finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Lord Jim/section_21_part_0.txt
Lord Jim.chapters 36-37
chapters 36-37
{"name": "Chapters 36-37", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219145744/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/l/lord-jim/summary-and-analysis/chapters-3637", "summary": "Marlow ends his story. The men drift off the verandah quietly, without queries or comments about Marlow's incomplete story of a white man who chose to go into a dark, savage jungle in order to regain his self-worth. The question, however, remains: what was the ultimate fate of someone who was \"one of them,\" and yet who was someone who chose to achieve greatness in an alien world, and yet in a world of his own making, a world in which he had accepted enormous responsibility for peace, and for life and death. Only one man of those on the verandah is ever to hear the last of the story. More than two years later, this man received a thick packet, addressed in Marlow's handwriting. It arrived in the midst of a driving rainstorm on a winter's evening. Inside the packet were four separate enclosures: several pages of close handwriting, pinned together; a loose sheet of paper with a few words in handwriting that the man was not familiar with; a letter from Marlow; and another letter, yellow and frayed. The man turned first to Marlow's letter. Marlow tells the man who is reading the letter that he was always reluctant to admit that Jim had indeed \"mastered his fate.\" Moreover, Marlow says, you prophesied that one day Jim would feel disgust with the honor which he had acquired in his \"new world.\" According to Marlow, this man said long ago that Jim had, in effect, sold his soul for a clean, pure slate that was granted to him by some \"brutes\" -- meaning the brown, and yellow, and black Malay natives. Marlow writes that Jim himself said two years ago that he had no message for \"home\"; however, it is clear that Jim did make an attempt to send a \"message.\" It is Jim's writing, Marlow says, on the gray sheet of \"foolscap\" paper. Marlow says that one of the first things that Jim did after he, Marlow, left Patusan was to carry out a plan of defense for \"his people.\" He had a deep ditch dug and surrounded it with a strong, spiked fence, with Doramin's cannons positioned at its four corners. This fortress was a place of safety, a place where \"every faithful partisan could rally in case of some sudden danger.\" Jim called this structure \"The Fort, Patusan.\" Those words are on the sheet of foolscap, along with fragments of two messages that Jim had attempted to write: \"An awful thing has happened\" and \"I must now at once . . .\" And then there is a blotch, as if Jim's pen sputtered. In the packet, there is also a letter to Jim from his father, the parson, who writes about what each member of the family is doing. It is a comfortable letter, the father talking easily about faith and virtue and cautioning his son \"not to give way to temptation.\" At the moment of \"giving way,\" his father says, one succumbs to \"total depravity and everlasting ruin.\" He admonishes Jim never \"to do anything which you believe to be wrong.\" The letter arrived just before Jim sailed aboard the Patna. The last document is another letter from Marlow; it is the story of Jim's last days, pieced together from fragments which Marlow learned. It reveals what happened to Jim after Marlow left him on the beach. There is pain in Marlow's words as he writes about Jim's fate. He says that he can scarcely believe that he will never again hear Jim's voice, never see \"his smooth tan-and-pink face . . . the youthful eyes darkened by excitement to a profound, unfathomable blue.\" The key figure in Jim's tragic end was named Brown, \"Gentleman Brown,\" as he called himself, even though he had a fierce reputation as an immoral and dangerous buccaneer. Marlow listened to Brown's story as Brown lay dying of asthma in a shack in Bangkok. Jim, Brown said, was nothing more than a \"hollow sham,\" adding that Jim didn't have \"enough devil in him\" to fight like a man. Brown bragged about having made an end of Lord Jim. Later that night, Brown died. Marlow says that he learned even more about Jim when he returned some eight months earlier to see his old friend Stein. At Stein's, he saw a Malay native, one from Patusan. It was Jim's \"morose shadow of darkness,\" his bodyguard, Tamb' Itam. Startled at seeing Marlow, Tamb' Itam. hung his head, and then he blurted out, \"He would not fight. He would not fight.\" Marlow found Stein studying his butterfly collection, and Stein asked Marlow to come and talk to Jewel. In particular, he asked Marlow to ask her to forgive Jim. Jewel was sitting in Stein's big reception room, dressed in white. The crystals of Stein's chandelier above her twinkled like icicles. Marlow sensed Jewel's remote, icy despair. Seemingly, she was \"frozen\" with unforgiving anger toward Jim. Despite Jim's promises, he did leave her. He could have fought for his life; he could have fled. But he did neither. He chose, deliberately, to die. Thus, according to Jewel's logic, Jim chose to leave her. \"He was like the others. He was false,\" she says. At this point, Marlow's letter ends, and the story continues on the sheets of paper that Marlow included, piecing together information which he gathered from Brown, from Jewel, and from Tamb' Itam.", "analysis": "This chapter presents a type of transition from the earlier narration by Marlow to a type of narration presented through documents and letters, \"pieced together by\" Marlow and sent to one of the men on the verandah who listened to Marlow's story. The time of the receipt of the packet is some two years after the events of the last chapter. Conrad's use of these narrative devices and the introduction of an anonymous recipient of this material is perhaps the most awkward and unaesthetic aspect of the novel. This method of bringing the novel to a climax is, for the modern reader, terribly distracting and unjustified as a narrative technique, and the introduction of the anonymous recipient of the letter is totally unwarranted -- we simply don't care about this person. The whole chapter is out of place. In Chapter 37, as is typical of this novel, Conrad jumps forward in his narration, and we hear about the death of Jim before we hear about the events surrounding Jim's death. We are also introduced to Gentleman Brown, the instrument of Jim's death. In Gentleman Brown, we meet the epitome of Jim's nemesis -- a person who reeks of pure evil. At this point, we are not prepared for someone who thoroughly and irrationally hates Jim for no other reason than the fact that Jim is a good and honorable man. Had Jim screamed at Brown, \"Hands off my plunder,\" Brown would have respected him as another pirate or as another mercenary, but Brown has never before encountered so perfect and so honorable a gentleman. Thus, Brown can only respond to Jim with disgust. On his deathbed, Brown is ultimately pleased that he \"paid out the fellow\" and that finally he did \"make an end of him after all.\" Conrad gives us this information before we see the encounter between Jim and Brown in order to let us know that Jim should have handled Brown in an entirely different manner. In other words, the reader thoroughly dislikes Brown after this introduction to him, and he wishes futilely that Jim would have followed the advice of his associates who wanted him to destroy Brown. This chapter also confirms Jewel's earlier fear that Jim eventually would, like all the other white men, finally leave Patusan. But note that before meeting Jewel at Stein's house, Marlow meets Tamb' Itam, who cries out to Marlow that Jim \"would not fight. He would not fight.\" To the incredibly loyal native, Jim's refusal to fight was totally incomprehensible and therefore unforgivable. The same is also true for Jewel: upon seeing Marlow, she immediately cries out that \"He has left me . . . you always leave us -- for your own ends.\" She also feels that \"It would have been easy to die with him.\" Jim's death confirms her earlier statements and fears. She could have accepted anything that Jim might have decided to do -- if his decision had been made with survival being uppermost in his mind. Jewel wanted Jim to save his own life, to fight for survival. She could have forgiven Jim anything -- except one unalterable fact: Jim deliberately chose death over a life with her. Because of this decision, she can never forgive him. The shock and horror of Jim's choice of death and honor over life and love is unfathomable to Jewel. Not surprisingly, it has changed her nature. Jewel has changed from \"passion into stone.\" She has been betrayed by Jim, and she will never understand or ever recover from his betrayal of her."}

With these words Marlow had ended his narrative, and his audience had
broken up forthwith, under his abstract, pensive gaze. Men drifted off
the verandah in pairs or alone without loss of time, without offering
a remark, as if the last image of that incomplete story, its
incompleteness itself, and the very tone of the speaker, had made
discussion in vain and comment impossible. Each of them seemed to carry
away his own impression, to carry it away with him like a secret; but
there was only one man of all these listeners who was ever to hear the
last word of the story. It came to him at home, more than two years
later, and it came contained in a thick packet addressed in Marlow's
upright and angular handwriting.

The privileged man opened the packet, looked in, then, laying it down,
went to the window. His rooms were in the highest flat of a lofty
building, and his glance could travel afar beyond the clear panes of
glass, as though he were looking out of the lantern of a lighthouse.
The slopes of the roofs glistened, the dark broken ridges succeeded each
other without end like sombre, uncrested waves, and from the depths of
the town under his feet ascended a confused and unceasing mutter. The
spires of churches, numerous, scattered haphazard, uprose like beacons
on a maze of shoals without a channel; the driving rain mingled with the
falling dusk of a winter's evening; and the booming of a big clock on a
tower, striking the hour, rolled past in voluminous, austere bursts
of sound, with a shrill vibrating cry at the core. He drew the heavy
curtains.

The light of his shaded reading-lamp slept like a sheltered pool, his
footfalls made no sound on the carpet, his wandering days were over. No
more horizons as boundless as hope, no more twilights within the forests
as solemn as temples, in the hot quest for the Ever-undiscovered
Country over the hill, across the stream, beyond the wave. The hour
was striking! No more! No more!--but the opened packet under the lamp
brought back the sounds, the visions, the very savour of the past--a
multitude of fading faces, a tumult of low voices, dying away upon the
shores of distant seas under a passionate and unconsoling sunshine. He
sighed and sat down to read.

At first he saw three distinct enclosures. A good many pages closely
blackened and pinned together; a loose square sheet of greyish paper
with a few words traced in a handwriting he had never seen before, and
an explanatory letter from Marlow. From this last fell another letter,
yellowed by time and frayed on the folds. He picked it up and, laying it
aside, turned to Marlow's message, ran swiftly over the opening lines,
and, checking himself, thereafter read on deliberately, like one
approaching with slow feet and alert eyes the glimpse of an undiscovered
country.

'. . . I don't suppose you've forgotten,' went on the letter. 'You alone
have showed an interest in him that survived the telling of his story,
though I remember well you would not admit he had mastered his fate.
You prophesied for him the disaster of weariness and of disgust with
acquired honour, with the self-appointed task, with the love sprung from
pity and youth. You had said you knew so well "that kind of thing," its
illusory satisfaction, its unavoidable deception. You said also--I call
to mind--that "giving your life up to them" (them meaning all of mankind
with skins brown, yellow, or black in colour) "was like selling your
soul to a brute." You contended that "that kind of thing" was only
endurable and enduring when based on a firm conviction in the truth of
ideas racially our own, in whose name are established the order, the
morality of an ethical progress. "We want its strength at our backs,"
you had said. "We want a belief in its necessity and its justice, to
make a worthy and conscious sacrifice of our lives. Without it the
sacrifice is only forgetfulness, the way of offering is no better than
the way to perdition." In other words, you maintained that we must fight
in the ranks or our lives don't count. Possibly! You ought to know--be
it said without malice--you who have rushed into one or two places
single-handed and came out cleverly, without singeing your wings. The
point, however, is that of all mankind Jim had no dealings but with
himself, and the question is whether at the last he had not confessed to
a faith mightier than the laws of order and progress.

'I affirm nothing. Perhaps you may pronounce--after you've read. There
is much truth--after all--in the common expression "under a cloud." It
is impossible to see him clearly--especially as it is through the eyes
of others that we take our last look at him. I have no hesitation in
imparting to you all I know of the last episode that, as he used to say,
had "come to him." One wonders whether this was perhaps that supreme
opportunity, that last and satisfying test for which I had always
suspected him to be waiting, before he could frame a message to the
impeccable world. You remember that when I was leaving him for the last
time he had asked whether I would be going home soon, and suddenly cried
after me, "Tell them . . ." I had waited--curious I'll own, and hopeful
too--only to hear him shout, "No--nothing." That was all then--and there
will be nothing more; there will be no message, unless such as each of
us can interpret for himself from the language of facts, that are so
often more enigmatic than the craftiest arrangement of words. He made,
it is true, one more attempt to deliver himself; but that too failed, as
you may perceive if you look at the sheet of greyish foolscap enclosed
here. He had tried to write; do you notice the commonplace hand? It is
headed "The Fort, Patusan." I suppose he had carried out his intention
of making out of his house a place of defence. It was an excellent plan:
a deep ditch, an earth wall topped by a palisade, and at the angles
guns mounted on platforms to sweep each side of the square. Doramin had
agreed to furnish him the guns; and so each man of his party would know
there was a place of safety, upon which every faithful partisan could
rally in case of some sudden danger. All this showed his judicious
foresight, his faith in the future. What he called "my own people"--the
liberated captives of the Sherif--were to make a distinct quarter of
Patusan, with their huts and little plots of ground under the walls of
the stronghold. Within he would be an invincible host in himself "The
Fort, Patusan." No date, as you observe. What is a number and a name to
a day of days? It is also impossible to say whom he had in his mind when
he seized the pen: Stein--myself--the world at large--or was this only
the aimless startled cry of a solitary man confronted by his fate? "An
awful thing has happened," he wrote before he flung the pen down for the
first time; look at the ink blot resembling the head of an arrow under
these words. After a while he had tried again, scrawling heavily, as if
with a hand of lead, another line. "I must now at once . . ." The pen
had spluttered, and that time he gave it up. There's nothing more;
he had seen a broad gulf that neither eye nor voice could span. I
can understand this. He was overwhelmed by the inexplicable; he was
overwhelmed by his own personality--the gift of that destiny which he
had done his best to master.

'I send you also an old letter--a very old letter. It was found
carefully preserved in his writing-case. It is from his father, and
by the date you can see he must have received it a few days before he
joined the Patna. Thus it must be the last letter he ever had from home.
He had treasured it all these years. The good old parson fancied his
sailor son. I've looked in at a sentence here and there. There is
nothing in it except just affection. He tells his "dear James" that the
last long letter from him was very "honest and entertaining." He would
not have him "judge men harshly or hastily." There are four pages of it,
easy morality and family news. Tom had "taken orders." Carrie's husband
had "money losses." The old chap goes on equably trusting Providence and
the established order of the universe, but alive to its small dangers
and its small mercies. One can almost see him, grey-haired and serene in
the inviolable shelter of his book-lined, faded, and comfortable study,
where for forty years he had conscientiously gone over and over again
the round of his little thoughts about faith and virtue, about the
conduct of life and the only proper manner of dying; where he had
written so many sermons, where he sits talking to his boy, over there,
on the other side of the earth. But what of the distance? Virtue is one
all over the world, and there is only one faith, one conceivable conduct
of life, one manner of dying. He hopes his "dear James" will never
forget that "who once gives way to temptation, in the very instant
hazards his total depravity and everlasting ruin. Therefore resolve
fixedly never, through any possible motives, to do anything which you
believe to be wrong." There is also some news of a favourite dog; and a
pony, "which all you boys used to ride," had gone blind from old age and
had to be shot. The old chap invokes Heaven's blessing; the mother and
all the girls then at home send their love. . . . No, there is nothing
much in that yellow frayed letter fluttering out of his cherishing
grasp after so many years. It was never answered, but who can say what
converse he may have held with all these placid, colourless forms of men
and women peopling that quiet corner of the world as free of danger
or strife as a tomb, and breathing equably the air of undisturbed
rectitude. It seems amazing that he should belong to it, he to whom so
many things "had come." Nothing ever came to them; they would never be
taken unawares, and never be called upon to grapple with fate. Here they
all are, evoked by the mild gossip of the father, all these brothers
and sisters, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, gazing with clear
unconscious eyes, while I seem to see him, returned at last, no longer
a mere white speck at the heart of an immense mystery, but of full
stature, standing disregarded amongst their untroubled shapes, with a
stern and romantic aspect, but always mute, dark--under a cloud.

'The story of the last events you will find in the few pages enclosed
here. You must admit that it is romantic beyond the wildest dreams
of his boyhood, and yet there is to my mind a sort of profound and
terrifying logic in it, as if it were our imagination alone that could
set loose upon us the might of an overwhelming destiny. The imprudence
of our thoughts recoils upon our heads; who toys with the sword shall
perish by the sword. This astounding adventure, of which the most
astounding part is that it is true, comes on as an unavoidable
consequence. Something of the sort had to happen. You repeat this to
yourself while you marvel that such a thing could happen in the year of
grace before last. But it has happened--and there is no disputing its
logic.

'I put it down here for you as though I had been an eyewitness. My
information was fragmentary, but I've fitted the pieces together, and
there is enough of them to make an intelligible picture. I wonder how
he would have related it himself. He has confided so much in me that at
times it seems as though he must come in presently and tell the story
in his own words, in his careless yet feeling voice, with his offhand
manner, a little puzzled, a little bothered, a little hurt, but now and
then by a word or a phrase giving one of these glimpses of his very
own self that were never any good for purposes of orientation. It's
difficult to believe he will never come. I shall never hear his voice
again, nor shall I see his smooth tan-and-pink face with a white line
on the forehead, and the youthful eyes darkened by excitement to a
profound, unfathomable blue.'

'It all begins with a remarkable exploit of a man called Brown, who
stole with complete success a Spanish schooner out of a small bay near
Zamboanga. Till I discovered the fellow my information was incomplete,
but most unexpectedly I did come upon him a few hours before he gave up
his arrogant ghost. Fortunately he was willing and able to talk between
the choking fits of asthma, and his racked body writhed with malicious
exultation at the bare thought of Jim. He exulted thus at the idea that
he had "paid out the stuck-up beggar after all." He gloated over his
action. I had to bear the sunken glare of his fierce crow-footed eyes if
I wanted to know; and so I bore it, reflecting how much certain forms
of evil are akin to madness, derived from intense egoism, inflamed by
resistance, tearing the soul to pieces, and giving factitious vigour to
the body. The story also reveals unsuspected depths of cunning in the
wretched Cornelius, whose abject and intense hate acts like a subtle
inspiration, pointing out an unerring way towards revenge.

'"I could see directly I set my eyes on him what sort of a fool he was,"
gasped the dying Brown. "He a man! Hell! He was a hollow sham. As if he
couldn't have said straight out, 'Hands off my plunder!' blast him! That
would have been like a man! Rot his superior soul! He had me there--but
he hadn't devil enough in him to make an end of me. Not he! A thing like
that letting me off as if I wasn't worth a kick! . . ." Brown struggled
desperately for breath. . . . "Fraud. . . . Letting me off. . . . And
so I did make an end of him after all. . . ." He choked again. . . . "I
expect this thing'll kill me, but I shall die easy now. You . . . you
here . . . I don't know your name--I would give you a five-pound note
if--if I had it--for the news--or my name's not Brown. . . ." He grinned
horribly. . . . "Gentleman Brown."

'He said all these things in profound gasps, staring at me with his
yellow eyes out of a long, ravaged, brown face; he jerked his left arm;
a pepper-and-salt matted beard hung almost into his lap; a dirty ragged
blanket covered his legs. I had found him out in Bankok through that
busybody Schomberg, the hotel-keeper, who had, confidentially, directed
me where to look. It appears that a sort of loafing, fuddled vagabond--a
white man living amongst the natives with a Siamese woman--had
considered it a great privilege to give a shelter to the last days of
the famous Gentleman Brown. While he was talking to me in the wretched
hovel, and, as it were, fighting for every minute of his life, the
Siamese woman, with big bare legs and a stupid coarse face, sat in a
dark corner chewing betel stolidly. Now and then she would get up for
the purpose of shooing a chicken away from the door. The whole hut shook
when she walked. An ugly yellow child, naked and pot-bellied like a
little heathen god, stood at the foot of the couch, finger in mouth,
lost in a profound and calm contemplation of the dying man.

'He talked feverishly; but in the middle of a word, perhaps, an
invisible hand would take him by the throat, and he would look at me
dumbly with an expression of doubt and anguish. He seemed to fear that
I would get tired of waiting and go away, leaving him with his tale
untold, with his exultation unexpressed. He died during the night, I
believe, but by that time I had nothing more to learn.

'So much as to Brown, for the present.

'Eight months before this, coming into Samarang, I went as usual to see
Stein. On the garden side of the house a Malay on the verandah greeted
me shyly, and I remembered that I had seen him in Patusan, in Jim's
house, amongst other Bugis men who used to come in the evening to talk
interminably over their war reminiscences and to discuss State affairs.
Jim had pointed him out to me once as a respectable petty trader owning
a small seagoing native craft, who had showed himself "one of the best
at the taking of the stockade." I was not very surprised to see him,
since any Patusan trader venturing as far as Samarang would naturally
find his way to Stein's house. I returned his greeting and passed on. At
the door of Stein's room I came upon another Malay in whom I recognised
Tamb' Itam.

'I asked him at once what he was doing there; it occurred to me that
Jim might have come on a visit. I own I was pleased and excited at the
thought. Tamb' Itam looked as if he did not know what to say. "Is Tuan
Jim inside?" I asked impatiently. "No," he mumbled, hanging his head
for a moment, and then with sudden earnestness, "He would not fight. He
would not fight," he repeated twice. As he seemed unable to say anything
else, I pushed him aside and went in.

'Stein, tall and stooping, stood alone in the middle of the room between
the rows of butterfly cases. "Ach! is it you, my friend?" he said
sadly, peering through his glasses. A drab sack-coat of alpaca hung,
unbuttoned, down to his knees. He had a Panama hat on his head, and
there were deep furrows on his pale cheeks. "What's the matter now?"
I asked nervously. "There's Tamb' Itam there. . . ." "Come and see the
girl. Come and see the girl. She is here," he said, with a half-hearted
show of activity. I tried to detain him, but with gentle obstinacy he
would take no notice of my eager questions. "She is here, she is here,"
he repeated, in great perturbation. "They came here two days ago. An old
man like me, a stranger--sehen Sie--cannot do much. . . . Come this way.
. . . Young hearts are unforgiving. . . ." I could see he was in utmost
distress. . . . "The strength of life in them, the cruel strength of
life. . . ." He mumbled, leading me round the house; I followed him,
lost in dismal and angry conjectures. At the door of the drawing-room he
barred my way. "He loved her very much," he said interrogatively, and
I only nodded, feeling so bitterly disappointed that I would not trust
myself to speak. "Very frightful," he murmured. "She can't understand
me. I am only a strange old man. Perhaps you . . . she knows you. Talk
to her. We can't leave it like this. Tell her to forgive him. It was
very frightful." "No doubt," I said, exasperated at being in the dark;
"but have you forgiven him?" He looked at me queerly. "You shall hear,"
he said, and opening the door, absolutely pushed me in.

'You know Stein's big house and the two immense reception-rooms,
uninhabited and uninhabitable, clean, full of solitude and of shining
things that look as if never beheld by the eye of man? They are cool
on the hottest days, and you enter them as you would a scrubbed cave
underground. I passed through one, and in the other I saw the girl
sitting at the end of a big mahogany table, on which she rested her
head, the face hidden in her arms. The waxed floor reflected her dimly
as though it had been a sheet of frozen water. The rattan screens were
down, and through the strange greenish gloom made by the foliage of the
trees outside a strong wind blew in gusts, swaying the long draperies
of windows and doorways. Her white figure seemed shaped in snow; the
pendent crystals of a great chandelier clicked above her head like
glittering icicles. She looked up and watched my approach. I was chilled
as if these vast apartments had been the cold abode of despair.

'She recognised me at once, and as soon as I had stopped, looking down
at her: "He has left me," she said quietly; "you always leave us--for
your own ends." Her face was set. All the heat of life seemed withdrawn
within some inaccessible spot in her breast. "It would have been easy to
die with him," she went on, and made a slight weary gesture as if giving
up the incomprehensible. "He would not! It was like a blindness--and yet
it was I who was speaking to him; it was I who stood before his eyes;
it was at me that he looked all the time! Ah! you are hard, treacherous,
without truth, without compassion. What makes you so wicked? Or is it
that you are all mad?"

'I took her hand; it did not respond, and when I dropped it, it hung
down to the floor. That indifference, more awful than tears, cries, and
reproaches, seemed to defy time and consolation. You felt that nothing
you could say would reach the seat of the still and benumbing pain.

'Stein had said, "You shall hear." I did hear. I heard it all, listening
with amazement, with awe, to the tones of her inflexible weariness.
She could not grasp the real sense of what she was telling me, and her
resentment filled me with pity for her--for him too. I stood rooted to
the spot after she had finished. Leaning on her arm, she stared with
hard eyes, and the wind passed in gusts, the crystals kept on clicking
in the greenish gloom. She went on whispering to herself: "And yet he
was looking at me! He could see my face, hear my voice, hear my grief!
When I used to sit at his feet, with my cheek against his knee and his
hand on my head, the curse of cruelty and madness was already within
him, waiting for the day. The day came! . . . and before the sun had
set he could not see me any more--he was made blind and deaf and without
pity, as you all are. He shall have no tears from me. Never, never. Not
one tear. I will not! He went away from me as if I had been worse than
death. He fled as if driven by some accursed thing he had heard or seen
in his sleep. . . ."

'Her steady eyes seemed to strain after the shape of a man torn out of
her arms by the strength of a dream. She made no sign to my silent bow.
I was glad to escape.

'I saw her once again, the same afternoon. On leaving her I had gone
in search of Stein, whom I could not find indoors; and I wandered out,
pursued by distressful thoughts, into the gardens, those famous gardens
of Stein, in which you can find every plant and tree of tropical
lowlands. I followed the course of the canalised stream, and sat for
a long time on a shaded bench near the ornamental pond, where some
waterfowl with clipped wings were diving and splashing noisily. The
branches of casuarina trees behind me swayed lightly, incessantly,
reminding me of the soughing of fir trees at home.

'This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my
meditations. She had said he had been driven away from her by a
dream,--and there was no answer one could make her--there seemed to be
no forgiveness for such a transgression. And yet is not mankind itself,
pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and
its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive
devotion? And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?

'When I rose to get back to the house I caught sight of Stein's drab
coat through a gap in the foliage, and very soon at a turn of the path
I came upon him walking with the girl. Her little hand rested on his
forearm, and under the broad, flat rim of his Panama hat he bent over
her, grey-haired, paternal, with compassionate and chivalrous deference.
I stood aside, but they stopped, facing me. His gaze was bent on the
ground at his feet; the girl, erect and slight on his arm, stared
sombrely beyond my shoulder with black, clear, motionless eyes.
"Schrecklich," he murmured. "Terrible! Terrible! What can one do?" He
seemed to be appealing to me, but her youth, the length of the days
suspended over her head, appealed to me more; and suddenly, even as I
realised that nothing could be said, I found myself pleading his cause
for her sake. "You must forgive him," I concluded, and my own voice
seemed to me muffled, lost in un irresponsive deaf immensity. "We all
want to be forgiven," I added after a while.

'"What have I done?" she asked with her lips only.

'"You always mistrusted him," I said.

'"He was like the others," she pronounced slowly.

'"Not like the others," I protested, but she continued evenly, without
any feeling--

'"He was false." And suddenly Stein broke in. "No! no! no! My poor
child! . . ." He patted her hand lying passively on his sleeve. "No! no!
Not false! True! True! True!" He tried to look into her stony face. "You
don't understand. Ach! Why you do not understand? . . . Terrible," he
said to me. "Some day she _shall_ understand."

'"Will you explain?" I asked, looking hard at him. They moved on.

'I watched them. Her gown trailed on the path, her black hair fell
loose. She walked upright and light by the side of the tall man, whose
long shapeless coat hung in perpendicular folds from the stooping
shoulders, whose feet moved slowly. They disappeared beyond that
spinney (you may remember) where sixteen different kinds of bamboo grow
together, all distinguishable to the learned eye. For my part, I was
fascinated by the exquisite grace and beauty of that fluted grove,
crowned with pointed leaves and feathery heads, the lightness, the
vigour, the charm as distinct as a voice of that unperplexed luxuriating
life. I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as one would
linger within reach of a consoling whisper. The sky was pearly grey. It
was one of those overcast days so rare in the tropics, in which memories
crowd upon one, memories of other shores, of other faces.

'I drove back to town the same afternoon, taking with me Tamb' Itam
and the other Malay, in whose seagoing craft they had escaped in the
bewilderment, fear, and gloom of the disaster. The shock of it seemed to
have changed their natures. It had turned her passion into stone, and
it made the surly taciturn Tamb' Itam almost loquacious. His surliness,
too, was subdued into puzzled humility, as though he had seen the
failure of a potent charm in a supreme moment. The Bugis trader, a shy
hesitating man, was very clear in the little he had to say. Both were
evidently over-awed by a sense of deep inexpressible wonder, by the
touch of an inscrutable mystery.'

There with Marlow's signature the letter proper ended. The privileged
reader screwed up his lamp, and solitary above the billowy roofs of the
town, like a lighthouse-keeper above the sea, he turned to the pages of
the story.

Chapters 36-37
Marlow ends his story. The men drift off the verandah quietly, without queries or comments about Marlow's incomplete story of a white man who chose to go into a dark, savage jungle in order to regain his self-worth. The question, however, remains: what was the ultimate fate of someone who was "one of them," and yet who was someone who chose to achieve greatness in an alien world, and yet in a world of his own making, a world in which he had accepted enormous responsibility for peace, and for life and death. Only one man of those on the verandah is ever to hear the last of the story. More than two years later, this man received a thick packet, addressed in Marlow's handwriting. It arrived in the midst of a driving rainstorm on a winter's evening. Inside the packet were four separate enclosures: several pages of close handwriting, pinned together; a loose sheet of paper with a few words in handwriting that the man was not familiar with; a letter from Marlow; and another letter, yellow and frayed. The man turned first to Marlow's letter. Marlow tells the man who is reading the letter that he was always reluctant to admit that Jim had indeed "mastered his fate." Moreover, Marlow says, you prophesied that one day Jim would feel disgust with the honor which he had acquired in his "new world." According to Marlow, this man said long ago that Jim had, in effect, sold his soul for a clean, pure slate that was granted to him by some "brutes" -- meaning the brown, and yellow, and black Malay natives. Marlow writes that Jim himself said two years ago that he had no message for "home"; however, it is clear that Jim did make an attempt to send a "message." It is Jim's writing, Marlow says, on the gray sheet of "foolscap" paper. Marlow says that one of the first things that Jim did after he, Marlow, left Patusan was to carry out a plan of defense for "his people." He had a deep ditch dug and surrounded it with a strong, spiked fence, with Doramin's cannons positioned at its four corners. This fortress was a place of safety, a place where "every faithful partisan could rally in case of some sudden danger." Jim called this structure "The Fort, Patusan." Those words are on the sheet of foolscap, along with fragments of two messages that Jim had attempted to write: "An awful thing has happened" and "I must now at once . . ." And then there is a blotch, as if Jim's pen sputtered. In the packet, there is also a letter to Jim from his father, the parson, who writes about what each member of the family is doing. It is a comfortable letter, the father talking easily about faith and virtue and cautioning his son "not to give way to temptation." At the moment of "giving way," his father says, one succumbs to "total depravity and everlasting ruin." He admonishes Jim never "to do anything which you believe to be wrong." The letter arrived just before Jim sailed aboard the Patna. The last document is another letter from Marlow; it is the story of Jim's last days, pieced together from fragments which Marlow learned. It reveals what happened to Jim after Marlow left him on the beach. There is pain in Marlow's words as he writes about Jim's fate. He says that he can scarcely believe that he will never again hear Jim's voice, never see "his smooth tan-and-pink face . . . the youthful eyes darkened by excitement to a profound, unfathomable blue." The key figure in Jim's tragic end was named Brown, "Gentleman Brown," as he called himself, even though he had a fierce reputation as an immoral and dangerous buccaneer. Marlow listened to Brown's story as Brown lay dying of asthma in a shack in Bangkok. Jim, Brown said, was nothing more than a "hollow sham," adding that Jim didn't have "enough devil in him" to fight like a man. Brown bragged about having made an end of Lord Jim. Later that night, Brown died. Marlow says that he learned even more about Jim when he returned some eight months earlier to see his old friend Stein. At Stein's, he saw a Malay native, one from Patusan. It was Jim's "morose shadow of darkness," his bodyguard, Tamb' Itam. Startled at seeing Marlow, Tamb' Itam. hung his head, and then he blurted out, "He would not fight. He would not fight." Marlow found Stein studying his butterfly collection, and Stein asked Marlow to come and talk to Jewel. In particular, he asked Marlow to ask her to forgive Jim. Jewel was sitting in Stein's big reception room, dressed in white. The crystals of Stein's chandelier above her twinkled like icicles. Marlow sensed Jewel's remote, icy despair. Seemingly, she was "frozen" with unforgiving anger toward Jim. Despite Jim's promises, he did leave her. He could have fought for his life; he could have fled. But he did neither. He chose, deliberately, to die. Thus, according to Jewel's logic, Jim chose to leave her. "He was like the others. He was false," she says. At this point, Marlow's letter ends, and the story continues on the sheets of paper that Marlow included, piecing together information which he gathered from Brown, from Jewel, and from Tamb' Itam.
This chapter presents a type of transition from the earlier narration by Marlow to a type of narration presented through documents and letters, "pieced together by" Marlow and sent to one of the men on the verandah who listened to Marlow's story. The time of the receipt of the packet is some two years after the events of the last chapter. Conrad's use of these narrative devices and the introduction of an anonymous recipient of this material is perhaps the most awkward and unaesthetic aspect of the novel. This method of bringing the novel to a climax is, for the modern reader, terribly distracting and unjustified as a narrative technique, and the introduction of the anonymous recipient of the letter is totally unwarranted -- we simply don't care about this person. The whole chapter is out of place. In Chapter 37, as is typical of this novel, Conrad jumps forward in his narration, and we hear about the death of Jim before we hear about the events surrounding Jim's death. We are also introduced to Gentleman Brown, the instrument of Jim's death. In Gentleman Brown, we meet the epitome of Jim's nemesis -- a person who reeks of pure evil. At this point, we are not prepared for someone who thoroughly and irrationally hates Jim for no other reason than the fact that Jim is a good and honorable man. Had Jim screamed at Brown, "Hands off my plunder," Brown would have respected him as another pirate or as another mercenary, but Brown has never before encountered so perfect and so honorable a gentleman. Thus, Brown can only respond to Jim with disgust. On his deathbed, Brown is ultimately pleased that he "paid out the fellow" and that finally he did "make an end of him after all." Conrad gives us this information before we see the encounter between Jim and Brown in order to let us know that Jim should have handled Brown in an entirely different manner. In other words, the reader thoroughly dislikes Brown after this introduction to him, and he wishes futilely that Jim would have followed the advice of his associates who wanted him to destroy Brown. This chapter also confirms Jewel's earlier fear that Jim eventually would, like all the other white men, finally leave Patusan. But note that before meeting Jewel at Stein's house, Marlow meets Tamb' Itam, who cries out to Marlow that Jim "would not fight. He would not fight." To the incredibly loyal native, Jim's refusal to fight was totally incomprehensible and therefore unforgivable. The same is also true for Jewel: upon seeing Marlow, she immediately cries out that "He has left me . . . you always leave us -- for your own ends." She also feels that "It would have been easy to die with him." Jim's death confirms her earlier statements and fears. She could have accepted anything that Jim might have decided to do -- if his decision had been made with survival being uppermost in his mind. Jewel wanted Jim to save his own life, to fight for survival. She could have forgiven Jim anything -- except one unalterable fact: Jim deliberately chose death over a life with her. Because of this decision, she can never forgive him. The shock and horror of Jim's choice of death and honor over life and love is unfathomable to Jewel. Not surprisingly, it has changed her nature. Jewel has changed from "passion into stone." She has been betrayed by Jim, and she will never understand or ever recover from his betrayal of her.