The son of a baronet, Brown is famous for leading a "lawless life." He is "a latter-day buccaneer," known for his "vehement scorn for mankind at large and for victims in particular." We learn that he hung around the Philippines in his rotten schooner, which, eventually, "he sails into Jim’s history, a blind accomplice of the Dark Powers." Their meeting takes place as they face each other across a muddy creek—"standing on the opposite poles of that conception of life which includes all mankind." This encounter is of enormous consequence, as Jim, "the white lord," contends verbally with the "terrible," "sneering" Brown, who slyly invokes their "common blood, an assumption of common experience, a sickening suggestion of common guilt. . . ." The conversation, Marlow was to recall in his letter, appeared "as the deadliest kind of duel on which Fate looked on with her cold-eyed knowledge of the end." Brown, with his "satanic gift of finding out the best and the weakest spot in his victims," seems to be surveying and staking out Jim’s character and capability. Jim, on his part, intuitively feels that Brown and his men are "the emissaries with whom the world he had renounced was pursuing him in his retreat."
Perceiving the potential menace of Brown and his "rapacious" To underesti- white followers, Jim approaches the entire situation with caution; he knows that there will be either "a clear road or else a clear fight" ahead. His one thought, as he informs Doramin, is "for the people’s good." Preparations for battle now take place around the fort, and the feeling among the natives is one of anxiety, and also of hope that Jim will somehow resolve everything by convincing Brown that the way back to the sea would be a peaceful one. Jim is convinced "that it would be best to let these whites and their followers go with their lives." Unwavering as always in meeting his moral obligations, he is primarily concerned with the safety of Patusan. But he underestimates the calculating Brown, again disclosing the propensity that betrays him. Quite simply Jim does not mistrust Brown, believing as he does that both of them want to avoid bloodshed. In this respect, illusion both comforts and victimizes Jim, as the way is made clear for Brown, with the sniveling Cornelius at his side providing him with directions, to withdraw from Patusan, now guarded by Dain Waris’s forces.
Brown’s purpose is not only to escape but also to get even with Jim for not becoming his ally, and to punish the natives for their earlier resistance to his intrusion. When retreating towards the coast his men deceitfully open fire on an outpost of Patusan, killing the surprised and panic-stricken natives, as well as Dain Waris, "the only son of Nakhoda Doramin," who had earlier acceded to Jim’s request that Brown and his party should be allowed to leave without harm. It could have been otherwise, to be sure, given the superior numbers of the native defenders. Once again, it is made painfully clear, Jim flinches in discernment and in leadership, naïvely trusting in his illusion, in his dream, unaware of the evil power of retribution that impels Brown and that slinks in humankind. That, too, Brown’s schooner later sprung a bad leak and sank, he himself being the only survivor to be found in a white long-boat, and that the deceitful Cornelius was to be found and struck down by Jim’s ever loyal servant, Tamb' Itam, can hardly compensate for the destruction and the deaths that took place as a result of Jim’s failure of judgment. Marlow’s earlier demurring remark has a special relevance at this point: "I would have trusted the deck to that youngster [Jim] on the strength of a single glance . . . but, by Jove! it wouldn’t have been safe."
Jim’s decision to allow free passage to Brown stems from his concern with preserving an orderly community in Patusan: he did Moral pride not want to see all his good work and influence destroyed by violent acts. But clearly he had misjudged Brown’s character. Neither Jim’s honesty nor his courage, however, are to be impugned; his moral sense, in this case, is what consciously guided his rational conception of civilization. But a failure of moral vision, induced perhaps by moral pride and romanticism, blinds him to real danger. When Tamb' Itam returns from the outpost to inform Jim about what has happened, Jim is staggered. He fathoms fully the effects of Brown’s "cruel treachery," even as he understands that his own safety in Patusan is now at risk, given Dain Waris’s death and Doramin’s dismay and grief over events for which he holds Jim responsible. For Jim the entire situation is untenable, as well as perplexing: "He had retreated from one world for a small matter of an impulsive jump, and now the other, the work of his own hands, had fallen in ruins upon his head." His feeling of isolation is rending, as he realizes that "he has lost again all men’s confidence." The "dark powers" have robbed him twice of his peace.
To Tamb' Itam’s plea that he should fight for his life against Doramin’s inevitable revenge, Jim bluntly cries, "‘I have no life.’" Jewel, too, "wrestling with him for the possession of her happiness," also begs him to put up a fight, or try to escape, but Jim does not heed her. "He was going to prove his power in another way and conquer the fatal destiny itself." This is, truly, "‘a day of evil, an accursed day,’" for Jim and for Patusan. When Dain Waris’s body is brought into Doramin’s campong, the "old nakhoda" was "to let out one great fierce cry . . . as mighty as the bellow of a wounded bull." The scene here is harrowing in terms of grief, as he women of the household "began to wail together; they mourned with shrill cries; the sun was setting, and in the intervals of screamed lamentations the high sing-song voices of two old men intoning the Koran chanted alone." The scene is desolate, unconsoling, rendered in the language of apocalypse; the sky over Patusan is blood-red, with "an enormous sun nestled crimson amongst the tree-tops, and the forest below had a black and forbidding face." Jim now appears silently before Doramin, who is sitting in his arm-chair, a pair of flintlock pistols on his knees. "‘I am come in sorrow,’" he cries out to Doramin, who stared at Jim "with an expression of mad pain, of rage, with a ferocious glitter. . . . and lifting deliberately his right [hand], shot his son’s friend through the chest."
At the end of his explanatory letter Marlow remarks that Jim "passes away under a cloud, inscrutable at heart, forgotten, unforgiven, and excessively romantic." Such a remark, of course, must be placed in the context of Marlow’s total narrative, with all of the tensions and the ambiguities that occur in relating the story of Jim’s life as it unfolds in the novel. Nor can Marlow’s words here be construed as a moral censure of Jim [10, 156]. What exemplifies Marlow’s narrative, in fact, is the integrity of its content, as the details, reflections, judgments, demurrals emerge with astonishing and attenuating openness, deliberation. There is no single aspect of Jim’s life and character that is not measured and presented in full view of the reader. If judgment is to be made regarding Jim’s situation, Conrad clearly shows, then affirmations and doubts, triumphs and failures will have to be disclosed and evaluated cumulatively.
No one is more mercilessly exposed to the world than Jim. And no one stands more naked before our judgment than he. The scrutiny of Jim’s beliefs and attitudes, and of his actions and inactions, is relentless in depth and latitude. He himself cannot hide or flee, no matter where he happens to be. Marlow well discerns Jim’s supreme aloneness in his struggles to find himself in himself, to master his fate, beyond the calumnies of his enemies and the loyalty and love of his friends—and beyond his own rigorous self-judgments. The anguish of struggle consumes everything and everyone in the novel, and nothing and no one can be the same again once in contact with him. In Jim, it can be said, we see ourselves, for he is "one of us," he is our "common fate," which prohibits us to "let him slip away into the darkness."
2.2 "Human Bondage" and it’s moral duality
From a moral perspective the Official Court of Inquiry literally takes place throughout Lord Jim. Jim never ceases to react to charges of cowardice and of irresponsibility; never ceases to strive earnestly to prove his moral worthiness. He seems never to be in a state of repose, is always under pressure, always examining his tensive state of mind and soul. Self-illumination rather than self-justification, or even self-rehabilitation, is his central aim, and he knows, too, that such a process molds his own efforts and pain [15, 83]. He neither expects nor accepts help or absolution from others, nor does he blame others for his own sins of commission or omission. His character is thus one of singular transparency, acutely self-conscious, and vulnerable.
Jim’s moral sense weighs heavily on him and drives him on sundry, sometimes contradictory, lines of moral awareness and behavior. In this respect he brings to mind the relevance of Edmund Burke’s words: "The lines of morality are not like the ideal lines of mathematics. They are broad and deep as well as long. They admit of exceptions; they demand modifications."4 Gnostic commentators who view the moral demands of this novel as confusing or uncertain fail to see that the lines of morality, even when they take different directions and assume different forms, inevitably crystallize in something that is solid in revelation and in value.5
Clearly Jim’s high-mindedness and character are problematic, and his scale of human values is excessively romantic. Thus heromanticizes what it means to be a sailor, what duty is, even what cowardice is. The fact is that he is too "noble" to accommodate real-life situations. In essence, then, Jim violates what the ancient Greeks revered as the "law of measure." And ultimately his pride, his lofty conception of what is required of him in responsible leadership and duty, his high idealism, mar the supreme Hellenic virtue of sophrosyne-. Jim’s conduct dramatizes to an "unsafe" degree the extremes of arrogance, and of self-delusion and self-assertion. Above all his idealism becomes a peculiar kind of escape from the paradoxes and antinomies that have to be faced in what Burke calls the "antagonist world."
In the end, Jim’s habit of detachment and abstraction manifestly rarefies his moral sense and diminishes and even neutralizes the moral meaning of his decisions and actions. His self-proclaimed autonomy dramatizes monomania and egoism, and makes him incapable of harmonious human interrelations, let alone a redeeming humility. His moral sense is consequently incomplete as a paradigm, and his moral virtues are finite. And his fate, as it is defined and shaped by his tragic flaw, does not attain true grandeur. In Jim, it can be said, Conrad presents heroism withall its limitations [14, 147].
Despite the circumstances of his moral incompleteness, Jim both possesses and enacts the quality of endurance in facing the darkness in himself and in the world around him. Even when he yearns to conceal himself in some forgotten corner of the universe, there to separate himself from other imperfect or fallen humans, from thieves and renegades, and from the harsh exigencies of existence, he also knows that unconditional separation is not attainable. He persists, however erratically or skeptically, in his pursuit to reconcile the order of the community and the order of the soul; and he perseveres in his belief in the axiomatic principles of honor, of loyalty, prescribing the need to transcend inner and outer moral squalor. His death, even if it shows the power of violence, of the evil that stalks man and humanity, of the flaws and foibles that afflict one’s self, does not diminish the abiding example of Jim’s struggle to discover and to overcome moral lapses.
Jim can never silence the indwelling moral sense which inspires and illuminates his life-journey. Throughout this journey the virtue of endurance does not abandon him, does not betray him, even when he betrays himself and others. He endures in order to prevail. In Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad portrays a fitful but ascendant process of transfiguration in the life of a solitary hero whose courage of endurance contains the seeds of redemption. Such a life recalls the eternal promise of the Evangelist’s words: "He that endureth to the end shall be saved."
The major character of the novel, Philip, spends most of his life in two places, which become the dominant settings for the book. From the time he becomes aware of the world around him until his adolescence, Philip is found in Blackstable and its neighboring town of Tercanbury. Even after he goes abroad to study, he keeps coming beck to Blackstable during the holidays and whenever he feels the need for a change.
In the process of establishing his identity, Philip visits London twice and spends the major part of his mature years in that city. Returning back from Heidelberg, he goes to London to become a clerk in the company of Chartered Accountants. When he realizes he has no aptitude for accounting, he returns……
Philip Carey - an orphan with a clubfoot. He is the protagonist of the novel whose story Maugham traces fromage nine to thirty.
William Carey - the uncle of Philip and the vicar of Blackstable. He is self-centered and rigid in his views.
Mildred Rogers - Philip’s antagonist on one level. Selfish, shallow, and flirtatious, she successfully lures Philip with her charms.
Thorpe Athelny - a boisterous journalist. He is a loving family man who becomes Philip’s friend, philosopher, and guide.
Mrs. Carey - the kind and gentle wife of the vicar. She loves Philip and helps him fulfil his desires.
Mr. Perkins - one of Philip’s well-wishers. He is the scholarly headmaster of King’s School.
The novel is the story of Philip Carey. The story opens with his mother dying after childbirth. The nine-year-old Philip is taken by his uncle to Blackstable. After spending a few initial years at the Vicarage, the boy is admitted to King’s School at Tercanbury. Having a clubfoot, he is ostracized and becomes introverted, but his intelligence and his aptitude for studies help him academically. Unable to bear the humiliation and taunts of his fellow students and the rigid norms of school, he finally quits and goes to Germany. In Germany, Philip learns new languages, is introduced to philosophy, and discovers the beauty of nature. His stay in Heidelberg expands his vision of humanity and life. He graduates and starts planning his future.
After talking to his uncle, Philip decides to go to London to become a clerk; however, he discovers after a few months that he is more inclined toward art than accounting. Taking financial aid from his aunt, he leaves for Paris to study. The city gives him an insight into the world of artists and their struggle to exhibit their talent. At the end of two years, he also discovers that he lacks the potential to be a great artist. As a result, he leaves Paris and returns back to Blackstable.
Philip decides to take up his father’s profession of medicine and enrolls as a student in St. Luke’s hospital. He does not, however, pursue his goal in earnest because of a waitress named Mildred [8, 121].
The major theme of the novel is that the submission to passion is human bondage, while the exercise of reason is human liberty. Philip Carey loves Mildred passionately and, in trying to possess her, traps himself in her bondage. His freedom is curbed, his education is disrupted, and his fortune is lost. All his reasoning, power, and intelligence are eradicated by his passion for Mildred.
There are several minor themes in the novel. The first is that inappropriate love can be destructive. In spite of her many weaknesses, Philip loves Mildred and showers his affection and money on her. He even sacrifices his education and limited resources to please her. In the process, Philip wastes the important years of his life following a woman who is not deserving of his love. It is definitely a destructive relationship for Philip, one that keeps him in bondage [8, 128].
The mood of the novel is serious, but not gloomy. Maugham, with irony and cynicism, presents the struggle of a lonely protagonist and the turmoil in his mind.
William Somerset Maugham, the youngest child of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Maugham, was born in Paris, France on January 25, 1874. At the time of his birth, his father was working as a lawyer for the British Embassy in Paris. In 1882, his mother died of tuberculosis. His three brothers went to study in London, and William was sent to a clergyman attached to the British Embassy. When his father died two years later, there was no one to look after him in Paris. As a result, h e was sent to Kent to live with his uncle, Henry Maugham. Since his uncle and aunt were childless, they found it difficult to care for him. William, at the age of ten, was a lonely and unhappy child. His life at King’s School in Canterbury was no better. Frail and sensitive, he felt isolated from the other boys because of his stammer.