Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Lord Jim, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fantasy vs. Reality
Justice and Duty
Racism and Colonialism
Truth and Perspective
Summary
Analysis
Jim has just jumped from the Patna to a small boat, and now the sea around him is dark and hissing. Jim’s biggest fear is that the Patna seems to still be there—he just wants it to sink and get it over with. Suddenly, because the Patna has no lights, one of the two engineers shouts to the others that the ship must be gone.
Here the physical Patna represents Jim’s failure to do his duty and live up to his ideals. Later, the memory of the Patna will have a similar effect on him.
Themes
Jim muses to Marlow at dinner that, strangely, he almost wishes that he had been forced to see the horror of the sinking Patna rather than just darkness. But Marlow doesn’t think this isn’t strange: Jim’s imagination can come up with worse than any real horror.
Marlow correctly identifies the power of Jim’s imagination. Jim is such a dreamer that his mind can create greater horrors than what exist in the real world.
Themes
On the rescue boat, Jim fights back the urge to swim over where the Patna (supposedly) sank so he can drown there. Eventually, everything goes still. The skipper and two engineers console themselves on the rescue boat by saying they made it off just in the nick of time, and that it probably went down quickly. Eventually, however, they start arguing, and they ask George why he took so long to jump. Jim realizes they all think he’s George until eventually they realize who he really is. When they do realize it’s not George, they’re all furious with Jim. They act as if Jim hindered or even murdered George.
Because of the story’s nonchronological structure, the audience already knows at this point that the Patna doesn’t sink. Whereas before the novel created suspense around what actually happened on the Patna, now the suspense is about what will happen when Jim and the other crew members find out what really happened to the ship they left behind.
Themes
Jim gets so animated telling Marlow at dinner about his confrontation on the boat with the skipper and the two mates that he spills some cognac. He apologizes, then gets back to the story, where the men in the boat are enveloped in so much darkness that it feels like a tomb. Despite threatening each other, no one physically fights on the boat.
The animated reaction of Jim at the dinner visually illustrates the connection between the past and the present, showing how events that happened in the past still hold sway over Jim to the point that they make him react physically
Themes
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On the boat, Jim mans the tiller for a long time, which demands a lot of endurance. When the sun rises, the skipper and the two engineers look very dirty to Jim. They try to put aside their differences and make peace with Jim. They say they don’t even care about George anymore. Jim doesn’t put up a fight.
Jim’s show of endurance at the tiller is the beginning of his long journey to try to atone for his prior cowardice and prove that he is a good person after all.
Themes
All of a sudden, Jim, the skipper, and the two engineers see a ship coming on the horizon. The skipper tries to put together a story for them to tell. They worry Jim might tell the truth but eventually agree that he won’t say anything. To his own surprise, Jim goes along with them.
Jim faces yet another opportunity to do the right thing (by telling the truth and contradicting the skipper’s lies), but once again he finds himself unable to overcome his own instinct for self-preservation.
Themes
