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Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed

Lord Jim

by Joseph Conrad

1900

Novel

Psychological

This story of lost honor ranks among the best of Conrad's tales of the sea, as interesting for its shifts in narrative point of view as for its mysterious and troubling plot.

Conrad introduces Jim as an able-bodied seaman with romantic ideas about his own courage. Those ideas change drastically, though, when a crisis strikes the Patna, a decaying steamer aboard which Jim serves as chief mate; the rest of the novel explores the complexity of Jim's character as he struggles to form a new conception of himself.

The steamer strikes a submerged object one night at sea and begins to go down, carrying a load of passengers. The unscrupulous captain and his drunken crew abandon the vessel immediately, and though Jim remains behind for a long while, he eventually jumps from the ship and joins the others in the captain's lifeboat. But the steamer does not sink; the passengers are rescued and Jim's actions become the subject of a legal inquiry, while the rest of the crew slips away unpunished.

It is at this inquiry that Marlow first appears, and he goes on to narrate much of the remaining story. Marlow helps Jim in his attempt to come to terms with the meaning of his actions and restore his lost honor. Marlow eventually finds work for Jim in a remote trading settlement, where, among the natives, be becomes known as Lord Jim. Here at last he arrives at some understanding of himself, though the dramatic conclusion of the novel challenges the depth of that understanding.

Conrad adds interest to the tale and complicates his themes of lost honor and self-knowledge by introducing Marlow as a narrator. Marlow becomes a kind of mediator between Jim and the reader, so that Jim's story can, at times, tell us as much about Marlow as it does about Jim. It is this added dimension—a Conrad trademark—that makes Lord Jim the profound exploration of human character that it is.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Conrad, Joseph. "Lord Jim." Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed, edited by Editors of Salem Press, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=6CR_0307.
APA 7th
Conrad, J. (2015). Lord Jim. In E. Salem Press (Ed.), Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Conrad, Joseph. "Lord Jim." Edited by Editors of Salem Press. Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.