** spoiler alert ** "The human heart is vast enough to contain all the world. It is valiant enough to bear the burden, but where is the courage that would cast it off?" Marlowe, Lord Jim pg 218 (or thereabouts—it's what my Nook says, anyway)

I was struck by this passage when I read it. I think it is what Conrad is going round the world (almost literally) examining in Lord Jim. Jim, after the abandonment of the Patna, is frantic to show he has courage. That's why he faces the board of inquiry and why he doesn't leave Patusan. There he does prove he has courage, enough to face Doramin when there's little doubt Doramin will shoot Jim rather than take responsibility for his son Dain Waris's death (if you read carefully, it becomes evident that this is where that blame belongs).

But Jim continues to lack the courage to say 'screw 'em' and live his own life regardless of what others think. Everything, everything he does is motivated by the thoughts of others. I think Brierly, for all his apparent solidness (I feel his name is an illusion to pipewood; hard, strong, polished and somewhat aristocratic), is a similar character and kills himself lest he find himself in a similar situation to Jim's, which he can apparently foresee; either that, or Jim facing the board and introducing the simple possibility is too much for him.

The are some people in the novel possess the kind of courage Marlowe speculates about. One of them seems to be Captain "Holy Terror" Robinson, who is still a captain despite being suspected of having eaten his fellow castaways after a shipwreck. On the other hand, he seems to be senile. I suspect Stein did, and I think Jewel does, but with both of them it’s harder to say. Stein has lost so much that he has no place save with his insect collection, and at the end of the novel, Jewel finds herself in similar straits. But I note that both of them have lost persons, persons whom they cared for, not honor—honor is something only the world can bestow, at least as far as Jim, Brierly, and, I suspect, Marlowe are concerned.

Marlowe says one cannot go home and it be home without feeling entitled to the respect of others—at least that's how I interpret his ruminations on page 150. Jim can't go home because he'd have to explain to his father, and others, how he'd failed in his duty. Even his achievements in Patusan can't wash that away; all they afford him is a clean start there not in the world at large; a cleanliness, incidentally, that Jim likely feels he’ll lose if he’s blamed for Dain Waris's death.

But, were Jim able to shake off the world’s hold on him, he could leave Patusan, taking his Jewel with him. He could go home, trusting that those who truly loved him would still receive him and that those who do not could ‘go hang.’ Jim is trapped by the the burden of the world. He cannot cast it off, and it thus drags him to his death.

The bad part is I think Conrad could’ve managed to tell us all of this in about half the time. I don’t see where we really need the scenes from Jim’s POV at all—the book would work just as well if all told by Marlowe. On that account, there are many lushly described scenes Marlowe gives us when, so far as I can see, he can have no such in-depth knowledge of those scenes, and they often seem to serve more to pad out the book than to really tell us anything. Of course, I’m likely wrong, but it certainly felt that way at times. I find myself in sympathy with those critics who felt Lord Jim was “a short story [that] had got beyond the writer’s control.” (from the Author’s note at the beginning of the book). That’s a little harsh. I’d say ‘novella.’

In the end, I cannot say I haven’t profited by reading Lord Jim. It’s given me some food for thought about the human conditions, so it does succeed after a fashion. But I’m left with the feeling it either could have either done more, or else presented less information for me to work through to gain these insights, and for that reason, I remain ambivalent about it. I may well be, as many suggest, I need to give it another read-through. Time will tell on that one.