The Spirit of Illusion

“‘He was not—if I may say so—clear to me. He was not clear. And
there is a suspicion he was not clear to himself either."
Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim (1900)

Points for Reflection

Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim (1900), chps. 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?

Blue Painting (1943)
Wassily Kandinsky

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu