Lord Jim, written by Joseph Conrad is a 19th century novel revolving around the main character, Jim, while the narrator is his friend Marlow. Jim is a young man that dreams of becoming a hero. Because of this, he decides to become a sailor, and goes out to sea. One day, on a ship called the Patna, Jim encounters a sinking ship. Thinking that he would stay and help the passengers off the boat, as well as sacrifice his own life in a noble way, he tries to stay. However, in the end, he finds himself jumping overboard along with a few other cowardly crew members. Jim testifies in court, but is still traumatized by the experience, so Marlow, a man he meets, sends him to Patusan, a remote island. Jim finds life there as a new and fresh start. He works his way up to becoming a leader of the village, and leads his dream life for a while before he makes another judgmental error, this time involving Pirate Brown and an attack on the villagers. Jim, again, sacrifices his own life (for real this time), and does not get to fulfill his dreams of becoming a true hero. Packed with action and a twisted plot, Joseph Conrad’s novel expresses thoroughly the themes of romance/fantasy and realism, heroism, as well as the past and the future.
Be realistic and stay in the moment. Don’t go off to fantasize about something so soon. Sometimes, it is not always the best option to go and try to imagine what will happen. For all you know, something could be happening for real, and you won’t notice. In Lord Jim, Jim, the main protagonist, struggles with romance/fantasy and realism. He is always off dreaming with his head on cloud nine, and when he is in reality, he is still thinking about his fantasization. In the story, the “romance” is more described as heroism, like a knight in shining armor, rather than love romance. Jim comes from a relatively nice upbringing, but he often dreams of performing noble deeds and becoming a hero in times of need. For example, when he saw the ship crash when he was a water clerk, he just watched, but he vowed to help the next time. Sometimes, Jim’s dreams and fantasization are so much different from reality that he can’t remember what he did, hence the memory loss after he jumped from Patna. Jim is always pretending to be romantic, while in reality, he isn’t at all, especially when he wants to be. Romance and realism are opposites of each other, and one should only hang on to one, and not try to swing to the other, before it is too late. Being romantic only h as its benefits if you can do it in reality, not just in your dreams.
Sometimes, you just have to have a fresh start and move on, before it’s too late to move on. After a traumatizing accident, people will try to hold on to it as much as they can, but they do not realize that the only way to survive is to keep going, and not look back. Jim’s problem in the story is the fact that he holds on too much to the past, and cannot move on to the future, because he lets his past bother him too much to move on. As a dreamy man, he must deal with the fact that his dreams do not match reality and that he cannot stay in his perfect fake world any longer. When he tries to save the ship, but jumps, he shows how he is not romantic. But in an attempt to redeem himself, he stands for trial, and tells the world his story. Afterwards, when Marlow tries to find him a job, Jim quits every so often because whenever the boss brings up Patna, Jim lets the old memories wash over him, becoming the scared man again. He holds on too much to the dark and past memories, without realizing that the future is so near, and he just needs to let go to ride on it. He doesn’t know what to do, is not ready, and is almost never ready. Jim needs to learn to accept the future and leave his past the way it is. The future and the past are the things that people can feel most turmoil with. After a mistake, people often don’t want to let go, and keep looking back to try and fix it. But they can’t, because there is no time travel. However, they can move on and make themselves a fresh start. Have you ever heard of the phrase “turning over a new leaf?” Probably, and it is what most people need, literally and figuratively.
Heroism does not define a person. It defines only a sliver of their personality, or maybe a dream in their head that is not even real. Throughout the story, Jim is always so focused on becoming a hero. He lets the dream wash over him, and he doesn’t notice much else, as he is so focused on his one goal. Jim, throughout his entire life, is always fixated on one dream: Become a hero, do a heroic deed, die as a hero. This overwhelms him and starts to eat him up, turning him blind to other possibilities. When Patna sinks, he is really fixated on becoming a hero, but he jumps while making a decision between life and death. Afterwards, Jim is really depressed because he did not fulfill his act of becoming a hero, which drives him to be anguished and too reflective on the entire situation. Too caught up in this one moment, Jim does not even realize that he could be a hero just by speaking. He spoke to the public about the ship and his cowardice, and admitted it to the court. He was a hero by speaking up, being honest, and feeling the shame and guilt that a respectful man would have felt in the same situation. During his time on Patusan, Jim again showed himself the inner hero by becoming a leader of Patusan. However, Jim, so caught up with Patna, and later with Pirate Brown;’s attack, does not ever get to realize what he did. Marlow’s account of the story is a celebration of dreams and how it drives a person towards their goal, but also a warning on how being too fixated on one single dream can cause anguish, misfortune, and more pain a person can bear. Heroism is not always shown like Batman and needing to save an entire city. It’s more like small deeds, small acts that define the whole. Being a big-shot hero is a dream. It’s a dream that someone might have already accomplished, had they looked carefully enough.
Lord Jim is a cautionary yet captivating tale that recounts the life of a fortunate yet unfortunate man by the name of Jim, who has a long held dream of becoming a hero. Jim, a respectable sailor, gets his life turned upside down after an incident on the ship he was the captain of. This book explains the themes of romance vs realism, past vs future, and the dream of heroism. Jim is a man in the novel that struggles to contain his dreams while moving on from a troubled past. This novel can also be understood as a cautionary tale of telling people to have realistic dreams, so they will not crush a person if not fulfilled or broken. When Jim does not manage to become the big hero that he has always dreamed of being, he is crushed by reality and finds it hard to move on with the rest of his life. It also makes him blind to how he is already a hero, just not the big-time hero that he wanted to be, but a small one nevertheless that was willing to stand up for his mistakes that take the blame for something he did himself. Jim is also struggling with how to move on. His main problem that he struggles with in life is how he holds on too much to the past, while daydreaming too much of the future and trying to redeem his mistakes. He always has high hopes, and that is good, but Jim’s hopes are unrealistic for a common man. This novel is truly an astounding piece written by Joseph Conrad depicting the troubles of high dreams and how to move on with a fresh start in life, as well as the true definition of heroism. Dreams only come true if you are willing to open to every possibility and path.
Comments