finished_summaries/sparknotes/Lord Jim/section_0_part_0.txt
Lord Jim.chapters 1-2
chapters 1-2
{"name": "Chapters 1 and 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210126121516/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/section1/", "summary": "Jim is a popular, if somewhat mysterious, young man working as a water-clerk  in various Eastern  seaports. He is described as assertive, attractive, and possessing \"Ability in the abstract,\" yet he also is prone to leaving jobs without notice, and, we are told, works as a water-clerk only because he is \"a seaman in exile from the sea.\" A brief biographical sketch is given of Jim's early life: the son of an English country parson, he is sent to a merchant marine academy after \"a course of light holiday literature\" leads him to declare his interest in the sea. Quickly proving his merit, he soon sets out to sea on training ships, where he spends free time lost in daydreams, \"liv in his mind the sea-life of light literature.\" His fantasies typically involve acts of heroism: rescuing people, putting down mutinies, conquering savages. One winter's day he is aboard a training ship in port, fantasizing about becoming a hero, when a commotion arises on deck. A collision has occurred nearby, and a boat is launched from his ship to rescue survivors. Jim is not one of the rescuers aboard the ship's boat, and his disappointment is bitter. His captain consoles him, telling him to be quicker next time. After two years of training, Jim goes to sea aboard the first of a series of merchant ships. His abilities lead to quick promotion, and he soon finds himself \"chief mate of a fine ship,\" although he is still very young and has not yet been truly tested by the sea. His first encounter with \"the anger of the sea\" causes him to be injured by a falling spar. Disabled, he spends days in his bunk as the storm rages, not fantasizing about heroics but instead confronting the brutal nature of pain, fear, and physical existence. He is left behind, still lamed, at the next port of call, where he spends some time recuperating, then engages as chief mate on the Patna, a decaying steamer ferrying a boatload of Muslim pilgrims to Mecca and commanded by a crazed German skipper. The Patna leaves port and turns into the open ocean. The voyage begins in a mood of eerie calm and isolation, the sea flat, the white crew \"isolated from the human cargo\" of pilgrims.", "analysis": "Commentary The opening chapters of Lord Jim make reference to three distinct moments in time: the apparent present time of Jim's employment as a water-clerk, a continuous span of years in the past from the time he leaves home to his shipping aboard the Patna, and a moment that seems to be in the future, when he will leave the seaside and venture into the Malay forest. The as-yet-unnamed narrator, whom we will meet in Chapter 4, seems to have a nearly omnipotent knowledge of Jim's story; he hints that we will see him transform from \"just Jim\" to \"Tuan Jim,\" or \"Lord Jim,\" although he offers no clues as to how this will occur. For the time being, the narrator instead invokes a series of literary paradigms within which Jim's story may or may not fit. First, the story begins in medias res, or in the middle of things, in the interlude between the two major episodes of the novel. This is the classic opening strategy of novels within the epic genre. Will Jim's story prove to be an epic, perhaps like Homer's Odyssey, another work which begins with a displaced sailor far from home? The marked interest in only one individual--Jim--and the lack of any secondary characters means that this will not be a classical epic, since classical epic is typically more interested in sweeping social events involving groups of people. The sketch of Jim's early life and education suggest that Lord Jim may share features with biography, or perhaps bildungsroman . The bildungsroman often seeks to trace an individual's development through his or her reading, which is certainly the case here, although Jim is reading light popular literature rather than the more serious tomes usually cited in this genre. The reiterated attention to Jim's propensity for daydreaming and the emphasis on his innate \"Ability\" are, in their way, tropes of Romanticism, a mode that requires imagination and inborn genius above all else in its heroes. Finally, too, there is a certain pre-modernist aspect to Jim's introduction. Like Leopold Bloom in Ulysses, Jim derives many of his ideas from popular literature and culture. Conrad's language, too, with its density of abstract terms  and local allusions , can be difficult in the same way as the language of Virginia Woolf or William Faulkner. Above all, the narrator makes the suggestion that there is a fundamental void at the heart of this text. Much is left unexplained, and that which is explained is seemingly accidental; for example, Jim only ships on the Patna because he has been injured aboard another ship and left behind far from home. Conrad also invokes the problematic historical circumstances of colonialism by situating his hero in a part of the world where nearly every square foot of land has been claimed by a European power, and by putting him in the employ of men who \"love. . .short passages, good deck-chairs, large native crews, and the distinction of being white.\" This section of the novel ends with the image of a small island of whiteness aboard a ship full of dark-skinned Muslims, isolated in the middle of a human ocean as well as a literal one. While Jim and the rest of the Patna's crew are placed in a position of seeming superiority as the ship's officers, they are nevertheless economically dependent on the hordes below the deck, just as many European countries were at the time economically reliant on the natural resources of their colonies."}
He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he
advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head
forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging
bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of
dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed
a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at
anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white
from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his
living as ship-chandler's water-clerk he was very popular.

A water-clerk need not pass an examination in anything under the sun,
but he must have Ability in the abstract and demonstrate it practically.
His work consists in racing under sail, steam, or oars against other
water-clerks for any ship about to anchor, greeting her captain
cheerily, forcing upon him a card--the business card of the
ship-chandler--and on his first visit on shore piloting him firmly but
without ostentation to a vast, cavern-like shop which is full of things
that are eaten and drunk on board ship; where you can get everything
to make her seaworthy and beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her
cable to a book of gold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where
her commander is received like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never
seen before. There is a cool parlour, easy-chairs, bottles, cigars,
writing implements, a copy of harbour regulations, and a warmth of
welcome that melts the salt of a three months' passage out of a seaman's
heart. The connection thus begun is kept up, as long as the ship remains
in harbour, by the daily visits of the water-clerk. To the captain he
is faithful like a friend and attentive like a son, with the patience
of Job, the unselfish devotion of a woman, and the jollity of a boon
companion. Later on the bill is sent in. It is a beautiful and humane
occupation. Therefore good water-clerks are scarce. When a water-clerk
who possesses Ability in the abstract has also the advantage of having
been brought up to the sea, he is worth to his employer a lot of money
and some humouring. Jim had always good wages and as much humouring
as would have bought the fidelity of a fiend. Nevertheless, with black
ingratitude he would throw up the job suddenly and depart. To his
employers the reasons he gave were obviously inadequate. They said
'Confounded fool!' as soon as his back was turned. This was their
criticism on his exquisite sensibility.

To the white men in the waterside business and to the captains of ships
he was just Jim--nothing more. He had, of course, another name, but he
was anxious that it should not be pronounced. His incognito, which had
as many holes as a sieve, was not meant to hide a personality but a
fact. When the fact broke through the incognito he would leave
suddenly the seaport where he happened to be at the time and go to
another--generally farther east. He kept to seaports because he was a
seaman in exile from the sea, and had Ability in the abstract, which is
good for no other work but that of a water-clerk. He retreated in good
order towards the rising sun, and the fact followed him casually but
inevitably. Thus in the course of years he was known successively in
Bombay, in Calcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia--and in each of
these halting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Afterwards, when his
keen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good from seaports
and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays of the jungle
village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorable faculty, added a
word to the monosyllable of his incognito. They called him Tuan Jim: as
one might say--Lord Jim.

Originally he came from a parsonage. Many commanders of fine
merchant-ships come from these abodes of piety and peace. Jim's father
possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the
righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind
of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live in mansions. The
little church on a hill had the mossy greyness of a rock seen through a
ragged screen of leaves. It had stood there for centuries, but the trees
around probably remembered the laying of the first stone. Below, the
red front of the rectory gleamed with a warm tint in the midst of
grass-plots, flower-beds, and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back,
a paved stable-yard to the left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses
tacked along a wall of bricks. The living had belonged to the family for
generations; but Jim was one of five sons, and when after a course of
light holiday literature his vocation for the sea had declared itself,
he was sent at once to a 'training-ship for officers of the mercantile
marine.'

He learned there a little trigonometry and how to cross top-gallant
yards. He was generally liked. He had the third place in navigation
and pulled stroke in the first cutter. Having a steady head with an
excellent physique, he was very smart aloft. His station was in the
fore-top, and often from there he looked down, with the contempt of a
man destined to shine in the midst of dangers, at the peaceful multitude
of roofs cut in two by the brown tide of the stream, while scattered
on the outskirts of the surrounding plain the factory chimneys rose
perpendicular against a grimy sky, each slender like a pencil, and
belching out smoke like a volcano. He could see the big ships departing,
the broad-beamed ferries constantly on the move, the little boats
floating far below his feet, with the hazy splendour of the sea in the
distance, and the hope of a stirring life in the world of adventure.

On the lower deck in the babel of two hundred voices he would forget
himself, and beforehand live in his mind the sea-life of light
literature. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting
away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a
lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs
in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. He confronted savages on
tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat
upon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men--always an example
of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book.

'Something's up. Come along.'

He leaped to his feet. The boys were streaming up the ladders. Above
could be heard a great scurrying about and shouting, and when he got
through the hatchway he stood still--as if confounded.

It was the dusk of a winter's day. The gale had freshened since noon,
stopping the traffic on the river, and now blew with the strength of a
hurricane in fitful bursts that boomed like salvoes of great guns firing
over the ocean. The rain slanted in sheets that flicked and subsided,
and between whiles Jim had threatening glimpses of the tumbling tide,
the small craft jumbled and tossing along the shore, the motionless
buildings in the driving mist, the broad ferry-boats pitching
ponderously at anchor, the vast landing-stages heaving up and down and
smothered in sprays. The next gust seemed to blow all this away. The
air was full of flying water. There was a fierce purpose in the gale, a
furious earnestness in the screech of the wind, in the brutal tumult of
earth and sky, that seemed directed at him, and made him hold his breath
in awe. He stood still. It seemed to him he was whirled around.

He was jostled. 'Man the cutter!' Boys rushed past him. A coaster
running in for shelter had crashed through a schooner at anchor, and one
of the ship's instructors had seen the accident. A mob of boys clambered
on the rails, clustered round the davits. 'Collision. Just ahead of us.
Mr. Symons saw it.' A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and
he caught hold of a rope. The old training-ship chained to her moorings
quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty
rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea.
'Lower away!' He saw the boat, manned, drop swiftly below the rail,
and rushed after her. He heard a splash. 'Let go; clear the falls!' He
leaned over. The river alongside seethed in frothy streaks. The cutter
could be seen in the falling darkness under the spell of tide and wind,
that for a moment held her bound, and tossing abreast of the ship.
A yelling voice in her reached him faintly: 'Keep stroke, you young
whelps, if you want to save anybody! Keep stroke!' And suddenly she
lifted high her bow, and, leaping with raised oars over a wave, broke
the spell cast upon her by the wind and tide.

Jim felt his shoulder gripped firmly. 'Too late, youngster.' The captain
of the ship laid a restraining hand on that boy, who seemed on the
point of leaping overboard, and Jim looked up with the pain of conscious
defeat in his eyes. The captain smiled sympathetically. 'Better luck
next time. This will teach you to be smart.'

A shrill cheer greeted the cutter. She came dancing back half full of
water, and with two exhausted men washing about on her bottom boards.
The tumult and the menace of wind and sea now appeared very contemptible
to Jim, increasing the regret of his awe at their inefficient menace.
Now he knew what to think of it. It seemed to him he cared nothing for
the gale. He could affront greater perils. He would do so--better than
anybody. Not a particle of fear was left. Nevertheless he brooded apart
that evening while the bowman of the cutter--a boy with a face like
a girl's and big grey eyes--was the hero of the lower deck. Eager
questioners crowded round him. He narrated: 'I just saw his head
bobbing, and I dashed my boat-hook in the water. It caught in his
breeches and I nearly went overboard, as I thought I would, only old
Symons let go the tiller and grabbed my legs--the boat nearly swamped.
Old Symons is a fine old chap. I don't mind a bit him being grumpy with
us. He swore at me all the time he held my leg, but that was only his
way of telling me to stick to the boat-hook. Old Symons is awfully
excitable--isn't he? No--not the little fair chap--the other, the big
one with a beard. When we pulled him in he groaned, "Oh, my leg! oh,
my leg!" and turned up his eyes. Fancy such a big chap fainting like
a girl. Would any of you fellows faint for a jab with a boat-hook?--I
wouldn't. It went into his leg so far.' He showed the boat-hook, which
he had carried below for the purpose, and produced a sensation. 'No,
silly! It was not his flesh that held him--his breeches did. Lots of
blood, of course.'

Jim thought it a pitiful display of vanity. The gale had ministered to
a heroism as spurious as its own pretence of terror. He felt angry with
the brutal tumult of earth and sky for taking him unawares and checking
unfairly a generous readiness for narrow escapes. Otherwise he was
rather glad he had not gone into the cutter, since a lower achievement
had served the turn. He had enlarged his knowledge more than those who
had done the work. When all men flinched, then--he felt sure--he alone
would know how to deal with the spurious menace of wind and seas. He
knew what to think of it. Seen dispassionately, it seemed contemptible.
He could detect no trace of emotion in himself, and the final effect of
a staggering event was that, unnoticed and apart from the noisy crowd of
boys, he exulted with fresh certitude in his avidity for adventure, and
in a sense of many-sided courage.
After two years of training he went to sea, and entering the regions so
well known to his imagination, found them strangely barren of adventure.
He made many voyages. He knew the magic monotony of existence between
sky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the exactions of the
sea, and the prosaic severity of the daily task that gives bread--but
whose only reward is in the perfect love of the work. This reward eluded
him. Yet he could not go back, because there is nothing more enticing,
disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea. Besides, his
prospects were good. He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a
thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he
became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by
those events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of
a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal
the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not
only to others but also to himself.

Only once in all that time he had again a glimpse of the earnestness in
the anger of the sea. That truth is not so often made apparent as people
might think. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and
gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of
facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which
forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication
of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose
of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty
that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his
fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to
annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is
priceless and necessary--the sunshine, the memories, the future; which
means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by
the simple and appalling act of taking his life.

Jim, disabled by a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his
Scottish captain used to say afterwards, 'Man! it's a pairfect meeracle
to me how she lived through it!' spent many days stretched on his back,
dazed, battered, hopeless, and tormented as if at the bottom of an
abyss of unrest. He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid
moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has
the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and
Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated,
sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. Jim saw nothing
but the disorder of his tossed cabin. He lay there battened down in the
midst of a small devastation, and felt secretly glad he had not to go on
deck. But now and again an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip
him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the
unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such
sensations filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost.
Then fine weather returned, and he thought no more about It.

His lameness, however, persisted, and when the ship arrived at an
Eastern port he had to go to the hospital. His recovery was slow, and he
was left behind.

There were only two other patients in the white men's ward: the purser
of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind
of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by
some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and
indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil
servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. They told each other
the story of their lives, played cards a little, or, yawning and in
pyjamas, lounged through the day in easy-chairs without saying a word.
The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering through the
windows, always flung wide open, brought into the bare room the softness
of the sky, the languor of the earth, the bewitching breath of the
Eastern waters. There were perfumes in it, suggestions of infinite
repose, the gift of endless dreams. Jim looked every day over the
thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of
palms growing on the shore, at that roadstead which is a thoroughfare
to the East,--at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by
festal sunshine, its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling
a holiday pageant, with the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead
and the smiling peace of the Eastern seas possessing the space as far as
the horizon.

Directly he could walk without a stick, he descended into the town to
look for some opportunity to get home. Nothing offered just then, and,
while waiting, he associated naturally with the men of his calling in
the port. These were of two kinds. Some, very few and seen there but
seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with the
temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. They appeared to live
in a crazy maze of plans, hopes, dangers, enterprises, ahead of
civilisation, in the dark places of the sea; and their death was the
only event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable
certitude of achievement. The majority were men who, like himself,
thrown there by some accident, had remained as officers of country
ships. They had now a horror of the home service, with its harder
conditions, severer view of duty, and the hazard of stormy oceans. They
were attuned to the eternal peace of Eastern sky and sea. They
loved short passages, good deck-chairs, large native crews, and the
distinction of being white. They shuddered at the thought of hard work,
and led precariously easy lives, always on the verge of dismissal,
always on the verge of engagement, serving Chinamen, Arabs,
half-castes--would have served the devil himself had he made it easy
enough. They talked everlastingly of turns of luck: how So-and-so got
charge of a boat on the coast of China--a soft thing; how this one had
an easy billet in Japan somewhere, and that one was doing well in the
Siamese navy; and in all they said--in their actions, in their looks, in
their persons--could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the
determination to lounge safely through existence.

To Jim that gossiping crowd, viewed as seamen, seemed at first more
unsubstantial than so many shadows. But at length he found a fascination
in the sight of those men, in their appearance of doing so well on
such a small allowance of danger and toil. In time, beside the original
disdain there grew up slowly another sentiment; and suddenly, giving up
the idea of going home, he took a berth as chief mate of the Patna.

The Patna was a local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a
greyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water-tank. She
was owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort
of renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly
his native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck's
victorious policy, brutalised all those he was not afraid of, and wore a
'blood-and-iron' air,' combined with a purple nose and a red moustache.
After she had been painted outside and whitewashed inside, eight hundred
pilgrims (more or less) were driven on board of her as she lay with
steam up alongside a wooden jetty.

They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by
faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp
and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and
when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed
forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner
recesses of the ship--like water filling a cistern, like water flowing
into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the
rim. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections
and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south
and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths,
descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in
small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting
strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. They
came from solitary huts in the wilderness, from populous campongs, from
villages by the sea. At the call of an idea they had left their forests,
their clearings, the protection of their rulers, their prosperity,
their poverty, the surroundings of their youth and the graves of their
fathers. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with
rags--the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men
pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes
glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid
women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of
soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of
an exacting belief.

'Look at dese cattle,' said the German skipper to his new chief mate.

An Arab, the leader of that pious voyage, came last. He walked slowly
aboard, handsome and grave in his white gown and large turban. A string
of servants followed, loaded with his luggage; the Patna cast off and
backed away from the wharf.

She was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely the
anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a circle in the
shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge of foaming reefs. The
Arab, standing up aft, recited aloud the prayer of travellers by sea.
He invoked the favour of the Most High upon that journey, implored His
blessing on men's toil and on the secret purposes of their hearts; the
steamer pounded in the dusk the calm water of the Strait; and far astern
of the pilgrim ship a screw-pile lighthouse, planted by unbelievers on
a treacherous shoal, seemed to wink at her its eye of flame, as if in
derision of her errand of faith.

She cleared the Strait, crossed the bay, continued on her way through
the 'One-degree' passage. She held on straight for the Red Sea under a
serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor
of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all
impulses of strength and energy. And under the sinister splendour of
that sky the sea, blue and profound, remained still, without a stir,
without a ripple, without a wrinkle--viscous, stagnant, dead. The
Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over that plain, luminous and smooth,
unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the
water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of
a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer.

Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the
progress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly
at the same distance astern of the ship, caught up with her at noon,
pouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the
men, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea
evening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her
advancing bows. The five whites on board lived amidships, isolated from
the human cargo. The awnings covered the deck with a white roof from
stem to stern, and a faint hum, a low murmur of sad voices, alone
revealed the presence of a crowd of people upon the great blaze of the
ocean. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one
into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake
of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her
steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if
scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity.

The nights descended on her like a benediction.
Chapters 1 and 2
Jim is a popular, if somewhat mysterious, young man working as a water-clerk  in various Eastern  seaports. He is described as assertive, attractive, and possessing "Ability in the abstract," yet he also is prone to leaving jobs without notice, and, we are told, works as a water-clerk only because he is "a seaman in exile from the sea." A brief biographical sketch is given of Jim's early life: the son of an English country parson, he is sent to a merchant marine academy after "a course of light holiday literature" leads him to declare his interest in the sea. Quickly proving his merit, he soon sets out to sea on training ships, where he spends free time lost in daydreams, "liv in his mind the sea-life of light literature." His fantasies typically involve acts of heroism: rescuing people, putting down mutinies, conquering savages. One winter's day he is aboard a training ship in port, fantasizing about becoming a hero, when a commotion arises on deck. A collision has occurred nearby, and a boat is launched from his ship to rescue survivors. Jim is not one of the rescuers aboard the ship's boat, and his disappointment is bitter. His captain consoles him, telling him to be quicker next time. After two years of training, Jim goes to sea aboard the first of a series of merchant ships. His abilities lead to quick promotion, and he soon finds himself "chief mate of a fine ship," although he is still very young and has not yet been truly tested by the sea. His first encounter with "the anger of the sea" causes him to be injured by a falling spar. Disabled, he spends days in his bunk as the storm rages, not fantasizing about heroics but instead confronting the brutal nature of pain, fear, and physical existence. He is left behind, still lamed, at the next port of call, where he spends some time recuperating, then engages as chief mate on the Patna, a decaying steamer ferrying a boatload of Muslim pilgrims to Mecca and commanded by a crazed German skipper. The Patna leaves port and turns into the open ocean. The voyage begins in a mood of eerie calm and isolation, the sea flat, the white crew "isolated from the human cargo" of pilgrims.
Commentary The opening chapters of Lord Jim make reference to three distinct moments in time: the apparent present time of Jim's employment as a water-clerk, a continuous span of years in the past from the time he leaves home to his shipping aboard the Patna, and a moment that seems to be in the future, when he will leave the seaside and venture into the Malay forest. The as-yet-unnamed narrator, whom we will meet in Chapter 4, seems to have a nearly omnipotent knowledge of Jim's story; he hints that we will see him transform from "just Jim" to "Tuan Jim," or "Lord Jim," although he offers no clues as to how this will occur. For the time being, the narrator instead invokes a series of literary paradigms within which Jim's story may or may not fit. First, the story begins in medias res, or in the middle of things, in the interlude between the two major episodes of the novel. This is the classic opening strategy of novels within the epic genre. Will Jim's story prove to be an epic, perhaps like Homer's Odyssey, another work which begins with a displaced sailor far from home? The marked interest in only one individual--Jim--and the lack of any secondary characters means that this will not be a classical epic, since classical epic is typically more interested in sweeping social events involving groups of people. The sketch of Jim's early life and education suggest that Lord Jim may share features with biography, or perhaps bildungsroman . The bildungsroman often seeks to trace an individual's development through his or her reading, which is certainly the case here, although Jim is reading light popular literature rather than the more serious tomes usually cited in this genre. The reiterated attention to Jim's propensity for daydreaming and the emphasis on his innate "Ability" are, in their way, tropes of Romanticism, a mode that requires imagination and inborn genius above all else in its heroes. Finally, too, there is a certain pre-modernist aspect to Jim's introduction. Like Leopold Bloom in Ulysses, Jim derives many of his ideas from popular literature and culture. Conrad's language, too, with its density of abstract terms  and local allusions , can be difficult in the same way as the language of Virginia Woolf or William Faulkner. Above all, the narrator makes the suggestion that there is a fundamental void at the heart of this text. Much is left unexplained, and that which is explained is seemingly accidental; for example, Jim only ships on the Patna because he has been injured aboard another ship and left behind far from home. Conrad also invokes the problematic historical circumstances of colonialism by situating his hero in a part of the world where nearly every square foot of land has been claimed by a European power, and by putting him in the employ of men who "love. . .short passages, good deck-chairs, large native crews, and the distinction of being white." This section of the novel ends with the image of a small island of whiteness aboard a ship full of dark-skinned Muslims, isolated in the middle of a human ocean as well as a literal one. While Jim and the rest of the Patna's crew are placed in a position of seeming superiority as the ship's officers, they are nevertheless economically dependent on the hordes below the deck, just as many European countries were at the time economically reliant on the natural resources of their colonies.