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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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