Lord Jim: A Tragedy Of Cultural Estrangement

Lord Jim is one of Joseph Conrad's masterpieces, one which attracts immense interests from home and abroad. The innovative narrative technique in Lord Jim is the focus of criticism. In the study of its themes, Chinese critics tend to regard Conrad as a moralist and analyze the novel from the angle of morality. In recent years Postcolonial criticism has become a fashionable practice among Chinese critics, quite a number of whom have explored Conrad's view on imperialism as reflected in the work. However, there has been yet no detailed study of the theme of Lord Jim from cultural perspective. This thesis attempts to interpret the novel in the light of cultural exchange, to explore the roots of Jim's tragedy and to demonstrate that Jim's failure has its root in the cultural estrangement between the West and the East.Apart from the introduction part and the conclusion, this thesis consists of four chapters: Chapter One, Conrad: Writing the Other; Chapter Two, Jim on the Patna: A Victim of Racial Superiority; Chapter Three, Jim in Patusan: An Emissary of Western Culture; Chapter Four, The Failure of Jim's Cultural Mission.The introduction part presents a literature review on the work and a brief introduction to the research problems of this study.Conrad's unique life experience determines his unique choice of writing subjects. Conrad avails himself of his extraordinary experience and charges his writings with plentiful cultural information. Throughout his major fictions, Conrad is writing the colonial other. It is a recurrent theme in Conrad's fiction that cultural estrangement causes degeneracy or bewilderment for Western intruders in the Eastern world.In the following two chapters, a completely new interpretation of the novel in the terms of cultural estrangement is presented. On the Patna, there isn't any communion between the white men and their colored passengers. The abandonment of the ship is a natural result of the cultural estrangement which arises from a sense of white superiority. If we say the crew members feel above the pilgrims, Jim feels superior to his crew fellow as well. Since sea men's"professional decency"isn't so easy to preserve and a crime committed by human instinct is tolerable, the only thing at fault is the sense of superiority.There already exist in Patusan before Jim's arrival cultural divergences among the country-born Malay, the Bugis and the Arab intruder. Rajah Allang forms a party that represents the decadent old power; the Bugis led by Doramin and his son represents the new emerging force; Sherif Ali is an evil foreign power in the Western eyes of Jim and Marlow. Jim's arrival further complicates the situation. Relying on the natives'support and the Western advanced technology, Jim carried out cultural reconstruction according to his Western ideology: he restructured political power, established himself as a new force, broke up trade monopoly and restored the glory of 17th century pepper trade.Chapter four is the key part of this thesis, which explores the root of Jim's failure. With his suicidal death, Jim leaves Patusan people open to external threat and to internal conflict and uncertainty. Jim who was supposed to bring"light"to the place had only deepened the cultural estrangement instead. The failure of Jim's cultural mission has its origin in both sides, in the natives themselves as well as in Jim.What Jim did in Patusan was taken not in reference to Patusan, but to a European idea of honor. He does not regard the trust of the natives as equivalent to European trust. For Jim, the natives are always objects never subjects; Jim is living in a"world without men". With Brown's arrival, Jim is caught between his loyalty to his native people and a necessity to save the life of his own white people. Because he never really enters the native community, he chooses to save the life of his compatriot even if with his own life.In the Jim-myth created by themselves, Patusan people lose their own will and their independence. Though Patusan people are instinctively distrustful of Gentleman Brown and consider Jim's decision to let him go erroneous, its very dependence on Jim makes it incapable of exercising any influence on Jim's decision. They failed to recognize that Brown is actually Jim's alter ego. Patusan people's attitude is characteristic of the people of semi-colonial countries who tend to"bifurcate"the West: Jim the representative of the"metropolitan West"; Brown of the"colonial West". The two"Wests"are the two sides of a coin, just as Jim and Brown are a unity. Main points are summarized in the conclusion part. Enveloped in his daydreams, Jim could never realize that it was the cultural estrangement arising from his sense of racial superiority that led to his fall. When Jim is given responsibility for the lives of others in Patusan, he repeats his initial failure. The failure of Jim's cultural mission has multiple implications. In the presence of advantaged culture, people from the disadvantaged culture shall not lose its own independence while advancing its own culture. As we distinguish the two sides of Western culture, we shall not fail to see its unity. Jim's failure alerts us that"contemptuous"attitude in cultural exchange is undesirable even if it's"tenderness". The sense of superiority may eventually lead to cultural collisions and conflicts. On this point the West shall reflect more; the Eastern other is a mirror for its self-question on its own culture.