Reading 1001 discussion

What GR says: Jim, a young British seaman, becomes first mate on the Patna, a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the hajj. When the ship starts rapidly taking on water and disaster seems imminent, Jim joins his captain and other crew members in abandoning the ship and its passengers. A few days later, they are picked up by a British ship. However, the Patna and its passengers are later also saved, and the reprehensible actions of the crew are exposed. The other participants evade the judicial court of inquiry, leaving Jim to the court alone. He is publicly censured for this action and the novel follows his later attempts at coming to terms with his past. The novel is counted as one of 100 best books of the 20th century.

3 Stars

Conrad is the master of obscure writing the GR summary tells me what happens at the start of the book and if it wasn’t for this I would not have had a clue apart from the fact the boat sank even I managed to understand that.

This book reminded me of Heart of Darkness and in a way some of the same themes are explored. To escape from the shame of what happened with the shipwreck Jim retreats from the known world to Malaysia where he makes a life for himself among the natives. Without giving too much away there is a girl, a fight and it ends badly.

Personally I found this book easier to read than Heart of Darkness but it is still not the type of story I enjoy. I appreciated the look at how bad news travels round the world, how guilt and shame can drive a man to extreme lengths to escape and the treatment of native people by the “whites” who discover them. But as a whole nah not for me.

Jim - we never learn his surname - is a young sailor who has done something shameful and cowardly instead of the daring deeds he always dreamed of. Through his story told by Marlow, an older seaman who takes a godfatherly interest in him, we learn how one moment's false step blights Jim's life from then on.

I found the first two-thirds of this a fascinating examination of shame and its effects on the self esteem. Jim and Marlow never seem to be quite in tune, which makes their conversations even more revealing. In the last third it's more of a colonial adventure story, and I lost interest there.

A story of guilt and the search for redemption. The Jim of the novel is a young man who has taken a position as a seaman to learn the trade. Jim makes a decision which causes him great torment and leaves him searching for redemption and peace from the torment of guilt. Conrad is a great author but requires the readers full attention.

** 1/2

An exploration of guilt and a shame through a man with a romantic approach to life (not in the love sense), being put into almost hopeless situations. I was hoping for something a bit more exotic considering this was a novel set mainly in Borneo in the late 19th century; most of the exploration though was in Tunku Jim's internal motivations rather than the jungle's. I found it really hard to keep my interest in this story.