Butterflies, specifically Stein’s specimens of dead butterflies preserved in jars, symbolize the disparity between the ideal and the real. The character Stein is a naturalist who is famous across Europe for his collections of preserved insect specimens. When he first hears about Jim from Marlow, Marlow calls Jim a “specimen,” establishing a link between Jim and the butterflies. Throughout the novel, butterflies function as a mirror for Jim, symbolizing how, counterintuitively, Jim’s death at a young age actually helps to preserve him as the ideal, heroic self he has always longed to be. But Jim’s early death also suggests the impossibility of ever fully realizing one’s dreams—in other words, that Jim must die to live out his heroic dreams suggests that his dreams are unattainable in life.
Stein’s collection of insect specimens represents a preserved ideal—they stay pristine, but this purity comes at the cost of the insects dying in the process. As a romantic dreamer, Jim is looking for perfection like the butterfly specimens—the absolute ideal that can’t be achieved in real life. Though he might not consider himself to be suicidal, he is ultimately looking to achieve a legendary, ideal status that no mortal can hope to maintain while still alive. The story’s ending further establishes this symbolism, contrasting Jim, preserved forever in his youth as the ideal hero (but only after paying with his life) with Stein, who lives a much longer life than Jim, but whose former renown diminishes with old age as he faces his own inevitable mortality.
Butterflies Quotes in Lord Jim
‘All this was in the past, but I knew the story of his life and the origin of his fortune. He was also a naturalist of some distinction, or perhaps I should say a learned collector. Entomology was his special study. His collection of Buprestidae and Longicorns—beetles all—horrible miniature monsters, looking malevolent in death and immobility, and his cabinet of butterflies, beautiful and hovering under the glass of cases on lifeless wings, had spread his fame far over the earth. The name of this merchant, adventurer, sometime adviser of a Malay sultan (to whom he never alluded otherwise than as “my poor Mohammed Bonso”), had, on account of a few bushels of dead insects, become known to learned persons in Europe, who could have had no conception, and certainly would not have cared to know anything, of his life or character. I, who knew, considered him an eminently suitable person to receive my confidences about Jim’s difficulties as well as my own.’
“To tell you the truth, Stein,” I said with an effort that surprised me, “I came here to describe a specimen. . . .”
‘“Butterfly?” he asked, with an unbelieving and humorous eagerness.
‘“Nothing so perfect,” I answered, feeling suddenly dispirited with all sorts of doubts. “A man!”
‘The popular story has it that Jim with a touch of one finger had thrown down the gate. He was, of course, anxious to disclaim this achievement. The whole stockade—he would insist on explaining to you—was a poor affair […]; and, anyway, the thing had been already knocked to pieces and only hung together by a miracle. He put his shoulder to it like a little fool and went in head over heels. Jove! If it hadn’t been for Dain Waris, a pock-marked tattooed vagabond would have pinned him with his spear to a baulk of timber like one of Stein’s beetles. The third man in, it seems, had been Tamb’ Itam, Jim’s own servant. This was a Malay from the north, a stranger who had wandered into Patusan, and had been forcibly detained by Rajah Allang as paddler of one of the state boats. He had made a bolt of it at the first opportunity, and finding a precarious refuge (but very little to eat) amongst the Bugis settlers, had attached himself to Jim’s person. His complexion was very dark, his face flat, his eyes prominent and injected with bile. There was something excessive, almost fanatical, in his devotion to his “white lord.”’
‘Who knows? He is gone, inscrutable at heart, and the poor girl is leading a sort of soundless, inert life in Stein’s house. Stein has aged greatly of late. He feels it himself, and says often that he is “preparing to leave all this; preparing to leave . . .” while he waves his hand sadly at his butterflies.’
September 1899—July 1900.
Butterflies Symbol Timeline in Lord Jim
