  Could the Patna and its passengers have been saved?
17. Marlow’s opinion of Jim dips and crests like a ship on turbulent waves, eh?  Ultimately, where does Marlow come out—does he think well of Jim, all things considered? Do Jim’s rhetorical questions of Marlow—in which he asks whether Marlow would not have done the same thing as Jim—ultimately convince Marlow of the younger man’s cowardice or his humanity?
18. Marlow is no passive observer of Jim’s ordeal, but an active participant deeply affected by his new friend’s struggles.  Why is Marlow so interested in Jim?  What does Jim represent/symbolize for him?
19. what does Jim's tale force Marlow to face? Is it similar to what Captain Brierly recognized, prior to his suicide?
20. we discover early on that Jim's father is a parson. Does Conrad appear to follow the trend of many other modernist novels and work to reject traditional religious concepts?  Look for allusions to Christianity and Islam, references to God, reflections on the spiritual, etc.
    • what idea is the following passage orbiting?   “‘If I understand anything of men, the matter was no doubt of the gravest import, one of those trifles that awaken ideas—start into life some thought with which a man unused to such a companionship finds it impossible to live’” (39 mid).
    • does Conrad employ the word “soul” to indicate one's innermost self, or an actual, eternal spirit?
    • is Conrad’s narrator sympathetic to the faith of the Muslim pilgrims?
    • what are the two narrators’ own attitudes towards traditional Christian concepts?
    • does this inexplicable force which puts Jim in such a difficult position appear—in the words of the narrator—more as a malevolent god or an impersonal but fatalistic hand of destiny?
21. do you agree with Marlow that it is possible to lie unconsciouly (83)?
22. does the combination of diametrically opposed attributes contained within Jim's personality seem normal, or do his thoughts and behavior deserve classification under some kind of mental disorder?
23. why does Jim characterize himself as isolated in the boat, despite the presence of others?
24. at what points does his own tale feel like a comedy of the absurd to Jim?
25. does Nature appear more as a comforting mother in this novel, or a malevolent destroyer?
26. what narratological purpose is served by Marlow's mentioning his (apparently tangential) conversation with the French lieutenant concerning the Patna (84-93)?
27. in the same vein, what purpose is served by Conrad's including that seemingly irrelevant digression about the fate of "poor Bob" who drowned trying to save a girl who would not abandon ship that, when it sank, went down so fast it pulled the two of them with it?

hps. 16-35

1. how close have Jim and Marlow grown, amidst Jim’s long revelation about his past?  What sort of intimacy have they achieved, and what distance remains?
2. why might Marlow have difficulty remembering Jim as the “legend of strength and prowess” he appeared the last time Marlow saw him, and instead easily recall him as “‘taking, perhaps, too much to heart the mere consequences of his failure” (106)?
3. what might be at issue, really, in that cryptic chp. 16 conversation held by Jim and Marlow filled with incomplete sentences (109)?
4. consider the metaphors Marlow used to describe Jim’s post-story, vulnerable self (112, 113).  Why might Marlow apply these metaphors—traditionally assigned to a female—to this male?
5. why does Marlow think his efforts to help Jim are inadequate? What element of Jim's person is Marlow able to assist, and what can he not reach/shape?
6. why does Marlow not cast as cowardly Jim’s repeat abandonment of good jobs (119)?
7. do Stein’s observations about human nature, and Jim specifically, seem valid?
8. Marlow concludes that Jim's "fine sensibilities" are unfortunate (107). What does his friend Stein think of Jim's sensibility: does Stein think it a strength or weakness?
9. what does Stein recommend as the answer/solution to the problem of the human condition?  Does Marlow agree?
10. consider the symbolic significance of the lighting conditions in Stein’s study (123-30).
11. Marlow reflects that he and Stein sent Jim off to Patusan “‘with no other notion than to get him out of the way [. . .] though, I own, I might have had another motive which had influenced me a little’” (134).  What was this other motive?
12. what role does the revolver, given to Jim by Marlow, play in Jim’s arrival in Patusan?
13. can you identify the comic malapropisms of the captain whose voluble speech seems, according to Marlow, “to be derived from a dictionary compiled by a lunatic’” (144)?
14. what range of emotions does Marlow pass through as Jim prepares to leave for Patusan (142-45)?
15. what has Jim found in Patusan that so thoroughly validates him?
16. does Marlow’s perspective concerning Jim’s new situation accord with Jim’s own?
17. is the racism exhibited in this novel by such characters as the Patna’s skipper shared by its narrator?  Its author?
18. upon what foundation has the friendship between Jim and Dain Waris been laid?
19. why does Sherif Ali compel his followers to kill all “strangers in their midst” (176)?
20. does Jim find what he's looking for in Patusan?
21. what has Jim accomplished that encourages the Bugis to look at him as superhuman?
22. has Marlow’s tendency to see Jim as “symbolic” of something about the human condition (159) prevented Marlow from fully understanding his friend as an individual?
23. why does Marlow consider Jim as simultaneously free and imprisoned, adored and isolated?
24. does Marlow’s repeated, silent likening of Jim to a child affect Marlow’s actual treatment of and interactions with Jim? Do these comparisons reflect a troublingly paternalistic posture towards his friend?
25. Marlow at first cannot determine why Jewel would love Jim so “jealously,” her pretty smiles regularly succeeded by “a look of silent, repressed anxiety” (169).  What is the source of Jewel’s concern?
26. does Marlow fail to quell Jewel's fears (188) because of their differing genders, or does his unsuccessful attempt suggest something more profound about the limits of human relationships across the board?
27. why does Jim feel helpless, instead of heroic, when Jewel claims she cannot be constantly watching over him ever night (178)?
28. does Marlow appreciate women more than he fears them (165-66)? Do his opinions about the opposite sex constitute misogyny?
29. what is it that Jewel wished to be saved from when she begged Jim to leave Patusan after helping to save his life (185)?
30. does Jim’s imaginative capacity serve him well in Patusan?
31. does Marlow’s visit to Jim in Patusan assist the young man in his journey towards peace? Towards self-knowledge?
32. why does Jim aver that the Bugis can never know the shameful event from which he flees (181)?
33. awhat might happen to Jim if he were quite, quite alone for an extended period of time, now that he has found refuge in Patusan?
34. what does Marlow mean by his declaration that “‘“[Jim] is not good enough [. . .] nobody is good enough”’” (189)?
35. what is the “‘strange and melancholy illusion’” Marlow has which he believes to be, “‘like all our illusions,’” a “‘remote unattainable truth, seen dimly’” (192)?
36. do you believe Marlow’s comment on his story to be generalizable to other narratives—that they, too, are “‘truth disclosed in a moment of illusion’” (192)?
37. why is Jim so intent on staying in Patusan, amidst the Bugis?

chps. 36-45

1. how would it alter the novel to end it with chapter 35 instead of continuing through to chapter 45?
2. the “‘privileged man’” who receives that Marlow’s correspondence about Jim’s final days apparently told Marlow--two years earlier--that “‘“giving your life”’” to those of a foreign culture is “‘“like selling your soul to a brute”’”  unless one’s actions are grounded in a firm belief in “‘the morality of an ethical progress’” (201).  This individual apparently told Marlow that one cannot sacrifice one’s life in a worthy way unless one holds such a belief.  Does Jim? If so, in what does he believe?
3. does Marlow believe that Jim’s family’s Christian faith gave them the imaginative capacity to envision the struggles faced by sailors (202-203)?
4. is Marlow correct that Jewel does “‘not grasp the real sense of what she was telling [him]’” (207)?
5. does Jim sink into the same swamp enveloping the other would-be leaders in this novel, or emerge as something special?
6. putting aside Cornelius’ jealousy of Jim for a moment, consider why else the older man might call Jim a “fool” (218, 224).
7. does learning about “Gentleman” Brown’s past dalliance with the wife of a missionary (209, 228) make him more sympathetic, or less so?
8. since the self-absorbed and duplicitous Brown is the one describing his private exchange with Jim, we don’t have access to Jim’s true feelings about the conversation—and only limited understanding of how Jim responds to Brown’s words.  Does Brown unwittingly say anything certain to a reaction deep within Jim?
9. how much does Marlow trust Brown’s account of his time in Patusan?
10. Jim told Marlow he had not yet lost sight of why he came to Patusan—not yet forgotten the shameful event that pursues him (181).  Has he successfully escaped this memory by the end of the novel?
11. whose narrative perspective takes over most of the narrative left after Marlow report Brown’s extended interaction with Jim? How frequently does Brown’s perspective reappear?
12. how effective a leader does Jewel prove when left in charge of the fort?
13. Marlow proves unwilling to divulge what he learned from Jewel about that hour or more she had alone with Him following Dain Waris’ death (242).  What arguments do you imagine she used in her efforts to alter Jim’s planned course of action?
14. when Jim tells Jewel, “‘“Nothing can touch me,”’” what does he mean, and do you think Marlow correct to interpret this as a “‘last flicker of superb egoism’” (244)?
15. which of the two options given us by Marlow do you, personally, gravitate towards--the portrait of Jim as an "inscrutable" and "excessively romantic" man who achieves "extraordinary success," or the vision of one driven by an "exalted egoism" who marries himself to "a shadowy ideal of conduct" (246)?

Sky Blue (1940)
Wassily Kandinsky

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu