Victory?

Lord Jim

It seems to me that this novel is not an optimistic story. I think that the basic theme is about the uncertainty of good/evil choices. Conrad practically wore himself out in his efforts to define and redefine the factors behind the decisions that were made by all of the main characters in the novel. About the time the reader is swinging towards a definite positive attitude about the course of the plot, doubts are plantedand the characters are analyzed from another perspective reminiscent of Kafka's "The Castle".

No Subject

Roderick does not understand the nature of a tragedy. John, it's not so much about choices, it's more a case of not understanding the other within the self and when faced with the unconscious, the character's ability to deal with this knowledge, this truth. Jim couldn't deal, nor could Kurtz, but Marlowe dealt with it by lying. the perfect existentialist.

Victory?

I wonder whether this book is really to be read in as optimistic a light as that in which some of your contributors appear to have understood it? It seems to me that Conrad's novel is tragic in form, and that Jim is a flawed character, of the type which Aristotle famously defined as requisite to true tragedy. What is interesting about Jim is that the flaw, in his case, lies in his romantic idealism. He is, as the older, and more world-weary narrator emphasises, deeply romantic, highly imaginative, and extremely idealistic. The reader is given to understand that the narrator, at least, regards these qualities, on which so much store is sometimes set, as being of at least doubtful value. However natural they are to youth, they are, in themselves, not only an obstacle to a true understanding of the world, but treacherous to the exercise of practical virtue. Jim is inarticulate, self-obsessed, easily duped, and ultimately destroyed by his tendency to refer everything around him to the way in which he perceives himself. There is a tension in the book between the codes by which ordinary and unsung men live their lives of duty and self-sacrifice, and the ambitions of those who, in their own view at least, transcend the rules because they are born to a higher destiny. It seems to me that Conrad is sensitive to the strengths and limitations of both value systems, and that the current of the book takes the form of a debate in which the one is not necessarily preferred to the other. It seems to me too that those who want to see Jim's ultimate fate as a vindication of his honour need to think about the price that more than one other person in the book ends up having to pay for it. The moral may well be that romantic idealists are dangerous to themselves, and to those around them - a view that those raised on the virtues propounded by the Hollywood school of heroism may find hard to accept, but which those who have lived life in dangerous trades - and CXIX sea-faring was such a trade - may well regard as all but self-evident. A bit of decency, humility and respect for others is perhaps the best we can really hope for in life - the tragedy is that the practice of these virtues is very much more difficult than at first appears.