In the opening lines of the novel, Conrad introduces readers to Jim, using a metaphor in the process:
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.
In comparing Jim to “a charging bull,” Conrad prepares readers for Jim’s forward-moving momentum and thirst for adventure. Despite growing up in a traditional and simple family in the English countryside, Jim craves a life of exploration, as seen in his decision to leave home and become a sailor. Like a charging bull, Jim also passionately moves toward what he wants without much discretion or intentionality. This comes across later in the novel when, in a crisis, he frantically abandons the Patna rather than staying collected and acting in line with his values (by staying aboard the potentially sinking ship).
It is notable that, in the second sentence of the passage, Conrad describes how there was “nothing aggressive” in the way Jim carried himself. This is Conrad’s way of communicating that, while Jim is like a charging bull, this energy stems more from his hunger for adventure than his desire to cause harm. Any harm Jim does end up causing in the story comes from his tendency not to think things through rather than any intentional aggression.
When Marlow is first getting to know Jim, he describes how Jim’s youthfulness also makes him feel young, using a metaphor in the process:
“He was a youngster of the sort you like to see about you; of the sort you like to imagine yourself to have been; of the sort whose appearance claims the fellowship of these illusions you had thought gone out, extinct, cold, and which, as if rekindled at the approach of another flame, give a flutter deep, deep down somewhere, give a flutter of light . . . of heat!”
The metaphor here—in which Marlow describes the “illusions” (or romantic visions for his life) he used to have as formerly “extinct” and “cold” flames that Jim’s presence re-lit—communicates why he is drawn to Jim. Marlow is much older than Jim and, after a long career as a sea captain, has become somewhat disillusioned with the life he has chosen. Jim is young, adventurous, and optimistic, even after standing trial for abandoning the Patna. This flame-based metaphor captures the way Jim’s romantic and lively persona awakens something in Marlow and helps readers understand why he ultimately decides to help Jim find a new life on Patusan.
Near the end of the novel, Marlow describes a conversation he had with Jewel about whether Jim is planning to leave Patusan or not, using a simile and a metaphor in the process:
“Why did I come, then? After a slight movement [Jewel] was as still as a marble statue in the night. I tried to explain briefly: friendship, business; if I had any wish in the matter it was rather to see him stay. . . . ‘They always leave us,’ she murmured. The breath of sad wisdom from the grave which her piety wreathed with flowers seemed to pass in a faint sigh. . . . Nothing, I said, could separate Jim from her.”
The simile here—in which Marlow describes how Jewel “was as still as a marble statue” while waiting to hear why Marlow came back to Patusan—captures the intensity of Jewel's anxiety about Marlow possibly coming to take Jim back with him. She is so scared that her husband might be leaving her that she cannot move or breathe.
The metaphor in this passage is a bit more complex. When Marlow describes “the grave which [Jewel’s] piety wreathed with flowers” he is capturing something important about the effects of colonialism. Because Jewel is so used to white colonizers coming to Patusan, taking what they want, and then leaving, she is preparing herself to lose Jim (if he were to go back to Europe), and, Marlow imagines, has already built a grave for him inside of her mind and heart.
The ultimate irony, of course, is that Jim ends up in a literal grave (after choosing to stay in Patusan) rather than in a metaphorical one (if he had left Jewel and gone home to Europe). This situational irony becomes clear at the end of the novel when Jim is killed by Doramin after failing to protect the Malay community from Brown’s attack.
