Can anyone help?

[Dark Muse]

I admit that at my first attempt to read this book, I was completly confused by it, and had the most difficult time figuring out what the heck was going on and what was suppose to be happening, I think I only got to maybe the 3rd chapter before I was just like forget it and stopped reading, but I have been considering trying again. Though sometimes I wonder if I will regeret that choice.

But well the things that had the most difficulty with initially, was first, tracking the story, as it seemed to be jumping all over the place, and I could not figure out what was happening now, what already happerend, and just what was going on.

And this kept bugging me, but is Lord Jim suppose to be African American, or White? I could never figure that one out and kept going back and forth between the two.

[catavenger]

Jim is plainly an Englishman any confusion may be because of the order in which the story is told. It starts out where he is a "water-clerk" in ports taking people to shore etc. it then goes back to his childhood as the son of a parson. Jim grows up wanting to be a sailer and then is sent to an academy to become an officer. After that in the story follows his career as a ship's officer. He becomes 1st mate on the Patna.
After the officers (including Jim) desert the passengers because they think the ship is sinking. There is a naval board inquiry about this. Now the story gets a bit out of order again as a charactor name Marlow is telling the story and tells of what Jim tells him - thats as far as I have gotten in chapter 8. It seems like it should be strait forward from this point. I think Jim (who is arrogant) tries to find redemption for his cowardly act of leaving the passengers.

[Dark Muse]

Thank you for the recap of the story, it does put things in more perspetive, I was so lost in my attemtp to read that book. I have not yet gone back to it.

[Virgil]

Dark Muse, I love this novel to death. It's a great work. Did you ever finish it? Try Spark Notes if you have trouble with the time sequence: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/. Plus here's Wiki to help you understand it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Jim. It is a novel of redemption and trying to understand the character of another human being. Ultimately Jim, as seen through Marlow's perspctive, is a mystery.

[Dark Muse]

No I have not finnished my first read I got half-way through than I stopped. In addition to being completely confussed and not knowing anything that was happening, I found the writing a bit dry for my personal taste, but still I will eventurally try to read it again.

[Virgil]

Dry? Here's one of the paragraphs from chapter one:

To the white men in the waterside business and to the captains of ships he was just Jim- nothing more. He had, of course, another name, but he was anxious that should not be pronounced. His incognito, which had as many holes as a sieve, was not meant to hide a personality but a fact. When the fact broke through the incognito he would leave suddenly the seaport where he happened to be at the time and go to another- generally farther east. He kept to seaports because he was a seaman in exile from the sea, and had Ability in the abstract, which is good for no other work but that of a water-clerk. He retreated in good order towards the rising sun, and the fact followed him casually but inevitably. Thus in the course of years he was known successively in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia- and in each of these halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Afterwards, when his keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan Jim: as one might say- Lord Jim.

I think Conrad's style is a little hard to grasp at first. He overwhlems you with words and images and the reader is left trying to process them. But if you can grasp the key thrusts of what he's getting at, here how Jim is a mystery, then I think it fits together. William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitgerald both had Conrad as their main infleuence.

[Dark Muse]

Perhaps dry was not the best word, but I was not sure just how to explain it, but well it just did not really draw me in. Same problem I had with Joyce, I just was not moved to really care about the character, and so I could not get involved in the story as a whole. His style is just not for my personal taste.

[Dark Muse]

No I did not know that, it is interesting, but well in my first attempt to read the story, quite honestly, it kind of bored me.

[catavenger]

I think maybe a person must have to really screwed up to understand Jin. Since I have I think I can.

[Dark Muse]

No I haven't. I have that one, but I started Lord Jim first, and well after that I just kind of avioded Conrad

[Dark Muse]

Maybe I will read that one first, before attempting Lord Jim again