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CHAPTER- 2
Identity Crisis: The Themes of Horror,
Courage, and Solidarity in Joseph Conrad’s
Early Novels:
The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ and
Lord Jim
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Joseph Conrad is a modernist writer like that of D.H. Lawrence, William
Faulkner, Marcel Proust and Franz Faulkner in fiction. Pound and Eliot did the same
in poetry, while Samuel Becket and others made modernist experiment in drama.
Literary modernism is full of innovation and experiment.
Conrad’s preoccupations in fiction are both thematic and formulaic. Conrad
has written about modern man’s existential problems- horror, august, absurdity, and
alienation. His two early novels The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ and Lord Jim can the
best be cited in this regard. The following is a critical analysis of Conrad’s depiction
of modern man’s identity crisis.
THE NIGGER OF THE ‘NARCISSUS’ (1898):
Conrad began work on this short novel in 1896. It was originally conceived as
a story of ‘about 30,000 words’, but as so often with Conrad it expanded as he worked
on it and the length of the finished novel is just over 50,000 words. ‘Not for the last
time, composition was a painful business’: he wrote to Garnett on 10 January 1897.
The novel was finished within the week, whereupon Conrad took to his bed for a
couple of days.
Conrad’s emotional involvement in the book was considerable, and his desire
for its artistic success correspondingly strong.
From August to December 1896 the novel was serialized in W.E. Henley’s
New Review; on 9 August, Conrad asked Cunninghame Graham not to read it in the
magazine version, since ‘The installment plan ruins it’ but he naturally needed the
double payment that came from serial and volume publication. On 30 November it
was published in New York, under the less offensive title of The Children of the Sea,
and on 2 December in London. Conrad had considered at least two other titles. The
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Forecastle: a Tale of Ships and Men, and The Nigger: A Tale of Ships and Men. In the
several versions and the first American edition the subtitle was given as A Tale of the
Forecastle, later amended to A Tale of the Sea.
Conrad was elated by the book’s reception at the hands of reviewers: he noted
that there were twenty-three reviews, most of them ‘unexpectedly appreciative’, and
Garnett referred to ‘a general blast of eulogy from a dozen impressive sources’
Several reviewers, however, pointed out that the story possessed two curious features:
the absence of plot and of female characters- ‘no plot and no petticoats’ as Israel
Zangwill put in the Academy. Conrad had boldly chosen to dispense with these
traditional and apparently indispensable ingredients of nineteenth-century fiction, a
well-made plot and a strong romantic interest; and some of his critics were distinctly
baffled.
The storyline of the novel is a follows:
“Mr. Baker, chief mate of the ship Narcissus, stepped in one stride out of his
lighted cabin into the darkness of the quarterdeck.” This opening sentence suggests,
by analogy, that conflict between the small lighted area of human order, of “mind and
will and consciousness,” and darkness that surrounds it, darkness both of the
elemental forces of nature and also of the darker forces within man himself.
The means to human order which Conrad presents in The Nigger of the
Narcissus assaults both from outside and from inside. The external means is the
storm; the internal menace stems primarily from Donkin and from the dying Negro,
James Wait. The issues of this tale all meet in James Wait. From the moment he
attracts attention by being almost late for the baleful presence that starts Belfast
thieving that exaggerates the cook’s near-religious mania, and that allows the
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despicable Donkin to achieve a position as the mouthpiece of the crow. Without the
nigger. Mr. Baker, the mate, would have had no difficulty in dealing with Donkin,
with Wait, however, Baker is powerless. Whether the Nigger is actually dying or
merely malingering, the crew cannot decide. Old Singleton is the one man untouched
by Wait’s presence.
The men are ultimately saved by a great storm- they dull together in their
efforts to defeat their common enemy, the sea. At the height of the tempest Mr. Baker
asks the cook to make a hot drink. The cook is at first too busy talking about the life
to come. Mr. Baker says he will attempt the job himself. At the stage, the cook, by
using his breadboard for a raft, achieves the apparently impossible and puts fresh
heart into the way men. And the men, after burying James Wait at sea, reach home in
a Narcissus which runs quickly on as if relieved of an unfair burden.
The story thus is a well-told yarn. The Nigger is more than a yarn of the sea.
Conrad leaves us in no doubt that his ship is the greater world in miniature. Conrad’s
concern is with the mental and physical health of the whole crew in the face of forces
which threaten to poison their combined action. It is also said,
In The Nigger of ‘Narcissus’ Conrad identifies truth with one side of his
dualistic universe. The dialectical structure remains unchanged and the hero is
still obliged to die, caught between the conflicts of fore1
With The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ we come to Conrad’s first maturepiece of
work. Almayer’s Folly, on which he spent at least four and an half years, is a highly
finished novel, but remains nonetheless, relative to the rest of the Conrad canon, very
much an experimental production. An Outcast of the Islands, although somewhat
longer, was scarcely more than one year in the writing and bears the marks, in its
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structural anomalies of being less certain. In these two novels, and in An Outpost of
Progress, Conrad experimented with the fictional structures and concepts which, with
some radical changes of style and technique, were to form the basis for the great
works of his early period- The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus,’ Heart of Darkness, and Lord
Jim.
From the structural point of view the change initiated in The Nigger of the
‘Narcissus’ which most strongly distinguishes the novels of this phase from the earlier
writings is in the conception of the hero, a change which can be seen as an elaboration
of features already implicit and developing in the characters of Willems, Kayerts and
Carlier. Willems, compared to Almayer in Almayer’s Folly, is a deeper character, but
in having a dynamic side to his nature and in being prepared to commit definite acts
of betrayal. The paradox, relatively superficial in Almayer, becomes significantly
moral in Willems, who seems himself as obliged to become criminal in pursuit of
desirable aims. A further step is taken in An Outpost of Progress, where Kayerts and
Carlier subscribe to an altruistic idealogy while, at the same time, committing acts of
criminal inhumanity in its pursuit. The next step, achieved spectacularly in The
Nigger of the ‘Narcissus,’ was to universalize this paradoxical hero, whose acts
involve their own frustration and whose ideals, while attractive in principle, prove
disastrous in practice.
Conrad achieves this by emphasizing the impersonally idealistic potential of
the hero’s goal. The central figure may remain, like Almayer and Willems,
fundamentally self-involved, but his objectives and desires now acquire a
sympathetic, or at least plausible aspect, which makes them capable of being (and
likely to be) taken up by others. The hero becomes a man of reputation, not only in
the rather narrow sense in which Willems is concerned about his social standing, but
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in the wider sense of exerting a real influence upon the thought and conduct of the
group of which he is a member. James Wait, the central figure of The Nigger of the
‘Narcissus,’ is the first of a line of these men of notability, whose way of life or
expressed ideal exercises a widespread fascination. Among Wait’s successors in this
respect are Kurtz, Jim, Nostromo, Verloc, Razumov, Heyst and George.
At the same time, just as the hero’s ideals are invariably seen to have their
hollow side, so his reputation in the story is regularly exposed as being partly
undeserved. The paradox which the hero embodies is now reflected chiefly in his
public persona within the story, and not solely, as with Almayer and Willems, in the
course of events for which he is responsible. In James Wait Conrad created the first of
a line of heroes, each of whom images in himself the paradoxical nature of his ideals
and actions. Wait is a man of outstanding appearance, voice and physique who
immediately impresses the officers and crew of the Narcissus as a most promising
seaman and yet proves to be virtually inactive, sick, dying and a pernicious influence
upon both the men and the voyage. His appearance, words and bearing, the surface of
his life, conceal a deception, much as his ideals are seen in the event to be in part of
specious covering for brutal selfishness.
The typical hero of this new phase is a man of high repute, an idealist whose
overt goals are shared by number of his fellows. Yet his ideals are flawed in practice,
just as he himself conceals behind his public exterior an inner weakness, a tendency to
compromise; and for this reason, like the earlier heroes Almayer and Willems, he
encounters a paradoxical situation in which his efforts towards achievement are
systematically frustrated. Unlike the earlier heroes, however, he images in himself, in
his own person, this central Conradian paradox, being at once both strong in
appearance and weak in fact, reliable and yet deceptive, attractive but dangerous.
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Along with this development in the figure of the hero goes an expansion of the
Conradian paradox into ideological dimensions, an extension first hinted in An
Outpost of Progress. The earlier novels display a relatively simple paradox in which
the hero’s purposive movements towards his personal goal are regularly met by
counter-movements within the structure of a dualistic universe. In The Nigger of the
‘Narcissus’ and in most of the novels which follow it, the paradox is primarily
ideological. The hero’s goal now entails a philosophy or way of life to which he
openly subscribes in the story, and this is shown to have consequences, both
theoretical and practical, contrary to what he desires and expects. The ideal of
civilized progress, for instance, in An Outpost of Progress and in Heart of Darkness,
leads in the event to primitive brutality, and the notion of liberal egalitarianism
advocated by Wait in The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’. Conrad’s concern with
ideological motifs in this phase of his career is the stepping-stone to the great political
novels of his next phase, which are set overtly against backgrounds of doctrinal
conflict.
James Wait is the structural hero of The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus,’ both
because he stands at the centre of the paradox, the ideological conflict between the
human desire for equality and the demand for discipline and hierarchy imposed by the
needs of a sailing ship, and because the story effectually begins with his entry and
ends in the aftermath of his death. His personal aim is fundamentally to secure
himself an easy passage by feigning sickness and resting idly while however, Wait
becomes a figurehead for the cause of common egalitarianism and the bond of
sympathy above the demands of discipline. Yet Wait really is ill and dying,
apparently from consumption, and his own half-belief that he is a healthy man
cleverly deceiving the officers in a wishful self-deception induced by the fear of
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death. In the course of the story the crew becomes demoralized by the confusion of
ideas. Wait represents and, having taken great risks to rescue him during a storm rises
to the point of mutiny in defence of his interests against the Captain’s orders. Finally,
when the Captain faces the crew, they back away from the logical conclusion of their
course and return to duty, while Wait dies and is buried at sea as the voyage nears its
end.
James Wait, along with Nostromo, is one of Conrad’s most nebulous,
symbolically complex, and highly-charged heroes. The paradox he embodies is
multifaceted. At the simplest level it is the anomaly of the easy option which
ironically, must be exercised in circumstances of usual hardship. Just as Almayer,
wanting luxury and European society, works out his destiny in the poverty and
isolation of Sambir, so James Wait, needing rest and comfort, takes a berth as an able
seaman aboard a sailing vessel on a voyage around the Cape. This is his compromise.
Wait, like Almayer and Willems, takes himself into a context to which, in his
condition, he does not belong. He is a sick man deceptively committed to a place
which demands health and strength. This aspect of the paradox is reflected in his
appearance, that of a powerful seaman, which prompts the mate, Baker, to seize upon
him says that :
Those West India niggers run fine and large- some of them…… Ough!.....
Don’t they? A fine, big man that, Mr. Creighton. Feel him on a rope. Hey?
Ought! I will take him into my watch, I think. (p.662)
Yet Wait’s physique is all the while deceptive, as is hinted by his cough,
metallic, hollow, and tremendously loud: it resounded like two explosions in a
vault: the dome of the sky rang to it, and the iron plates of the ship’s bulwarks
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seemed to vibrate in unison; then he matched off forward with the others
(p.662)
and by his progressive loss of strength. The paradox is reflected also in his name,
Wait, which comes to suggest a weight or burden on the ship, imposing a wait or
delay which hinders the return voyage.
In the earlier stories a dualistic antagonism is activated by the hero’s
paradoxical compromise: both Almayer and Willems precipitate a conflict of black
and white worlds by using dubious means to attain their ends. In The Nigger of the
‘Narcissus,’ the dualistic conflict again follows from the hero’s act, in this case from
Wait’s very joining the ship, but it is ideological rather than racial in character. The
imagery of black and white is retained superficially, Wait being a single black man
among whites in an apparent inversion of Conrad’s earlier interest in white heroes
isolated in black communities, but in fact the purely racial antithesis has little function
in the story. The conflict to which Wait’s compromise gives rise is essentially
political struggle between the extremes of liberal democracy, tending in Conrad’s
view to anarchy, and a hierarchy of command based upon mutual responsibility and
the requirements of a common task. In The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus,’ the action is
confined to a ship at sea, a rather special case in which the breakdown of discipline
has immediate and obvious consequences but the dualistic conflict with Conrad first
develops here between popular rule and traditional authority is recognizably the same
as that which was to reappear in his political novels, Nostromo, The Secret Agent and
Under Western Eyes.
The ideological dualism which results in mutiny on the Narcissus is initiated
by Wait through the paradox he embodies and through his influence over the crew. In
this influence over his fellows, which is almost mystical Wait is comparable to several
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later heroes who, sometimes without wishing it, find themselves and their careers of
unaccountable interest to the world. Wait, like Nostromo, revels in the fascination he
exercises and turns it to his own ends. His power over other minds is symbolized
initially by his pervasive, echoing voice. Conrad writes,
He enunciated distinctly, with soft precision, the deep, rolling tones of his
voice filled the deck without effort, and his words, “Spoken sonorously, with
an even intonation, were heard all over the ship (p. 662).
In this respect he is closest to Kurtz, another dying preacher of hollow but
reverberating ideals.
Yet Wait holds away over the crew of the Narcissus not so much by what he
says as by the paradox he represents. Wait is, first of all, an apparently strong and
healthy seaman who claims to be sick and weak, although as the voyage progresses he
becomes also, and increasingly, and obvious dying man pretending that his debility is
a mere sham. In a way that cannot be fully rationalized and remains partly mysterious,
this pattern trickery and self-deception causes confusion among the crew, upsetting
their established notions and in particular, distributing the discipline of the ship.
Wait’s efforts to maintain two conflicting stories, to be at once a healthy object of
respectful envy and a moribund recipient of ease and sympathy, touches upon the
mystery of mortality itself, presenting the vital mind with the anomaly of its own
extinction. Observing his inescapable presence and being constantly reminded of the
real or pretended approach of death, the men of the Narcissus abandon their
customary unaffected ways and become a group of pensive, unsettled individuals.
Was Wait a reality- or was he a sham- this ever-expected visitor of Jimmy’s?
We hesitated between pity and mistrust, while, on the slightest provocation, he shook
before our eyes the bones of his bothersome and infamous skeleton. He was for over
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trotting him out. He would talk of that coming death as though it has been already
there, as if it had been walking the deck outside, as if it would presently come in to
sleep in the only empty bunk; as if it had sat by his side at every meal. It interfered
with our daily occupations, with our leisure, with our amusements. We had no songs
and no music in the evening, because Jimmy had managed, with that prospective
disease of his, to disturb even Archie’s mental balance. Archie was the owner of the
concertina; but after a couple of stinging lectures from Jimmy he refused to play any
more”……
Our singers became mute because Jimmy was a dying man. For the same
reason no chap- as Knowles remarked –could drive in a nail to hang his few
poor rags upon,” without being made aware of the enormity he committed in
disturbing Jimmy’s interminable last moments. At night, instead of the
cheerful yell, “One bell! Do you hear there? Hey! hey! hey! Show leg! The
watches were called man by man, in whispers, so as not to interfere with
Jimmy’s, possibly, last slumber on earth (p.672).
The outcome is a gradual erosion of discipline as the crew becomes so
wrapped up in the problems Wait poses as to question the very fundamentals of
maritime regulation, which they had previously accepted without reflection. Conrad
writes:
All our certitudes were going; we were on doubtful terms with our officers;
the cook had given us up for lost; we had overheard the boatswain’s opinion
that ‘we were a crowd of softies.’ We suspected Jimmy, one another, and even
our very selves (p.676).
Wait’s condition is related to the ideological theme of the tale through the
notion, actually fallacious but maintained by Wait himself and propagated by Donkin,
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that the black man has discovered a foolproof way to beat the system, to get a paid
passage in return for little or no work. When Donkin asks, Wait replies that he has
played this trick before: “Last ship-yes. I was out of sorts on the passage. See? It was
easy. They paid me off in Calcutta, and the skipper made no bones about it
either……. I got my money all right. Laid up fifty-eight days! The fools! O Lord! The
fools! Paid right off!”. To the crew this view of Wait represents an ideal of
undisciplined luxury, an idea. Closely akin to the indolent, materialistic goals of
Almayer and Willems. Under the influence of Wait and Donkin the men of the
Narcissus,
They dreamed enthusiastically of the time when every lonely ship would
travel over a serene sea, manned by a wealthy and well-fed crew of satisfied
skippers (p.710).
The dream of reconstituting life aboard ship as a liberal democracy makes one
side of the story’s ideological dualism. The other side is provided by the established
hierarchy of the ship, the officers and the master, Captain Allistoun. The antagonism
between these two polarities is related to the conflict of black and white worlds
represented in the earlier novels. In both cases the hero in his black world stands for a
basically selfish indolence, which is opposed by the strict requirements of the white
world of his origin with its demanding insistence upon the responsibilities he has
neglected.
Allistoun’s role in The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ is comparable to that of
Lingard in An Outcast of the Islands as the authoritarian representative of the old
world, who appears at the climax of the story to cut short the hero’s career. Apart
from the nemesis and the hero himself, however, the other figures of the pattern at
first sight appear to be absent. There is obviously no heroine in this story to cut short
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the hero’s career. Apart from the nemesis and the hero himself, however, the other
figures of the pattern at first sight appear to be absent. There is obviously no heroine
in this story, and therefore no anti-heroine either, perhaps only for the straightforward
reason that the setting of the tale does not allow for female characters. The remaining
figure of the pattern, the rival, is present in the story and offers an interesting case.
This position is in fact occupied by Donkin, which seems at first unlikely because no
real rivalry develops between himself and Wait until near the end of the book,
through most of which Donkin acts as Wait’s friend and spokesman. It is, indeed,
chiefly through Donkin’s agency that the enigmatic figure of the sick man is
translated, for the crew and for the reader, into ideological terms. Donkin is the
prototypical Conradian malcontent, the first in the line which includes Cornelius, the
Monteros, Verloc’s anarchists, Schomberg, Ortega and Scevola. He is a fountain of
dissident rhetoric, the voice of the crew’s vague aspirations, the instrument which
focuses their discontent upon aspirations, and the instrument which focuses their
discontent upon Wait and directs it into channels of action. Yet Donkin is also, in a
sense, Wait’s murderer, who gloats over the dying hero and leaves the story with his
stolen gold in his pocket.
The rivalry between Donkin and Wait does not manifest itself in the usual
sexual mode because there is no heroine in this story. Their eventual antagonism has
its source rather in Donkin’s bitter envy and his greed for the dying man’s money. Yet
it is of interest that the final quarrel between them is precipitated when Wait offers
Donkin unsolicited confidences about his amorous experiences. Conrad writes:
There is a girl,” whispered Wait….. “Canton Street girl- she chucked a third
engineer of a Rennie boat- for me. Cooks oysters just as I like…. She says-
she would chuck- any toff- for a coloured gentleman…. That’s me. I am kind
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to wimmen,” he added, a shade louder. Donkin could hardly believe his ears.
He was scandalized-‘Would she? Yer wouldn’t be hany good to ‘er’ said with
unrestrained disgust. Wait was not there to hear him. He was swaggering up
the East India Dock Road. [……] He cared for no one. Donkin felt this
vaguely like a blind man may feel in his darkness the fatal antagonism of all
the surrounding existences that to him shall for ever remain irrealisable,
unseen and enviable. He had a desire to assert his importance, to break, to
crush; to be even with everybody for everything; to tear the veil, unmask,
exposé, leave no refuge (p.737).
Conrad uses Donkin’s jealously of Wait’s woman to introduce the scene in
which Wait slowly dies while Donkin abuses him and steals his savings from his
locker. Neither the jealously nor the “treasure have any great place in the story, but
they remind us of rivalries elsewhere in Conrad’s novels, involving a woman to whom
the hero is attached and an actual or imagined store of gold. It is almost as if Conrad
could not drop these elements from his plots, even when he had no real need of them.
Donkin figures in the story initially as the embodiment of the crew’s latent
discontents. The scene of his arrival makes this clear, as the men stand around
observing his destitute appearance, beginning to respond to his self-pitying
ingratiation, and eventually dressing him in a miscellaneous bundle of clothes donated
by them collectively, a scene which represents their guarded acceptance of his
attitudes. The crew none the less maintains a reasonable distance for Donkin, a
rationally critical stance towards his conduct, through the first stage of the voyage.
They acquiesce, for instance, in Mr. Baker’s beating of the insolent seaman on one
occasion and even assist the mate in silencing Donkin’s protests against authority
during the storm. After the storm, however, the crew’s view of the rebel changes as
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the men become conceived and more accepting of Donkin’s large claims for their
rights and merits.
The little place (Wait’s cabin), repainted white, had, in the night, the brilliance
of a silver shrine where a black idol, reclining stiffly under a blanket, blinked its
weary eyes and received our homage. Donkin officiated. He had the air of a
demonstrator showing a phenomenon, a manifestation bizarre, simple, and
meritorious that, to the beholders, should be a profound and everlasting lesson.
From this point to the climax of the story, the mutiny, Donkin leads the crew,
using Wait’s influence to work upon their feelings.
It is only after the mutiny has failed and discipline been restored that the true
relationship between Donkin and the hero comes to the surface, both men are
fundamentally selfish in their motives and essentially concerned to find an easy
passage for themselves by imposing upon the officers and crew. The failure of the
mutiny which results in Wait’s confinement and Donkin’s loss of face explodes the
veneer of cooperation between them, leaving Donkin, aggrieved and bitter, prepared
to turn on Wait as his only remaining victim. The two are competitors for the
territory, for the misplaced sympathies of the crew, much as in Conrad’s other stories
hero and rival jostle one another for local influence and the heroine’s affections.
Critic thinks Donkin remains Conrad’s most expanded presentation of the rival
figure, usually a secondary, less central character, such as Omar in An Outcast of the
Islands, Cornelius in Lord Jim, and the Monteros in Nostromo. The reasons for this
and for several other unusual structural features of The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus,’
probably lie in Conrad’s new exploration here of the ideological dimension. For the
first time he was making the central conflict of his story a specifically conceptual one,
a dualism in which two opposing philosophies are brought into play by the initial
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compromise of the hero. Wait, although befriended by Donkin and made a figurehead
in the crew’s revolt, remains essentially passive and self-concerned; other characters
are therefore needed to present and verbalize the ideological polarities of the story.
Conrad gives the two roles to the rival and the nemesis respectively; Donkin becomes
the chief advocate of individual rights, while Allistoun, as Captain of the ship, for
traditional authoritarianism.
Donkin and Allistoun are paired, as contraries, in several ways. The mutiny
aboard the Narcissus, which stems ultimately from Wait’s presence, is essentially a
confrontation between these two, in which Donkin attempts to murder the Captain,
fails, and is obliged to back down, Donkin and Allistoun are the only two aboard who
are explicitly excluded from participation in Wait’s rescue during the storm, and both
similarly decline participation in the black man’s funeral. Allistoun is initially present
but hands over the duty of conducting the service to Baker. The author says, “He
leaves unnoticed to resume his place on the bridge, from which he shouts an order as
soon as the last word has been read” (p.744). Everyone was there but Donkin was
“too ill to come. Allistoun’s reason for aloofness on these occasions is clearly his non-
involvement in the confusions for which Wait’s presence is responsible. It is
important to see that Donkin is no less aloof from Wait, despite their superficial
friendliness during the middle stage of the voyage. Donkin uses Wait, rather as Dain
uses Almayer, as long as their interests coincide, but turns against him the moment it
becomes clear that the game is lost. Donkin is no more Wait’s ally than is Allistoun.
Wait himself, like all major Conradian heroes, is a man alone, caught between
conflicting forces which he comprehends only in part and which he is, to his own
undoing, largely unable to reconcile.
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Donkin and Allistoun are not simply contraries, however, for they occupy
different roles in the Conradian pattern, Donkin as the hero’s rival and Allistoun as
the figure of nemesis. In the earlier stories, where the central dualism is presented in
broadly cultural rather than ideological terms, the rivals (Dain and Omar) are
characters whom the hero meets in the world of his compromise, the world in which
he finds himself after having abandoned or betrayed the code of his own world, while
the nemesis figure (Lingard), representing the standards which the hero has deserted,
comes from the abandoned world to confront the hero with his dereliction. In The
Nigger of the ‘Narcissus,’ where the action takes place almost entirely on board a ship
at sea, to whose company belong all the characters, this geographical definition of the
pattern cannot be applied. There is here no literal way in which Wait moves from one
“world” to another, as do Almayer and Willems, nor does it help of Donkin and
Allistoun as inhabitants of different “worlds” in other than a conceptual sense.
The chief figures nonetheless retain other defining characteristics. Wait,
having chosen the moral compromise of the easy option by shipping aboard the
Narcissus, there meets in Donkin the reduction of the course he has chosen. Donkin,
the adopted spirit of the ship’s crew, represents in his weak and insidious personality,
the logical conclusion, of Wait’s line of action universally applied. Like other rivals,
he appears as the inescapable concomitant of the hero’s paradoxical policy. Just as
Willems’ alliance with Aissa involves him with Omar, and Gould’s attempt to
reactivate the concession obliges him to deal with the Monteros, so Wait’s attempt to
gain an easy passage raises the spectre of Donkin, a spirit which eventually engages
him in a vital struggle. Allistoun, who confronts Wait with the reality of his situation
by sentencing him to remain on his sickbed, and who reasserts the balance which
Wait’s intrusion into the scheme of things has upset, is clearly not, like the rival, a
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figure brought into being by the hero’s action, but is rather a member of a higher
order, whose values are independent of, and prior to the hero’s coming.
In its employment of these key roles in their usual interrelationships The
Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’, is on common ground with earlier stories, despite the new
dimension introduced by its ideological focus. Several features of the pattern first
employed here, such as the use of the rival and nemesis figures to present opposite
poles of the conceptual dualism, were to recur in many later stories. The comparable
later novels, show an advance over The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ with respect to the
nemesis figure, for Conrad’s attitude to Allistoun remains largely uncritical. The
Captain’s key decisions, which appear on scrutiny to be arbitrary and of no great
profundity, are invariably and highly improbably justified in the story by
unforeseeable events. His refusal to cut away the masts in the storm proves correct
when the ship, against all odds, rights itself; his impetuous command that Wait shall
remain in his cabin- which, he says, “came to me all at once, before I could think”
commits him to a dangerous course of action but is appropriate to the story’s deeper
meaning; and his risky confrontation with Donkin after the mutiny is, by good luck,
ended without mishap. During the storm Allistoun is portrayed as a superhuman
figure engaged in a personal struggle with the elements. Conrad’s only concession to
realism is to show the Captain as “subdued by his captivity” once he leaves his ship
and falls subject to the bureaucracy of landsmen.
The unreserved adulation of Allistoun, since he represents one side of the
conflict and since Donkin, his adversary, is without redeeming features, affects the
conceptual balance of the story. Even Lingard in An Outcast of the Islands, “the
Captain’s immediate precursor, is allowed fallibility, as is shown by the collapse of
his house of cards,” (P.749) which images the failure of his entire jungle enterprise.
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Allistoun’s unique impeccability makes The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ Conrad’s only
novel which approaches moral univocality. Whereas even the earlier stories played
black and white worlds each against the other, this tale is unreserved in both revolts.
Later comparable works, such as Nostromo and The Secret Agent, subtly undercut the
representatives of established social order; only the most superficial readings can
overlook the limitations of Gould and the Assistant Commissioner and the respective
establishments for which they stand. Allistoun is fully vindicated, however, and The
Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ has in consequence a firm moral basis in what Conrad
presents as the ethos of the sea.
Conrad’s romantic view of life under sail gains the upper hand over his
judgment here, just as it topples his prose into several protracted people appealed
more to his original fin de siècle audience than they do to the present-day reader.
Allistoun, seen in the context of Conrad’s development, is a blind alley, a Neanderthal
evolution with no descendants. His own immediate ancestor, the Lingard of An
Outcast of the Islands, is himself, encumbered with an aura of divinity relieved only
by the failure of events to fall out in accord with his wishes. Allistoun, similarly
presented as an ideal seaman and commander, masters his world absolutely so long as
his ship remains at sea, future occupants of this role of the nemesis figure, and future
representatives of traditional authoritarian stability, were to be portrayed more
critically. In on other major novel did Conrad allow himself an unreserved
endorsement of either side in the story’s conflict. The flourishing line of descent from
the Lingard of the early tales is not that of Allistoun but that of such flawed and self-
doubting characters as Marlow in Heart of Darkness or Blunt in The Arrow of Gold,
characters who reflect and share in the feelings of the hero they confront.
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For its entire splendor, therefore, and despite the strongly positive feelings the
author retained his intents in it. The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ is neither typical nor
exemplary of Conrad’s mature work, because it lacks the moral neutrality and
ambivalence which generally characterizes his fiction. Even the earlier novels had
staunchly refused the reader the comfort of firm foundation in either the black or the
white perspective, and the later stories, particularly the political novels of the middle
period, were to make clear Conrad’s fundamental skepticism.
The uncritical, romantic tenor of The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ is related to the
search for a narrative point of view, in which Conrad was engaged at the time of its
writing. The earlier stories were written in third-person narrative, but in The Nigger of
the ‘Narcissus’ Conrad experimented for the first time with a first-person narrator, the
first-person voice surfaces only occasionally in the story and is often lost sight of.
These uncertainties of voice were to be resolved suddenly in Conrad’s next important
works, Youth and Heart of Darkness, with the discovery of Marlow, an identifiable
narrator-character within the stories.
When Conrad took up once again his central preoccupation with the fictional
pattern it was to the role of the nemesis figure that he gave renewed attention. In
Heart of the Darkness Allistoun’s successor none other than Marlow himself, a very
different character, assuming the task of confronting the errant hero and restoring the
balance that the hero’s action has upset. Conrad was evidently sufficiently dissatisfied
with Allistoun to replace him with a different personality type, a man open to doubts
and uncertainties who participates in the temptations and the guilt of the hero. The
result is an immediate restoration- and, indeed, intensification –of what we now
recognize as the typical Conradian skepticism, questioning equally both of the
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conflicting sets of values presented in the story. For the reason Heart of the Darkness
is conceptually much more demanding than The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’.
Conrad thus addressed two areas of weakness in The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’
with a single solution. Marlow in Heart of the Darkness provides not only a firm
technical centre for the narrative voice but also a sympathetically human and fallible
figure for the nemesis role. Marlow not only introduces fallibility into the
authoritarian nemesis role but also becomes the voice for that distinctive Conradian
ironic scepticism which was to be the hall-mark of the greater novels, but which is
often lost beneath the romanticism of the early stories, with their tendency to glorify
such figures as Lingard and Allistoun.
Thus the theme of the novels is based on interaction between an individual and
upon Wait and Donkin. Norman Sherry thinks,
There is no plot, no villainy, no heroism, and, apart from a storm and the
death and burial, no incident. The only female in the book is the ship herself.3
Another famous critic Albert Guerad thinks:
The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ presents the classic human contradiction in
collective terms, reduced to the simplicities of shipboard life. The storm tests
and brings out the soldaridity, courage, and endurance of men banded together
in the solidarity cause 4
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LORD JIM (1900):
Lord Jim was conceived as a short story to be included in the volume of Youth,
and its subtitle was A Sketch. It was published as a serial for Blackwood’s Magazine
from October 1899 to November 1900 and later published as book in 1900. This book
was shaped from material of the book Conrad drew, as always, on fragments of
personal experience. For instance, while sailing on the Vidar, he met a Jim Lingard, a
white trader who was called Lord Jim, on account of his swaggering manner. Conrad
himself had been injured on the Highland Forest in 1887 and, like Jim, after a period
in hospital, he stayed in the East and took a berth out there. But two other sources are
more important. In 1880 an old steamer called the Jeddah carrying about nine
hundred pilgrims from the Dutch islands left Singapore for Jeddah, the port of Mecca.
During some bad weather she was abandoned by her officers, as part of a scheme to
collect the insurance as the boat, which they presumed would founder. It did not sink,
and it was towed into Aden just when the captain was reporting the ship as lost with
all hands. Conrad was often in the East at the time and must have heard about the
whole episode.
Conrad brought a new vision into English fiction. The sense of human
isolation and the search for individual identity is the most characteristic feature of the
serious twentieth-century novel. And the fact that Lord Jim was published in 1900
makes it a symbol of the new trend. Conrad’s own life reveals many reasons why the
theme of human isolation, and identity crisis should be almost obsessive in his
writing. His father, a Polish writer as well as a landowner, was a victim of the
rebellion against Russia in 1863, when Conrad was five years old. His mother went
with his father into exile in Russia and died two years later. His father returned,
broken in health, in 1868 and died within a year. His reputation then was that of a
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writer of sea stories full of exotic local colour and composed in richly ornate prose
style.
The storyline of the Lord Jim novel is as follows:
Jim was the son of an English country person, who was given necessary
educational training to suit his career as a seaman. He belonged to a middle class
family with a strong belief in character. He got training in the science of navigation
and during the period of his training a small incident occurred which touched Jim to
the very core of his heart. He was employed as a first mate of a sailing ship named the
Patna. It was a voyage from Bombay to one of the ports of Arabia carrying about 800
pilgrims bound for the Haj pilgrimage. One day an accident happened to it. The
officers of the ship felt as if the ship had collided with another object. Jim tried to
save the ship but in vain. Luckily the ship was picked up by another boat and reached
safely to another port. Jim did not run away from this humiliation and he was the only
member of the crew of the Patna to stand trial. Jim realized as to how they were all
the victims of a ghastly mistake; he had made a mistake and was ready to suffer the
penalty of having his license cancelled. Marlow, as a well-wisher, had been drawn
very close to Jim. Marlow suggests him go to Patusan, an isolated community in the
Malaya islands. He gives Jim a silver ring as a symbol of eternal friendship between
Stein and Doramin, the chief of the Bogies Malays in Patusan. The king welcomed
Jim with warmth.
Two years later Marlow visited Jim at Patusan. Brown who had stolen a ship
and a band of desperate seaman, traveled up to Patusan. Brown wanted to loot and
finish off Doramin and his son Dain Waris, but Jim intervened to let them off. Jim
met Brown, but on the way out Brown advised by his deputy Cornelius ambushed the
Malays. Dain Waris and his villagers were killed. The survivors brought Dain Waris’s
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body back to his father. Jim’s new life had fallen into pieces. He now had three
choices before him to run away; to fight Doramin and his men; or give himself up
according to Malay custom. But Jim deliberately climbed the hill to Dormain’s village
and then alone unarmed he faced Doramin. Doramin shot Jim through the chest. Jim
fell at Doramin’s feet a hero in death.
Lord Jim is today Conrad’s most widely appreciated novel and many consider
it his most characteristic work of art. The novel opens with a description of Lord Jim,
He was an inch, perhaps two under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced
straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and fixed
from under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep,
loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had
nothing aggressive in it 5 (p.5).
Jim was a water clerk in various Eastern seaports. He never struck to any job.
He seemed to be running away from some incident in his past and a reference to it
makes him leave the seaport where he is working and move onwards generally further
East. His guilty of conscience made him go away from one place to another. He lost
his identity in one place to another and was reluctant to reveal his last home.
Lord Jim brings out existential truth about the nature of man and of moral
behavior. The existential truths are not easily stated; they must be grouped for by the
reader. In this novel, they are grouped for by the questioning protagonists- Jim and
Marlow. Though, Jim is engaged in the deeper quest of why he acted as he did, he
does not fully understand the complex reasons for his act, although he senses some of
the truth. The rest he may search out with the help of Marlow and this search
constitutes the major action. Lord Jim is a hardworking fellow. Norman Sherry says,
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The hero is introduced to us as a ‘water-clerk,’ a kind of commercial traveler
whose duty it is to board arriving ships-employed successively at various
Eastern ports. He is able, efficient, popular, but from time to time, at the
breath of a sinister rumour, he resigns his position and drives into a temporary
obscurity.6
Jim learned a little trigonometry and how to cross top-gallant yards. He had
the third place in the navigation and pulled stroke in the first cutter. Jim was unable to
take decisions in life; he drifted away from life and became a detached person. His
inner life became a dream world. His fondness for the light holiday literature about
the sea contributed to the imaginative frame of his mind. During his sea journey, Jim
spends much of his time day-dreaming about imaginary feats of heroism. He wished
to experience the romance and adventure of saving people. He learned how to save
sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through surf with a line;
or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half-naked, walking an uncovered reefs in
search of shellfish to stave off starvation. Conrad focuses on a movement in Jim’s
past when he showed a curious lack of decision and action. On board the training
ship, Jim met his first test of courage. During a storm, the trainees were called on to
launch a boat to pick up survivors of a collision. The indecisive Jim hesitated to jump
into the boat and was left behind on a deck. He was paralyzed when a call to real
action came. Last in his reveries, he found it difficult to make the transition from the
world of fancy to the world of fact.
Jim joined as a crew on the ship called Patna. It is said, “The Patna was a
local streamer as old as the hills, lean like a grey hound, and eaten up with rust worse
than a condemned water tank” (p.12). He has become a chiefmate of a fine ship
without ever having been tested, eight hundred pilgrims were traveled by the ship.
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The ship quivers; the crew men are thrown handling. They hear as days rumbling
below, like remote thunder as they took first at the undisturbed level of the sea and
then upwards at the stirs. The Patna has collided with a submerged derelict. The
skipper feels that the ship has come to a standstill, the two Malayas working at the
wheels they find that the wheels will not move, the engine has stopped, the ship
officers escape from the ship without a struggle to save.
The Patna was picked up by the captain of the ship called the Avondale and
taken to the nearest port. But a different fate overtook the Patna. The next day the
pilgrim ship was discovered by a French gun-boat which towed the Patna to the port.
The Patna had reached the port much before the captain and his men as well as Jim,
who honestly believed that the Patna had sunk. The Captain of the Patna with his
chief officers had been guilty of unprofessional and cowardly conduct in having
deserted their ship. Consequently an Admiralty Court was constituted to try the
captain and his crew as soon as they were arrested. When the captain arrived at the
port and came to know of these developments, he felt that he would be doomed if he
was imprisoned. He was prepared to get his license cancelled. Therefore, he at once
disappeared.
Jim did not run away from this humiliation, and he was the only member of
the crew of the Patna to stand trial. Jim realized as to how they were all the victim of
a ghostly mistaken thing. Jim too, could have run away, but he felt that it would be an
act of cowardice and he was anxious to show that he had the courage to suffer for
failing in duty. Baker G. Ernest says,
Lord Jim is Conrad’s Hamlet, the tragedy of the man of imagination who is so
incredibly aware of possible consequences of doing anything at a moment of
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terrible emergency that the capacity for decisive actions paralyzed. He cannot
act at all.7
One or two senior men including Marlow, the narrator of the story, who
attended the trial took pity on Jim and advised him privately to run away. But Jim
refused to take their advice and admitted that he had made a mistake and was ready to
suffer.
Conrad’s technique of time-shift keeps the existential act, one of novel’s most
important elements, constantly before the reader’s eyes. The scene shifts abruptly to
the official hearing convinced to investigate the incidents which occurred on the
Patna after the collision. A month has passed since the accident and the inquiry is
underway in the police court of an eastern port. The three judges were appointed and
they questioned Jim, the only white crew member of the Patna who faced the guilty
of desertion of having violated the seaman’s code of conduct. Jim feels humiliated
and quite ill-at-ease and his answers shape themselves in pain and misery. He is a
trapped and concerned man. He feels attentive eyes stabbing him. The court wanted
facts, the exact story of what happened but Jim could not give facts. The inquiry is
underway in the police court of an eastern port. When the three judges questioned
him, he stood elevated in the witness box, with burning cheeks in a cool lofty room.
The judge asked questions. Jim replied in good manner and was tempted to cry out
“What’s the good of this! What’s the good!” (p.75). He felt that no one realized the
true situation. But Marlow went into great detail about the night of accident and again
reminded his readers that “Jim was of the right sort; he was one of us.” The repetition
of the phrase reminds us again that we are like Jim and would probably have reacted
in the same manner in similar circumstances. Jim is not a cunning fellow. Richard
Curle says,
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Jim was efficient at his work aboard the training ship and liked by his
companions who little suspected that the down to earth. Youngster had his
own secret dreams.8
One judge asked a number of questions to Jim. Jim replied that he was not a
coward; he had seemingly committed a cowardly deed by running away from the ship.
Jim said he could not think the ship was evidently going down and he could not see
the front part of the ship. He did not think of his personal danger but he knew the
movement that the life boat which they had as board could not save more than one
third of the people and even there was not time enough to lower the entire bottom and
save the one third. He remembers he could not do anything, and there was nothing to
do but to sink the ship. Jim describes the situation very sadly. Everybody blamed him.
Conrad writes,
I pushed him away. Suddenly he caught hold of me round the neck. Damn
him! I hit him. I hit out without looking, Wait you save your own life- your
infernal coward? he sobs. Coward! He called me an infernal coward! Ha! Ha!
Ha!. He called me Ha! Ha! Ha! (p.71).
Jim was in dilemma. If he kept quite the captain and the mate would seat out
but he raised an alarm. All the 800 passengers would raise in panic and there would
be ghastly mess. Jim was a silent spectator. He realized the danger so he caught hold
of the oar, went to one end of the boat. Jim and his companions picked up another
steamer name Avondale and taken to a port. Jim further explained that he too believed
the ship would sink because when he was in the boat at sea, he saw no faces of the
ship of any light from it.
Marlow met the French officers. He argued both Frenchman with the view to
emphasize the deep romantic and remote implications of courage, heroism and self-
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sacrifices of Jim. Marlow suggested Jim an escape. He offered Jim many ways and
where he might begin his life afresh; Jim had his own identity, he refused his
suggestions. Marlow scolded “Oh! Nonsense my dear fellow” (p.108). He begged but
he was not in patience. Jim replied,
You don’t seem to understand’, he said incisively; then looking at me without
a wink, ‘I may have jumped, but I do not run away.’ I meant no offence, I am
good enough. I can’t afford it. I am bound to fight this thing down- I am
fighting it now (p.108).
Jim finally decided to take any kind of punishment. The readers see Jim through
Marlow’s sympathetic eyes and emotions.
The trial began: a judge asked several questions before the court. He asked
“whether the ship was in every respect fit and seaworthy for the voyage” (p.111). The
court found she was not fit to voyagers. The next point is that whether upto the time
of the accident the ship had been navigated with proper care. Finally the judge
declared that there was no evidence to show the exact cause of the accident. The court
spelt the official language that, “The court…. Gustav. So – and – so master……
native of Germany James so – and – so … mate. Certificates cancelled” (p.112). Jim
went out of the court hall, he ignored Marlow, he realized that his’s career as a
seaman ended with tragedy. He was deep depressed, seaman. Richard Cure says,
“Jim’s presence is a universal one, and surely degrees of mental fastidiousness can be
found in every nationality and in every class” 9.
Jim started a new life. Marlow realized that Jim had no chance of a career in the
merchant marine. He, therefore, wrote to his friends, explained the story of Jim’s
misfortunes and secured for him different kinds of jobs. First he secured him the job
of an assistant in a rice mill, which was run by a friend of Marlow by the name
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Denver; Jim gave such an excellent account of himself to his new job that Denver
became almost a father to him. But he did not stick to the job for long. After
sometime, the assistant engineer of the Patna, who had run away from his trial, came
to Denver and got a job in the mill as an engineer. When Jim found him there trying
to make friends with him and offering to keep the story of the Patna a secret, Jim
became disgusted with him and left the job quietly. Marlow came to knew of it later
on, and understood how sensitive Jim was, and how much he hated to be reminded of
the unhappy Patna episode by anyone.
Marlow next got him the job of an assistant in a firm of ship chandlers named
Egstrom and Blake. Here his job was to bring business to the company from the crew
and passengers of ships landing at ports. In this task also Jim proved highly efficient.
On one occasion one of the seamen who came to his company – a man named Captain
O’ Brich referred to the Patna episode and spoke contemptuously of the crew who
misbehaved on that occasion. Jim felt ashamed and again left his job suddenly. The
third job which Marlow secured for him was with a firm of timber merchants in an
Eastern port. The firm was Yucker Brothers. They had depots and forests in the
interior and were engaged in transporting logs by rivers to the port. Jim showed his
capacity and initiative. One day he quarreled with an officer in the Navy in the hotel
where he was putting up. Jim threw him out of the window into the river. This
brought Jim a bad name as a quarrelsome man and so he had to leave the job.
Wherever he worked, the story of the Patna was discussed; this made Jim desert his
job again. Of course, the people did not know that Jim was one of the men concerned:
but Jim realized that wherever he could go the story of Patna followed him to destroy
his peace of mind.
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Jim was aware that in terms of public morality, he was guilty. He accepted the
judgment of society as he kept flying form the society. He accepted a job after a job
only to leave when the Patna affairs came up. He felt as though he was an object of
scorn, scoffed at by other men who refuse him positions of responsibility, where he
could demonstrate his superiority. Jim conducted himself in a way that Marlow did
not understand. Although he had asserted to Marlow that he would face the problem,
he seemed unable to do so. He was holding fast to some deep idea which Marlow
could not comprehend. He went farther and farther eastwards in search of refuge
where he can start with a clean slate and proved himself to be a respectable man.
Marlow had advice for Jim’s dilemma and hence resolved to confer with
Stein, an old friend, one of the most trustworthy men he had ever known. Stein was an
owner of trading company with several branches in the Far East. Marlow considered
him to be an eminently suitable person to receive his confidences about Jim’s
difficulties. Stein combined in himself the courage of a man of action with the
thoughtfulness of a scholar. He was constantly obsessed with the complexity of
existence:
Sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is not wanted, where
there is no place for him; for if not, why should he want all the place? Why
should he run about here and there making a great noise about himself, talking
about the stars, distributing the blades of grass? (p.144).
Stein listened to Jim’s story with sympathetic interest diagnosed the case well
as he put his finger. He said: “I understand very well. He is a romantic; he had
diagnosed case for me at first I was quite startled to find how simple it was” (p.148).
The problem was not how to cure Jim of romanticism, but to discover how Jim could
live with romanticism.
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Stein felt that, in life some opportunities we availed of and some we missed.
The opportunities are bound to arise which will help us not only to discover the
highest limit of heroism of which we are capable, but also to give us that sense of
achievement or fulfillment which alone justifies human existence. One must prove
himself as a hero when the opportunity comes. Jim had failed to avail himself of his
romantic opportunity. Stein was saying that life may indeed be absurd and
meaningless, but we must not try to escape from it. Thus Jim must be given another
chance to prove himself- to live up to his expectations of himself.
Stein provided Jim a chance to rehabilitate himself in a different set-up. He
maintained an unprofitable trading port at Patusan, a settlement forty miles up a
jungle river in a distant native state where three warring factions were contending for
supremacy. There, Jim was to replace Cornelius, a Malacca Portuguese as Stein’s
resident manager. Patusan was a rich island. It was famous for pepper plantations and
there was a political crisis in the island. Jim got appointed there and he carried “books
in the tumble; two small in dark covers, and a thick green- and- gold volume- a half
crown complete Shakespeare” (p.165). Stein gave Jim a sliver ring as a token of
authority and told him to present it to Doramin and he would receive most
hospitability. Doramin wanted to consolidate his kingdom for his son named Dain
Waris. Richard Curle says,
Jim had fallen among people who were both primitive and complex- primitive
in the lack of civilized reactions and amenities, complex in the obscure
undercurrents of feuds and jealousies. His existence, exalted almost beyond
credulity, arose from his determined energy, his sense of fairness, and his
invariable success. His self-reliance was fostered by the people’s faith in him,
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and the urge to prevail over the past and to justify himself seemed to surround
him with an invulnerable halo.10
At Patusan Jim was completely isolated, cut off from his group. Man is the
most lamentable of all creatures. For Marlow Jim had become a symbol of hope, a
necessary affirmation of the human potential to overcome the darkness of
meaningless universe. Jim made his second jump into the unknowns.
Two years later Marlow met Jim. He founded Jim firmly established in his
new environments. Jim had become heavily involved in the social and political life of
Patusan and had found self-assurance and success. He felt that he had atoned for his
earlier future and looked at Patusan with new eyes. He was needed trusted and
revered by the natives. He was responsible for the peace and prosperity of the land.
He acted authoritatively and exhibied personal pride. Marlow saw Jim at the height of
his career and personal happiness. He had availed of the chance offered to him by
Stein. He had founded a new existence. Marlow affirmed that Jim had achieved
greatness. Jim had become an important figure in the locality. He was called “Tuan
Jim i.e., Lord Jim” (p.169). When Marlow met Lord Jim, he explained his crisis when
he was caught by Rajah Allang. He then escaped finally reached Doramin’s palace.
Conrad focuses on two identities. Doramin is identified with brawn, uncivil
and locality. Jim is identified with white, brave, civil and foreign. When Jim met
Doramin he and his son believed him. Jim had a romantic personality; there was a
good relationship between Dain Warris and Jim. Conrad says,
Dain Waris the distinguished youth, was the first to believe in him; theirs was
one of those strange, profound, rare friendship between brown and white,
which the very difference of race seems to draw two human beings closer by
some mystic element of sympathy (p.183).
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Jim took Doramin into confidence and planned to suppress Sheriff Ali.
While Jim and Marlow made a visit to the Rajah, Jim pointed out the stockade
where he was held captive. In a dare-devil act, he had escaped from the place. Jim
revealed to Marlow how he conquered his enemies and earned the adoration of his
people. He had decided to take aggressive actions against Sheriff Ali and made Dain
Waris, the only son of Doramin his partner. Ali was routed in a bold attack. Jim’s
success in the venture made him a hero in Putusan. People were highly excited at his
success. Jim could look down to the village and see the wild seething rush of people
in the streets. He could hear the din of gangs and shouts of crowd in faint bursts of
roaring, the seal of success upon his words, the conquered ground for the soles of the
feet, the blind trust of men. The belief in himself snatched from the fire, the solitude
of his achievement. The people began to trust Jim. In confidence with Dain Waris and
Doramin, Jim appointed the headmen and thus became the virtual ruler of the land.
Jim was a romantic. He fell in love with Jewel, who was the only woman in
Jim’s life and practically and the only woman in Lord Jim. He had a faithful servant
Tamb’Itam. He was a half- native fellow. There was a true love between Jewel and
Jim. Local people talked about their love. People said, “the white man could be seen
with her almost any day; they walked side by side, openly, he holding her arm under-
his-pressed to his side –thus in a most extraordinary way” (p.195). Jim took Jewel into
his confidence and revealed his earlier incident of the Patna which had blighted his
career. Jim was a true lover of Jewel. He says,
I was immensely touched; her youth, her ignorance- her pretty beauty, which
had the simple charm and the delicate vigor of a wild flower, her pathetic
pleading, her helplessness, appealed to me with almost the strength of her own
unreasonable and natural fear (p .215).
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Jim was leading a happy life. He was not afraid of anybody and anything but
he was in danger because he superseded Cornelius. Cornelius and Rajah Allang were
plotting against him. Jim was to be murdered mainly on religious grounds. Cornelius
and Raja were waiting to take revenge on him.
Conrad sketches Jim’s character as strong, brave, and sensitive. Jim was a
man of character. When Marlow asked of his dangers he said bravely,
I feel that if I go straight nothing can touch me. Indeed I do. Now you have
been long enough here to have a good look round and frankly, don’t you think.
I am pretty safe? It all depends upon me, and by Jove! I have lots of
confidence in myself. The worst thing he could do would be to kill me. I
suppose. I don’t think for a moment he would. He couldn’t you know-not if I
were myself to hand him a loaded rifle for the purpose, and then they turn my
back on him (p.226).
Cornelius resents Jim’s presence in Patusan but her his daughter Jewel was
another reason of Jim’s sticking on to Patusan. Their mutual unhappiness was the
household that brought them together. She kept a watch over Jim during the night and
helped him in thwarting her father’s plan to kill him. As Jim stood besides Jewel in
the darkness, after overcoming the four men who had come to kill him, he realized
that Jewel loved him and so did he. Jim told how much different his life had been
since he understood that someone needed him. He felt equal to the responsibility of
love.
Doramin and Jewel were anxious to know if Jim could be counted upon to
remain with them forever. Doramin was sure that Jim, like all the white men they had
known, would leave them to go back to his own country. He was worrying about the
fate of Patusan after Jim’s departure. Marlow assured him but he was not able to
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explain properly why Jim would not leave. Jewel lived in constant fear of losing Jim.
She thought that Marlow had the power to cause Jim to depart. Marlow assured her
that Jim was different because he was truer than any other man. Jewel divulged that
she knew Jim as a secret, something he could never forget. She begged Marlow to tell
her what it was. Marlow attempted to dispel her fear by telling that there was no one
in the entire world who would ever need Jim. No one would ever kill him. When
Jewel insisted on knowing the reason, Marlow answered in total exasperations:
“Because he is not good enough” (p.221). She turned to Marlow with scathing
contempt, bitterness and despair: “This is the very thing he said…. You lie” (p.222).
She was so upset that Marlow tried to moderate his words by saying “Nobody,
nobody, nobody is good enough” (p.222).
Marlow decided to leave Patusan. He was carried away in a small boat to his
waiting schooner. Jim lifted his voice and called: “Tell them….. no nothing?” (p.231).
Marlow had his last look at Jim:
he was white from head to foot, and remained persistently visible with the
stronghold of the night at his back, the sea at his feet, the opportunity by his
side-still veiled. What do you say? Was it still veiled? I don’t know. For me
that white figure in the stillness of coast and sea seemed to stand at the heart of
a vast enigma. The twilight was ebbing fast from the sky above his head, the
strip of sand had sunk already under his feet, and he himself appeared no
bigger than a child than only a speck, a tiny white speck that seemed to catch
all the light left in a darkened world…. And suddenly I lost him (pp.233-34).
Jim’s life ended with a tragedy. His letters narrated his tragic end and throw
light on simplicity, pity and honorable nature. Marlow defended that Jim stood out as
a hero who exhorted our admirations and affection even though we could find much
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to criticise him. Critic Suresh Raval says, “Marlow’s concluding words to the story of
Jim’s life, of his own responses to Jim; they also end Lord Jim.”11
Mr. Stein, the
patron of Jim was shocked to learn about the death of Jim at Patusan in tragic
circumstance.
Jim was successful. He was presented with a situation that he failed to decide
definitely. He was vulnerable to external forces and powers. While he is loved and
trusted in Patusan, the outside world entered his sanctuary in the person of gentleman
Brown and upset his life. He was driven by hunger. Brown, a piratical sea-captain and
his crew invaded Putusan to find food and water. Once again Nature played a
destructive role in Jim’s life. The sea drove Brown and his crew to Patusan and this
produced for Jim the final test of his heroic character.
The dependence of people of Patusan on Jim was not illusory. They were
unable to few dangers without the leadership of Jim. When Gentleman Brown reached
there, Jim was away in the interior. Dain Waris directed the repulse of the Brown
party and wanted to finish them of at once, but Doramin feared for his son’s safety.
Kassim, Rajah Allang’s spokesman opened communication with Brown, using
Cornelius as his interpreter. Cornelius enlightened Brown about affairs in Patusan and
told him that he needed only to kill Jim. Brown was eager to meet Jim and find out
what kind of a man he was to have won the confidence of the natives, and acquire
such mastery over them. He asked Cornelius to arrange their meeting.
Jim and Brown confronted each other in the wilderness with no checks of
civilization. Jim came unarmed, dressed in spotless white, and looked supremely
unconcerned and self-confident. Brown hated Jim at first sight: this was not the man
he had expected to see. Brown replies his intersection,
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I came here for food. D’ye hear?- food to fill our bellies. And what did you
ask for when you come here? We don’t ask you for anything but to give us a
fight or a clear road to go back where we come (p.266).
Both exchanged their thoughts. Brown had a psychological advantage in his
parley with Jim. At last Jim promised him a clear road.
Jim came back to the village. Everyone rejoiced. He mistrusted Brown. He
supplied food but everything happened against his will. Cornelius secretly met Brown
and misguided him that Jim had sent soldiers under leadership of Dain Waris to
destroy him. Brown believes him. Advised and guided by sneaking Cornelius, Brown
left as planned but treacherously fired on a party of Malays under Dain Waris. The
chief’s son and many of his soldiers were killed. Tamb’Itam stabbed Cornelius and
carried the news of the disaster to Jim.
Jim committed an error of judgment in allowing Brown a safe passage out of
Patusan. He pledged his own life as security, should any harm come as a result of
letting the Brown party go free. Doramin agreed to their arrangement only because he
was reluctant to have his son lead the attack. Tamb’Itam, who related this part of the
story to Marlow, remembered that his master was sad that night and walked back and
forth with bowed head and his hands behind his back.
There was a racial crisis. Doramin was identified with the local. Jim was
identified with the white and a foreign and Christen. Bugismen would say Jim
betrayed Doramin after all to his own white countrymen. One critic Giridhar says,
The human community in Lord Jim is presented in two forms: one is the white
European community struggling to maintain its domination over the native
Malayas. When Marlow refers to Jim as “one of us” he means to refer to this
community. The second community is the Malaya tribes.12
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At the extreme of life, there were three choices open to Jim: he could abscond
from the scene in the interest of his future; he was to fight; he could give himself up
according to Malay custom. Jim’s first reaction to the unexpected treachery of Brown
was to prepare boats and pursue the murderers. Jim realized that his world had fallen
in ruins upon his head. He was in confusion about the objective validity of his
motives. He realized almost with an outcry, that individual existence was impossible
without individual choice and action. Jim did not try to escape and face the angry
crowd. The town was chaotic with sorrow, lamentation and horrible doubts. Jim came
up slowly and lifted the sheet to look at Dain Waris as dead friend. Then, alone and
unarmed, he faced Doramin. Jim saw Doramin and his wife. He said gently, “I have
come in sorrow.” I have come ready and unarmed” (p.289). Doramin raised his loaded
pistol and aiming at Jim fired through his chest. Jim’s right hand went up to his lips
and as if closing them he fell dead. Conrad concludes the novel,
He passes away under a cloud, inscrutable at heart, forgotten unforgiven, and
excessively romantic. Not in the wildest days of his boyish visions could he
have seen the alluring shape of such an extraordinary success! For it may very
well be that in the short moment of his proud and unflinching glance he had
beheld the face of that opportunity which like as Eastern bride, had come
veiled to his side (p.290).
It was a path, however destructive, to discover truth and meaning in life.
The novel Lord Jim speaks of man’s trouble, identity crisis, the problem of
encounter, ego-clashes, different cultures, racism, and anguish.
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Works Cited
1. Patil Mallikarjun. Indian Companion to Joseph Conrad. New Delhi: Authors
Press, 2011. P.31
2. Conrad, Joseph. The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’. New Delhi: Black Rose
Publication, 2004. Print. (All subsequent quotations with page
numbers in brackets are from the same edition)
3. Sherry, Norman. Conrad. London: Routledge, 1973. P.23
4. Guerad Albert. J. Conrad: The Novelist. Cambridge: Harvard University,
1996. P.100
5. Joseph Conrad. Lord Jim. New Delhi: UBS Publishers and Distributors Pvt.
Ltd, 2005, P.5 (All subsequent quotations with page numbers in
brackets are from this edition).
6. Norman Sherry. Conrad. London: Routledge, 1973. P.111.
7. Baker G. Ernest. The History of the English Novel. Vol-10. Meerut: Tanmay
Publishers and Distributors, 2003. P.35.
8. Richard Cure. Joseph Conrad and his Characters. New York: Rusell &
Rusell, 1957. P.31.
9. Richard Cure. Joseph Conrad and his Characters. ibid, P.39.
10. Richard Cure. Joseph Conrad and his Characters. Ibid, P.40.
11. Suresh Raval. The Art of Failure of Conrad’s Fiction. London: Allen &
Unwin, 1986. P.46.
12. Giridhari, V.T. The Novels of Joseph Conrad. New Delhi: Prestige, 1999.
P.48.
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