Historical background
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Western powers were invading other territories in a series of colonial warfare conflicts rooted in imperial ambition.
France's campaign in West Africa in the 1890s was driven by its desire to control strategic regions like Dahomey, resulting in fierce battles. The annexation of Hawaii in the same years was an example of US strategic expansionism in the Pacific. In 1894, Britain intended to consolidate its influence in Southern Africa by launching a war against the Matabele in Zimbabwe. It was an uneven fight with British forces' using firearms against Matabele spears. In the same years Italy's ambitions were focused on Ethiopia, though they were challenged when Ethiopian forces defeated General Baratieri's army in Tigre.
On the American continent, the Spanish-American War of 1898 led to Spain giving up territories like Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the United States. This conflict, encouraged by sensationalist media and the mysterious sinking of the USS Maine, illustrated how media and political pressures could push nations into imperial conquests.
Against this backdrop of imperial expansion, Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim offers a critique of European attitudes towards colonised peoples, as well as a reflection on personal and collective responsibility. The novel examines the indifference of European powers to the lives of their colonial subjects. This is shown, fot example, in Jim's efforts to lead the people of Patusan against the predatory Gentleman Brown, who embodies European exploitation.
Literary context
By the turn of the century, Britain had begun to decline as a world power, and the Empire's continued supremacy and prosperity came into question. The self-confident British perception of the world and its place in it no longer seemed guaranteed. In Heart of Darkness, (1899), Conrad scrutinised the moral consequences of Britain's colonial empire. A year later Lord Jim examined human weakness and moral failings.
In these stories perceptions of people and events were unreliable and conflicting, the usually accepted universal truths of the previous Victorian era were challenged and the established worldview was presented as untrustworthy. These were the seeds of Modernist literature which incorporated themes such as destruction, chaos, loss and exile.
Conrad's modernist style and use of antiheroes influenced other 20th-century writers including William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury, As Lay Dying, and Absalom, Absalom! Both authors employed fragmented chronology, unreliable narration, and psychologically complex characters.
Conrad also influenced Ernest Hemingway, particularly in his The Old Man and the Sea, though the writers differ in their treatment of personal experiences: Conrad explores the hidden darkness behind experience; Hemingway describes experience in terms of visible action and controlled emotion.
Another modernist writer, Scott Fitzgerald, recognised that he had used Conrad's literary style in writing
The Great Gatsby (1925), modeling narrator Nick Carraway on Conrad's Marlow.
Summary
Discussion
The plot of Lord Jim appears deeply influenced by the paradigmatic Christian storyline: sin - atonement - redemption. Jim makes an erroneous moral decision by abandoning a ship he thought was about to sink, leaving hundreds of passengers on board. The ship was rescued, but he carried a guilty conscience for the rest of his life. In an effort to atone for his error, he retired to Patusan, a community far from civilisation. There he became a highly respected figure, achieving redemption by saving the group from its enemies.
Another religious element in the story is the presentation of all the characters as fitting one moral category or the other. The enemy Rahja, buccaneer imperialist Brown and the traitorous Cornelius are on the side of evil. Jim, honest, though an anti-hero, Doramine, wise leader, yet vengeful, and Marlow, a limited not an omniscient narrator, are portrayed as virtuous. Nobody is perfect and some are downright devilish.
Conrad’s narrative techniques signaled that the novel was changing from Victorian certitudes to an era of Modernist uncertainties. The first person narrator, Marlow, mixes his experiences with tales from a plethora of other storytellers so that the reader receives multiple fragmentary insights, but also wonders what the real story is. Can Marlow or any other quoted character be really trusted? The narrative has become as unsure as Jim is of himself.
The settings and some themes in Lord Jim seem to be continuations of Conrad’s previous novel, Heart of Darkness. The main characters are placed in a wilderness but represent two different responses to the same moral shortcomings. Kurtz is a study in the corruption of power and lack of restraint. He represents an ego that has completely detached from social bonds. Jim, on the other hand, is defined by his intense self-consciousness and his desperate need to be perceived as “honorable.” While Kurtz is consumed by the heart of darkness, Jim attempts to master his environment and himself to reclaim his lost dignity. The underlying theme of civilisation as a veneer covering a nastier human condition is repeated in Lord Jim where both Brown and Doramine give way to an irrational revengefulness, not to mention Jim’s agonising process of trying to reconcile his ideal self with his past actions. In Conrad Modernism is beginning to put an end to traditional comforting Victorian narratives about the human condition.
