LORD JIM
JOSEPH CONRAD

BACKGROUND
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Published 1900

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Set at sea outside the metropolitan cultures of the 19th and early 20th centuries

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Inspired by Conrad’s transitory life and his commitment to the sea •

born in Poland as a subject of Russian imperialism and child to parents who fought against the Tsar and were exiled for it

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move to France (1874) and then to Britain (1878)

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in both locations he continued with his obsession of the sea working in the Merchant Navy

FOCUS

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Relationship between Jim and Marlow and how that shapes the meaning behind the novel

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The quest of “How to be”

FORM
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Jumbled time sequence
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Example: when (in chapters 3 to 5) the narrative jumps between drunken arguments on the Patna, the inquisition in court and the events in between.

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reader has to play a part in reconstructing the chronology of the novel

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part of the crisis that is life, part of the reader’s experience

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Embodies the forwards and backwards movement of life — Jim moving towards and away from becoming the hero he dreams to be — connecting him to his forward ambitious future and then removing him from it as he fails to reach it

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Demonstrates Conrad’s experimentation with form as the Victorian Era was disappearing and the Modern emerging

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Against the realist tradition that was loyal to routine, ordered progress/development

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Links to language: Uses words in new ways: Modernism’s wrestling with meaning—crisis of language; it is unreliable and illusive

FORM CONT.
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Links to the unreliable nature of the main narrative

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Anecdotal structure created by Marlow’s story telling

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Telling a story based on personal accounts rather than facts

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Story Marlow tells creates the connection between two characters that are
“held together by a community of inglorious toil and fidelity to a certain standard of conduct”

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BUT Marlow acknowledges he is unreliable as he often reveals his limits to knowledge •

This bring’s the reader closer to the truth as the truth is unreliable in itself if it even exists

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Another movement away from realism and Victorian belief in order

MARLOW
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linking to the forward and backwards movements of the form, Marlow’s story telling resembles the fall and rise of man — the plight that makes up life — the self is an enigma to itself and from this confusion we can build our own understanding of life

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Movement links to Conrad’s belief in opposites: i.e. the world is chaos but he still believes in order

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This is evident in Jim’s journey and discovery of ‘how to be’ as he is constantly using his self crisis in order to redeem and save himself

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He refuses to back down from his quest for identity and Marlow is entangled in it as not only the narrator of his story but an active participant in it

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Marlow finds no redeeming qualities in Jim’s abandonment of the Patna but do his actions on the Patsuan redeem him?

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Does Jim redeem himself by the end of the novel?

QUOTES
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“I was aggrieved against him as though he had cheated me — me! — of a splendid
opportunity