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The Privileged Reader
The French lieutenant is a character who witnessed the Patna incident without understanding what was going on. Despite his lack of understanding, his account helps fill in some gaps in Jim’s story for Marlow. The French lieutenant shows how having an outside perspective can help a person discover come closer to understanding the truth.
The French Lieutenant Quotes in Lord Jim
The Lord Jim quotes below are all either spoken by The French Lieutenant or refer to The French Lieutenant. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 13 Quotes
‘“Pray—tell me,” he began, coming up ponderously, “what was there at the bottom of this affair—precisely (au juste)? It is curious. That dead man, for instance—and so on.”’
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This quote comes from Marlow’s recollection of his conversation with a French lieutenant who helped rescue the Patna after Jim and the other crew members abandoned it. Although the French lieutenant is an eyewitness to the events that took place on the ship, he is also an outsider who hasn’t heard about the scandal and court case surrounding the Patna. Interestingly, because the French man has little prior knowledge about the incident, he assumes that the dead man George is the most important part of the scandal. For the French man, the event that changed the whole course of Jim’s Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. U
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The French Lieutenant Character Timeline in Lord Jim
The timeline below shows where the character The French Lieutenant appears in Lord Jim. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 12
Later, Marlow hears more of the story of the Patna from a French lieutenant who was on a gunboat coming from Reunion when the crew of the Patna was...
(full context)
The French lieutenant tells Marlow about overseeing the rescue of the abandoned Patna. He describes the events calmly...
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Chapter 13
Marlow continues his conversation with the French lieutenant in Sydney. The Frenchman makes a passing remark about how quickly time goes, and it...
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The French lieutenant picks up on the fact that Marlow seems to be interested in Jim in particular....
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Marlow is disappointed that he doesn’t learn more from the French lieutenant . Marlow is still thinking about Jim’s case about three years later when he is...
(full context)
