CHAPTER SEVEN
The empty-headed diners at Marlow's hotel contrast with the troubled, intense Jim in a way that shows him off to advantage. As he begins his long account, Marlow warns his listeners, "I wanted to know- and to this day I don't know." Presumably he is referring to Jim's motivations. Or perhaps he is describing his difficulty in judging Jim. Should you be harsh or lenient? On the one hand, Jim is obviously making excuses, looking for ways to escape the terrible self-knowledge that came when he failed the test of honor. "Ah! what a chance missed!" Jim cries, leading Marlow to observe that his romantic imagination is still too active: Jim focuses not on the honor that he lost, but on the glory he might have won. And Jim's excuse is the same one he made after the storm on the training ship (Chapter One)- he wasn't prepared. It strikes Marlow as obvious self-deception.
Yet other factors argue for leniency. One of them was already noted by Brierly (Chapter Six): Jim may have failed the test, but so few of us are ever tested at all that we had better beware of judging too hastily. "Do you know what you would have done?" Jim asks Marlow. Besides, he had good reason to leave the Patna.
Finally you learn exactly what the Patna officers are guilty of. Marlow remarks, "So that bulkhead held out after all." That thin, rusty partition, the only thing keeping the ship from being flooded, but which was certain to give way, somehow managed to hold. The officers abandoned a sinking ship that didn't sink. No wonder the case has become well known, and they're so deeply disgraced.
Yet there was every reason to believe the ship would go down any minute. Anybody would have thought so, Marlow assures his audience. To make matters worse, there weren't enough lifeboats for the pilgrims. Jim's overactive imagination (which, you may recall from Chapter Two, is sometimes too vivid for his own good) leads him to envision the scene of panic that's surely imminent, and he's paralyzed with horror.
NOTE: THE JEDDAH INCIDENT
Conrad based the Patna disaster on an actual case. The pilgrim ship Jeddah was abandoned at sea by her white officers in the summer of 1880. When rescued, the officers claimed the ship had gone down, but it was in fact towed into port the day after they arrived. The scandal attracted international attention. Conrad must have read the reports in London, and he probably heard more about it three years later in Singapore, where one of two inquiries was held. Conrad altered various details to suit his purposes. For example, the captain of the Jeddah was English, not German, and he abandoned ship largely out of fear for the safety of his wife, who was on board. The Jeddah's first mate bore some striking resemblances, in looks and in background, to Jim; but in convincing his captain to abandon ship, he took a more active, more dishonorable role in the desertion than Jim does.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jim thinks of readying the lifeboats, but as he's leaving the bulkhead one of the pilgrims grabs him and begins jabbering. The man won't leave him alone even after Jim hits him with his lantern. Jim maintains that he was afraid the shouts would create a panic among the other pilgrims, but he may have struck out of his own panic. It turns out that the man just wants some water for his sick child.
When he reaches the bridge (above the deck), the other three officers- captain, chief engineer, second engineer- are preparing a lifeboat for themselves. They don't care about the pilgrims. Jim is disgusted, and he refuses to help them. But he doesn't do anything to help the pilgrims, either- he just stands there, outraged but immobile. He doesn't ready the lifeboats. He considers trying to reinforce the rotten bulkhead, but it seems hopeless. Besides, he doesn't want to start a panic. And what can he do alone?
But Jim isn't alone. In his paralysis, he forgets the East Indian sailors (lascars) who make up the rest of the crew. The two helmsmen, for example, never desert their post, even though they know something is wrong. Marlow jumps, for a moment, to their testimony at the inquiry. It never occurred to them to desert their posts. Behavior like that is so inconceivable to these honest men that they're convinced the white officers must have abandoned ship for some good, secret reason other than saving their skins. Their "extraordinary and damning" testimony puts Jim doubly in the wrong- not only for deserting, but also for not trying to avert disaster when there were other sailors on board who could have helped him.
Throughout this chapter, Marlow's view of Jim swings between sympathy and disgust. He suspects, rather uncomfortably, that Jim is looking for an absolution Marlow cannot grant. But he also admits that the issues are more complex than any court of inquiry could handle. Jim, he complains, makes you "look at the convention that lurks in all truth." He makes you notice something arbitrary in the fixed standard of conduct. This is the kind of troubling awareness that nobody wants to face, because questioning the whole structure of morality can drive you to despair. (Compare this with the passage about the fixed standard in Chapter Five.) That's what Marlow's talking about when he says that the case was "momentous enough to affect mankind's conception of itself." There's every reason to excuse Jim except that his behavior calls the fixed standard into question. And without it, there's no sure right or wrong, no sure good and evil; the structure of morality is undercut.
CHAPTER NINE
As if things aren't dreadful enough, a storm now appears on the horizon. Jim finally cuts the lifeboats loose. But then he plants himself again, immobile, across from the spot where the officers are bumbling with the lifeboat- "as far away as he could get from them," he tells Marlow, which clearly isn't true. The struggle he's watching is as slapstick as a Three Stooges comedy, except that there are now four officers, for the third engineer has joined them. Not for long, though- he presently drops dead from a heart attack. (The ridiculous irony isn't lost on Jim: If the man had been less intent on surviving, he wouldn't have killed himself trying to escape.)
Still insisting that nobody has a right to judge him, Jim virtually bullies Marlow into making "some fatal admission about myself which would have had some bearing on the case"- that is, admitting that he would have acted as Jim did. But Marlow has more self-respect than that. He may be willing to concede that his honor is untried, but not that it's deficient.
By now the officers have launched the lifeboat, and they're shouting for the third engineer (who is lying dead on the bridge) to jump. Jim's description of his final moments on board makes him seem utterly passive. And of course he wants to preserve this illusion, because it's a way to keep from believing that he made the conscious, cowardly decision to jump. He vividly recalls the sensations of that moment, but he can't remember either deciding to jump or jumping. But he does jump, "into an everlasting deep hole" from which he can't climb. The deep hole is his shame. No wonder he wishes he could die.
The ultimate question for any of us to answer is what would we have done in Jim's place. Could you say with any certainty how you would have behaved? Why?
CHAPTER TEN
Once at sea, the four men quickly lose the Patna's lights and assume it's sunk. The chief engineer even thinks he sees the ship go down- a delusion he retains, you'll recall, when he's delirious in the hospital (Chapter Five). Conrad develops at length the imagery of darkness, quiet, void. Jim really has leaped into an abyss of sorts. "Nothing mattered." The moral world, the fixed standard, has vaed, and Jim is like a man floating in a vacuum.
روش خرید: برای خرید پس از کلیک روی
دکمه زیر و تکمیل فرم سفارش، ابتدا محصول مورد نظر را درب منزل یا
محل کار تحویل بگیرید، سپس وجه کالا و هزینه ارسال را به مامور پست
بپردازید. جهت مشاهده فرم خرید، روی دکمه زیر کلیک کنید.
دانلود تولبار جی تاک
ed, and Jim is like a man floating in a vacuum. 
