For instance the few moments that comprise Jim’s fears and misgivings as the ship is abandoned are stretched out over more than twenty pages, and the evening dinner at which Jim recounts these events to Marlow lasts more than fifty pages.

Thus the narrative expands and contracts in terms of the psychological interest with which Conrad imbues his characters. Marlow intersperses the narrative with sketches of other characters and accounts of other events, and it is only very gradually revealed that Jim has abandoned the Patna along with the other crew members. But instead of describing the dramatic events of the Patna’s fate and the scandalous behaviour of its crew, the story suddenly jumps forward to the judicial inquest, and is then taken over by Marlow who reminisces about Jim from a point in time long after the events of the novel have concluded. A conventional opening relates Jim’s career as chief mate of the Patna up to the very point of its accident in the Arabian Sea. The narrative comprises a radically dislocated series of events. But for the main part he withholds crucial items of information, which creates both dramatic tension and a sense of grim expectancy. Marlow knows the outcome of the whole story from the outset, and from times to time he offers tantalising glimpses into what is to come. However, they are not relayed in chronological order but re-arranged to create maximum dramatic effect. The details are then relayed to a group of people Marlow is addressing – and hence to the reader. Marlow assembles the facts of the story from a number of different sources – from people he knows, and from information passed on to him from others. Lord Jim was the first of Conrad’s full length novels to feature as principal narrator Charles Marlow, the former sea captain. It’s also a very dramatic story that explores one of Conrad’s favourite themes – moral redemption via suffering and renunciation. Although the principal characters are English, the presence of Dutch, French, and German characters spreads the responsibility of ideological and cultural dominance during the highpoint of imperialism, and it does so over a geographic area which stretches from Aden in the Arabian Sea to Manila in the Philippines. Lord Jim (1900) explores the tensions of European colonialism and its role in the East Indies in the late nineteenth century. Tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Conrad lord jim