Lord Jim (Joseph Conrad, 1900)

General notes

• published serially in Blackwood's 1899-1900
• 6: why the short précis of the story?
• 7: repeating that he was generally liked -- why? This plural locus of character evaluation?
• 29 so far the reading tends to be in the metaphorics of the story, Jim's sense of advenuture and Marlie saying "before the end is told"
• 31 Patna captain keeps getting compared to objects, objectified
• 49 significant objects in the figurative patterning of the novel too, people being compared to their luggage on 61 or Brierly's pocketwatch as an indicator of his forethought in his suicide here
• 81 "he wanted me to know he had kept a distance": how differently narratorial mediation functions here in the narrative fabric than formal mediation of different media in Dracula
• 82 Marlow's description of Jim's "burlesque" trial -- Eliot is supposed to be more didactic than this proto modernism?!
• 87 the regularity of the serialized chapter breaks gives Marlow's narrative momentum, the reader (or I) want to keep going
• 108 in "collating" the Australian boarding party man's account with Jim's, Marlie performs something if the same diegetic narratorial/organizing function Mina Harker does in Dracula just with oral stories rather than documents
• 203

There was something occult in all this, no doubt; for what is the strength of ropes and of men's arms? There is a rebellious soul in things which must be overcome by powerful charms and incantations.... perhaps the souls of things are more stubborn than the souls of men.

Theme tracking

Shakespeare allusions

• 44 "there's some sort of method in his raving" (doctor to Marlow abt Patna engineer, Hamlet)
• 64 Jim paraphrases "the readiness is all" (Hamlet)
• 79 make angels weep (measure for measure)
• 84 this might be too far but Jim's histrionic "Ha, ha, ha!" Recalls Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy
• 116 "loved too well" othello
• 138 "and that's true too" Lear
• 178 "the country, for all its rotten state, was not judged ripe for interference" hamlet and lear with ripe
• 182 green and gold half crown complete Shakespeare
• 258 "ever-undiscovered country" hamlet