Lord Jim

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was born in the Ukraine, but naturalized British. Captain in the English merchant marine, his novels were outlined from his wide experiences at sea and in other different parts of the world; he was even embroiled in arms smuggling for the Carlist cause in Spain. Due to the malaria, he had to stop travelling and it was then that he started writing. 

He wonderfully depicted English characters against exotic backgrounds and rendered the dangerous life aboard vessels, with skippers yelling through gale force winds. His work is set in the context of colonial expansion in late Victorian England. The nature and effects of European imperialism, brutal and brutalizing, are less central in Lord Jim than in other novels like Heart of Darkness, masterpiece which would be the basis for Apocalypsis Now. Both novels share the same narrator, Marlow. In Heart of Darkness, his trip along the river in the Belgian Congo (which Francis Ford Coppola marvellously turned into the Vietnam background) is compared to Dante´s descent to the inferno, while in Lord Jim he explores the question of honour and moral conflicts of man's struggles at sea. 

Captain Marlow tells about Jim´s fall and redemption. He is a British naval officer disgraced by a single act of cowardice in the past and haunted by a guilty conscience since then. He, who had always dreamt of proving his heroism at sea, was paralyzed with fear the day he had to put his courage to the test. Together with the other disreputable crew, he abandoned their ship in a storm, not taking care of the sleeping passengers who were unaware of their peril. The story, which is partly based on true events, is about moral dilemmas, humiliation and second chances, about men who despite their heroic appearance are quite hollow.

A Greek hero? Like in all Aristotle's tragedies, Jim has got a flaw: probably his romantic idealism. Duty, conscience, self-sacrifice, self-knowledge, personal growth... Is death the only way honour can be retrieved? Does anyone care about all this? We are more than likely to be just talking about old-fashioned values, no longer valid nowadays...