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
After Jim’s attack, Sherif Ali flees the country without attempting to fight back against Doramin’s forces. With Dain Waris’s approval, Jim gets appointed headman, making him essentially the ruler of the area. This frightens Rajah Allang, who fears he’ll suffer Sherif Ali’s fate. Doramin hopes Jim will one day challenge the Rajah and that Dain Waris can rule, but he knows from what he’s heard that white men often come to foreign lands and leave suddenly.
Although Jim’s leadership represents a potential threat to Doramin’s leadership, Doramin is a shrewd leader who knows that most white Europeans like Jim will eventually return to their homelands. In the meantime, Jim makes a formidable figurehead, valuable more for the fear he inspires in Rajah Allang than for his actual skill as a military leader.
Themes
Doramin’s wife begins asking Marlow why Jim would leave his home. Didn’t he have a family there or other people who would miss him? Marlow struggles to answer the question for her.
Although Doramin’s wife comes from a very different culture from Jim, she can sense that it takes a very unusual person to willingly leave their old life behind.
Themes
During his time at Patusan, Jim also falls in love. Jim meets a woman that he calls Jewel—she is the part-white, part-Malay stepdaughter of Cornelius (Stein’s trading partner in Patusan before Jim arrived), and she becomes Jim’s wife. Jim is embarrassed the first time he introduces Jewel to Marlow at his house. Marlow makes a connection: on his way to meet Jim, he heard a rumor from an official that Jim had gotten his hand on some sort of valuable green gem through his strength and cunning. He realizes now that the rumor got twisted, and that people were confusing Jewel with a jewel.
This section objectifies the character Jewel: the rumor mill effectively transforms her from a human into an emerald. While Jim’s love for Jewel seems to be genuine in some respects, she is perhaps more important to him as an ideal than as a person. Jewel’s biracial background makes her a natural bridge between the European foreigner Jim and the Malay locals, although her in-between status also perhaps leaves her vulnerable to being excluded from both groups.
Themes
