Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim: Fallen Adam in a Fallen Garden

       "Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness. When your ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the world that made you, restrained you, taken care of you. It is as if the souls of men floating on the abyss and in touch with immensity had been set free from any excess of heroism, absurdity, or abomination. Of course, as with belief, thought, love, conviction, or even the visual aspect of material things, there are as many shipwrecks as there are men, and in this one there was something abject, which made the isolation more complete—there was a villainy of circumstances that cut these men off more completely from the rest of mankind, whose ideal of conduct had never undergone the trial of a fiendish and appalling joke" (Conrad 122). This passage from Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim suggests the cruelty and tragic irony of a fate which foils the lives of men. Like Oedipus, the protagonist realizes that life unfortunately serves as a riddle, a paradox, and a prelude to emotional and psychological suffering. Conrad's sad account of a young sailor's betrayal and loss of innocence strongly indicts a society whose superficial values only serve to satisfy their material aggrandizement, and decries the unforeseen consequences awaiting those who live by the Romantic dreams and ideals of their youth. Lord Jim suffers in both respects; however, his faith and determination ensure a form of existential victory worthy of emulation. Like Hamlet, Jim must confront his destiny, even at the ultimate price.

             As the mate of the Patna, young Jim, by accident or choice, abandons his ship in the false belief of imminent destruction, and for the remainder of his life must wrestle with his personal guilt and condemnation from society. As a tale of loss and redemption, the hero's symbolic fall initiates his coming of age and subsequent transformation in his quest for self-fulfillment. As Jim's crucial opportunity arises, the inexperienced sailor, instead of acting decisively in a critical moment, panics amid the shouts and clamor of the crew, and innocently finds himself plunging into the depths of the sea. As a result, this young parson's son undergoes a form of spiritual introspection to determine whether his behavior was motivated involuntarily or by choice; however, the truth eludes him. As he tells Marlow, "I had jumped . . . It seems . . . I know nothing about it till I looked up" (114). Tragically, the main character cries that he "wishes he could die," but there was "no going back." Jim says that it was as if he "had jumped into a well—into an everlasting deep hole" (114). Sadly, the young hero topples "from a height he can never scale again" (115). The author's theological implications rival those of Shelley's Frankenstein or Sophocles' Oedipus in that man's sinful nature, whether innate or acquired, predisposes him for a life of guilt and spiritual retribution. Just as the Frankenstein monster demanded companionship in a mate, as well as his creator, so does Jim long for the social acceptance from his peers. Validation in both instances proves the spiritual confirmation of the characters' values. Just as Oedipus' quest to justify the tragic circumstances of his birth lead ironically to his eternal damnation, so does Jim's idealistic quest to prove his "worthiness" lead to his paradoxical choice of death over life, to proclaim the superiority of his principles.

            Conrad twice uses the simile of "the Eastern bride waiting to be uncovered by the hand of the master" to show how man's opportunity "sat unveiled at his side" (214), unknown and unanticipated until its harsh features demand immediate action. In this respect, the main character must psychologically descend into the recesses of his unconscious to discover the truth of his inner nature. Old and more experienced seaman Marlow analyzes Jim's appearance and behavior from his initial interview with the young sailor to the final hours of the hero's life. Adding to the sense of verisimilitude by providing a third-person objective point of view, Marlow traces the young man's spiritual quest. Acting as Jim's mentor-priest archetype, the old officer comments on the protagonist's emotional confusion, saying, "His lips quivered while he looked straight into my eyes. 'I had jumped—hadn't I?' he asked, dismayed. ' That's what I had to live down. The story didn't matter.' He clasped his hands for an instant, glanced right and left into the gloom: 'It was like cheating the dead,' he stammered" (131). The eight hundred natives aboard should have perished, yet they live. Jim knew he felt "the ship," the "bulkhead weaken," (93) and clearly recognized the signs of impending disaster, yet ironically the ship held, rendering his apparently heroic judgment an act of irreversible cowardice. Jim described this inexplicable occurrence as "a joke hatched in hell" (112) and "an infernal joke" which "was being crammed devilishly down his throat" (113). The author's irony proves heart-wrenching. Conrad suggests here that man never fully knows the extent of his inner worth until the moment fate, or chance, predetermines it (197). As Marlowe, the author's persona, observes, "Truth shall prevail—don't you know. Magna est veritas et . . . Yes, when it gets a chance. There is a law, no doubt—and likewise a law regulates your luck in the throwing of dice. It is not Justice, the servant of men, but accident, hazard, Fortune—the ally of patient Time—that holds an even and scrupulous balance" (271). Just as Macbeth finds himself the victim of Time as he watches Birnam Wood meet Dunsinaine, so does Jim realize that he is trapped by that single moment during which he failed to respond accordingly.

            Conrad's use of religious imagery further intensifies the novel's theological overtones. Jim, the author's archetypal Adam, "dominated the forest, the secular gloom, the old mankind" and stood "like a figure set up on a pedestal to represent in his persistent youth the power, and perhaps the virtues, of races that never grow old, that have emerged from the gloom." Marlow even admits that Jim's appearance here symbolizes man's eternal plight against fate (230). The author enhances this image by creating a corresponding Edenic setting, as Marlow describes it during Jim's initial arrival at Patusa, his native land: "At the first bend he lost sight of the sea with it laboring waves for ever rising, sinking, and vanishing to rise again—the very image of struggling mankind—and faced the immovable forests rotted deep in the soul, soaring towards the sunshine, everlasting in the shadowy might of their tradition" (214). The continual undulations of the waves clearly suggest a retreat into the unconscious, the womb, a place of resurrection, or a return to the ancient symbols of man's primeval past. In Patusa, far from the vestiges of civilization, Jim by chance discovers a second "opportunity" to rise from death into rebirth, like the phoenix (194). Here the young sailor strives to create a light in the darkness, even if it appears, in Marlowe's words, only a "shadow" (230). This opportunity for Jim's "new direction in life" provides "as sunny an arrangement . . . as man can conceive" even in a "world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of disorder" (266). Like Poe's aged sailor, the hero's descent into the maelstrom of darkness and confusion represents his subconscious desire to submerge himself into the unknown, to fulfill his psychological quest for the truth. Ironically, Conrad admires the superiority of the primitive world of Patusa, an existence which surpasses the superficial progress and "haggard utilitarian lies" of modern society (242). The author praises this native life which is free from hypocrisy. As he speaks through Marlow: "But do you notice how, three hundred miles beyond the end of telegraph cables, mail-boat lines, the haggard utilitarian lies our civilization wither and die, to be replaced by pure exercises of imagination, that have the futility, often the charm, and sometimes the deep hidden truthfulness, of works of art?" (242). Although Jim strongly desires to serve his fellow man (94), his inability to discern between the illusion of his Romantic idealism and the harshness of Conrad's reality create tragic circumstances which, to him, spiritually and morally betray his innermost values (95-98). The author's world leaves Jim torn and suffering in metaphysical confusion, much like the heroes of Greek drama caught between their desire to transcend human limitations and the sad awareness of its impossibility. Conrad's world is one of paradox and betrayal, an existential paradise-lost in which a single occurrence on the Patna leads to Jim's social and emotional downfall, an event destined to haunt the remaining years of his life. Condemned and rejected by society for a crime he cannot justify, Jim withdraws from the company of civilized men in a heroic attempt to begin once more with a new identity, this time amid the ashes of a foreign environment. Speaking through Marlowe, Conrad says that Jim's work gave the youth "the certitude of rehabilitation," and that is "why he seemed to love the land and the people with a sort of fierce egoism, with contemptuous tenderness" (217). Like the phoenix, Jim strives to be reborn; tragically, like Sisyphus, however, the young sailor suffers in Patusa as well. The cruelty and prejudice of both worlds condemns him, just as Claggart condemns Billy Budd.

            As a sailor himself, Conrad utilizes the epic imagery of the sea to convey his tone of loss. Ironically, Jim's image of himself as the warrior-king like Beowulf or Odysseus filled his imagination with illusions which blinded his view of reality. This native preoccupation with the sea, Marlow suggests, forms a common thread in the personalities of young sailors. As Conrad points, "There is such magnificent vagueness in the expectations that had driven each of us to sea, such a glorious indefiniteness, such a beautiful greed of adventures that are their own and only reward! What we get—well, we won't talk of that; but can one of us restrain a smile? In no other kind of life is the illusion more wide of reality—in no other is the beginning all illusion—that disenchantment more swift –the subjugation more complete" (127). Marlowe comments on the young hero's Romantic sensibility in this respect as he admires Jim's innocent appearance "which claims the fellowship of these illusion you had thought gone out, extinct, cold, and which, as if rekindled at the approach of another flame, give a flutter deep down somewhere, give a flutter of light . . . of heat" (127). Jim's belief in the ultimate affirmation of truth also contributes to his emotional and spiritual betrayal. Marlowe observes that Jim "stood before me, believing that age and wisdom can find a remedy against the pain of truth, giving me a glimpse of himself as a young fellow in a scrape" which compels him to acknowledge his guilt, although the realization forces him to "shiver as if about to swallow some nauseous drug" (128).Sadly, the truth, as Conrad suggests, fails to set him free from the guilt associated with the Patna incident. This stage of Jim's psychological awareness marks the initial phase of the hero's transformation. From this juncture, the initiate must begin reconstructing the shattered dreams and illusions of his life to be symbolically reborn in a primeval Eden, like Adam after the Fall. Jim's heroic refusal to "shirk" his duty by failing to appear before the court, or denying that he had witnessed the ship's bulkhead bulge (94) suggests the author's pessimistic view of life as "an appalling joke" which unexpectedly leads to man's destruction. Ironically, Jim's faith in his youthful idealism and belief in truth beguile him.

            Conrad uses the concept of fate to contribute to the hero's tragic downfall. Jim struggles to find the truth "in the wild hope of arriving in that way at some effective refutation"; however, as the author suggests, the "stars had been ironically unpropitious," leaving the young sailor with "an inarticulate noise in his throat like a man imperfectly stunned by a blow on the head." Marlow sympathizes with Jim's "pitiful" condition (87), expressing the notion that "no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge" (91). Jim's material losses prove devastating: "certificate gone, career broken, no money to get away, no work that he could obtain as far as he could see" (91); nevertheless, his spiritual devastation proves far worse. The young hero torments himself in self-denunciation, saying "It was all in being ready. I wasn't, not –not then" and sadly cries out for someone "to understand—a person at least" (92). In essence, Conrad's fatalistic perception of reality renders the protagonist helpless amid the relentless force of nature. As the young hero realizes, human behavior proves unpredictable beneath the weight of tragic chance or circumstance. The Illusions of self-awareness, in this respect, appear as inexplicable as they are inscrutable. Conrad further suggests that the quality of heroism or cowardice often depends upon the circumstances of a single event in one's life. The Patna incident, or instance, threatens Jim's self-image like "those struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of what his moral identity should be" (92).Jim's introspection forces him into "a discovery about himself," a realization crushing the young man as he exclaims, "Ah! What a chance missed! My God! What a chance missed!" in an agonizing tone resembling "a cry rung out of pain" (93). The young sailor's fear of disaster creates "such an overwhelming sense of helplessness" that he "fails to apprehend the actual circumstances." His imagination supersedes his sense of reality. Jim acknowledges the fact that the Patna's survival was fortunate; however, the idea of the tragedy proves "terrible" (95). As Marlowe realizes, "It did not seem so strange to me. He must have had an unconscious conviction that the reality could not be half as bad, not half as anguishing, appalling--vengeful as the created terror of his imagination" (116). Lost in his inability to discern reality from illusion, Jim envisions those "recumbent bodies, a doomed man aware of his fate, surveying the silent company of the dead," as they "floundered in the sea whitened awfully by their desperate struggles" and "clamorous cries for help" (96). To the young mate, these dying images evoke "all the horrors of panic, the trampling rush, the pitiful screams . . . all the appalling incidents of a disaster at sea" (97). A victim of an oversensitive imagination, Jim romantically envisions the worst, and tragically suffers for it.

            Jim's idealistic preparation for victorious adventures on land and sea further serve to exacerbate his tragic fall. In his youth, the protagonist dreams of gaining glory and sagacity which would forever "crown his inner life" (102). The incident at sea, however, disillusions him into feeling betrayed and "taken unawares." In anguish, the hero utters a "malediction upon the waters and the firmament, upon the ship, upon the men." Here Conrad uses the Christian imagery of creation in comparing the young sailor to Adam, as an archetypal scapegoat, guilt-ridden and betrayed by his own nature. The initiate next appeals to Marlowe for forgiveness, saying only he possesses "the power to bind and to loose . . . in the hope of . . . absolution" (102). Like Peter, Marlowe alone can impart the grace essential for vindication and redemption. Without mercy, the young mate's guilt hangs over "his imaginative head" just as the "stars forever closed over him" that terrible night, "like the vault of a tomb—the revolt of his young life—the black end" (103). Conrad's death imagery here corresponds with Jim's emotional death, or coming of age, from which he must transform, in order to experience a form of rebirth. Just as Christ faced the physical death and darkness of the cross, suffering as God symbolically turns His back, forsaking him, so must Jim, as an archetypal savior, venture into his own psychological darkness where "no man can help: where his very Maker seems to abandon a sinner to his own devices" (104). Like Coleridge's condemned mariner eternally destined to spiritually expunge himself of the guilt associated with taking the life of one of God's innocent creatures, as well as the deaths of his crew, so must Jim forever condemn himself for a crime he unknowingly committed. In this respect, Conrad's bitterness closely parallels the tragic irony in the lives of Dostoyevsky's characters destined to suffer from the genetic predisposition of their fathers, albeit madness, violence, paranoia, or gambling. Conrad uses sinister imagery to describe the circumstances surrounding the Patna episode by saying that "a boat on the high seas brings out the Irrational that lurks at the bottom of every thought." The disaster serves as "part of a burlesque meanness" falsely contrived by "the Dark Powers whose real terrors" are "always on the verge of Triumph" (122). This metaphysical struggle pervades the main character's personality, like the poetry of Donne or Baudelaire.

              In contrast, the sensitive butterfly serves as one of Conrad's principal images to symbolize man's imaginative nature. Just as the delicate creature must adapt to the cruelty of its environment, so must Jim forever continue his search for truth. Stein, like the young sailor, retreats from a harsh society to become preoccupied with butterflies. Ironically, Stein finds life through the insect's death, in their preserved forms. This paradox, in essence, represents Jim's quest, to be reborn repeatedly. As Stein remarks, "This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man he will never on his heap of mud keep still. He wants to be so, and again he wants to be so . . . He wants to be a saint, and he wants to be a devil—and every time he shuts his eyes he sees himself as a very fine fellow—so fine as he can never be . . . In a dream" (192). In this respect, Jim's character transcends human expectations because he never falls prey to self-complacency, as Stein suggests. Like Icarus, and Phaethon, the struggle to satisfy the ego ends tragically from physical limitations. As Stein observes, "And because you not always can keep your eyes shut there comes the real trouble—the heart pain—the world pain. I tell you, my friend, it is not good for you to find you cannot make your dream come true, for the reason that you not strong enough are, or not clever enough . . . And all the time you are such a fine fellow, too" (191). Although Jim did not attain his illusive fame on the Patna or in Patusa, his existential victory in defying death on his own moral terms far surpasses even Stein's concept of heroism. Jim's romantic quest for Truth, like Stein's pursuit of Beauty, although it "floats elusive, obscure, half-submerged, in the silent still waters of mystery," provides meaning for both men's lives. Stein compares the chance of catching a fragile butterfly with man's rare opportunities to fulfill his dreams (193).

             Ultimately, Jim recognizes the need to face the consequences by testifying in court, the "only proper thing" to do. Recognizing his defeat, in a sense, alters his appearance radically "as if he had suddenly matured" (128). Jim realizes that his awareness makes it