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3.28 AVERAGE
3.28 AVERAGE
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
An insider's view of the psychological toll of imperialism paid by the White men who uphold it. The edition I read had terrible typography. As usual with Conrad, there are some nice turns of phrase.
Although this book began rather frustrating to me, constantly shifting between the main narrator of Marlow and those of whom he tells the story, the second half enters a more adventure novel realm that overpowers this narration struggle. Lord Jim, a dreamer unfamiliar with the harsh actualities of real life, at once lovable as well as disappointing, shows us a veiled, and therefore indecipherable, character of a colonial Peter Pan.
Tedious and extremely dense. Still, it was beautifully written and contained powerful moments. Definitely would have to re-read it.
Wow what a ride. It’s goes to show you what lasting effects guilt and shame can do to a person’s life.
I'm still not sure how I feel about this book -- in some ways, I liked it much better than Heart Of Darkness, but in other ways I found myself often growing impatient with it. I think I might just not be the right audience for literature about the horrors of human nature.
slow-paced
And we're back to painfully slow, brooding, portentous literature with Lord Jim, after the brief respite that was The Secret Agent and a Room with a View. A friend of mine had got my hopes up when he compared Lord Jim to Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. I thought that meant a gripping and well-paced narrative. Turns out he was referring to the story arc of redemption shared by both novels.
In Lord Jim, we find ourselves reunited with Marlow, the narrator in Heart of Darkness. Here, Marlow recounts the tale of Jim, a young lad who has visions of a life of adventure and heroic deeds at sea. However, when Jim joins the rest of the white crew in abandoning the Patna when it threatens to sink, his self-image as the fearless and honourable sailor is shattered and he is wracked with guilt. He then spends the next few years moving from port to port to escape all reminders of his cowardly deed, until he finds love, honour and ultimately, redemption in isolated Patusan (apparently located somewhere in Sumatra).
In some ways, I can see why Lord Jim is hailed as a literary masterpiece. It's a text just calling out to be analysed. How it serves as a counterpoint to Heart of Darkness, where we encounter another European, albeit one who becomes corrupted and twisted while in the tropics. The story arc of redemption. As a statement on colonialism and civilisation as represented by the European tradition. It's certainly impressive to think that a non-native speaker of English - Conrad was born in Poland and probably only picked up English when he joined the British Merchant Navy at age 19 - managed to write this work. But perhaps it's precisely because Conrad was a non-native speaker that I feel his writing requires a lot of effort - like it required a lot of effort on the part of the writer to produce, and requires a lot of effort on the part of the reader to absorb. A little like Gustave Ascenbach in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice perhaps? Like Dickens' novels, Lord Jim was first produced in a serialised form. But I found its pace plodding and couldn't quite figure out what would compel readers to purchase the next installment the following week.
In Lord Jim, we find ourselves reunited with Marlow, the narrator in Heart of Darkness. Here, Marlow recounts the tale of Jim, a young lad who has visions of a life of adventure and heroic deeds at sea. However, when Jim joins the rest of the white crew in abandoning the Patna when it threatens to sink, his self-image as the fearless and honourable sailor is shattered and he is wracked with guilt. He then spends the next few years moving from port to port to escape all reminders of his cowardly deed, until he finds love, honour and ultimately, redemption in isolated Patusan (apparently located somewhere in Sumatra).
In some ways, I can see why Lord Jim is hailed as a literary masterpiece. It's a text just calling out to be analysed. How it serves as a counterpoint to Heart of Darkness, where we encounter another European, albeit one who becomes corrupted and twisted while in the tropics. The story arc of redemption. As a statement on colonialism and civilisation as represented by the European tradition. It's certainly impressive to think that a non-native speaker of English - Conrad was born in Poland and probably only picked up English when he joined the British Merchant Navy at age 19 - managed to write this work. But perhaps it's precisely because Conrad was a non-native speaker that I feel his writing requires a lot of effort - like it required a lot of effort on the part of the writer to produce, and requires a lot of effort on the part of the reader to absorb. A little like Gustave Ascenbach in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice perhaps? Like Dickens' novels, Lord Jim was first produced in a serialised form. But I found its pace plodding and couldn't quite figure out what would compel readers to purchase the next installment the following week.