What Makes Jim As A Defected Hero?

What’s the reason behind Conrad’s making Jim as a defected hero who speak haltingly and Marlow as a skillful but not objective narrator? From the point of view of the dynamic of character, this kind of fragmented writing style can express the inner activity of Jim in a better way. But this is not this paper want to talk about. This paper mainly focus on the dynamic of audience response. And from that point of view, this way of writing made Conrad’s audience unable to get a justifiable judgement about the main character Jim. I have mentioned that this novel can be divided into three parts: the omniscient narration from chapter 1 to 4, Marlow’s narration which occupy greatest part in the novel from chapter 5 to 36, and a package of letters for

Conrad don’t want to make any hasty judgement. The privileged reader in the end of the novel is a possible way of evaluation Conrad had provided to us. This privileged reader thinks, “giving your life up to them (them meaning all of mankind with skins brown, yellow, or black in colour) was like selling your soul to a brute.”() After reading this novel, most of the readers can’t agree with this privileged reader. By doing so Conrad presents to us the fact that how different people’s judgement about a same thing can be. Different readers may have different opinions about this story. I can think Jim as a narrator has a low aesthetic value, and Marlow is not reliable. Other readers may disagree with me. This novel Lord Jim is like a mirror, it reflects not what Jim and Marlow looks like, but it reflects the readers’ value system. Take the privileged reader as an example, this reader’s evaluation about Jim reflects the reader himself is a racist who likes war. In a similar way, Marlow’s evaluation about Jim reflects that Marlow is a man of high self-esteem just like Jim. Perhaps our discussion about Jim is what Conrad really want to achieve. And that’s reason why this work has such a stong vitality, and such a simple navigation story can be evaluated from generation to