Lord Jim (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

The Other Side of Kurtz

In HEART OF DARKNESS, one of three Conradian works featuring the narrator Marlowe, the main character is Kurtz, a European completely corrupted by imperialism. In LORD JIM, Marlowe tells of his friend Jim, another European who seeks the jungle. Jim does everything he can to help the tribesmen he encounters. Although LORD JIM is an anti-imperialist book, it is a warning from a civilized author to a civilized readership to expect to be demoralized in any encounter with primitive peoples. Kurtz is a bad man and Jim is a good man, but the two have much in common. Marlowe (Conrad's mouthpiece) pities them both.

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Flip Side of Heart of Darkness

This beautiful story of a young man damned to a reputation of cowardice is from the man who wrote HEART OF DARKNESS. This involves imperialists in the jungle, as does HEART OF DARKNESS, but Jim, the young man, wants to help people. Whether he can or not is part of the plot. Conrad is the master of irony.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A reviewer

When I read Lord Jim for the first time as a teenager I found it boring. Many years later I now find it an amazing book. Conrad himself spent sixteen years at sea in the late 1800s, so this book is to some degree autobiographical. The version of this book that I have even quotes Conrad: 'Every novel contains an element of autobiography.' In this book, the protagonist, Jim, travels to a remote region of the world, far from Victorian England. In this sense, the plot is similar to that in one of Conrad's other famous works, Heart of Darkness. Other than that book, I'm not familiar with Conrad's other works, nor am I an expert in Victorian literature, so I can't place this in its proper historical context. However, it seems like an amazingly well written story in and of itself.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A thinking mans adventure.

Lord Jim is an adventure story, but it also involves the psychological side. There were several chapters that I had to reread several times to get a true grasp of the story that was being told. And that's alright. Jim is a young man who pictures himself as one who is destined to be a hero and a great adventurer. Unfortunately reality does not match his vision and Jim must deal with his own act of cowardice. Wherever Jim goes and as much as he tries to hide form his past, he soon learns it catches up with him and since he does not know that if he can be forgiven he runs further and further. His lack of knowing that he can have redemptions leads to a very sad ending. While this is not as easy reading as most adventures, and at times made me want to pull my hair out, I still recommend it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

One of the finest books I ever read

I had just graduated from highschool when I read Lord Jim. Anyone can understand it if they invest their time in it. And it would be an investment that pays dividends for the rest of your life.

It's full of typos..

This versionwas unreadalbe because all the typos and line errors I found....

difficult to read

format is difficult to follow. Paragraphs are either run on or separated in middle by line spaces.

Joseph Conrad is not my type of writer.

In my opinion the story became bogged done with too much psychological analysing of the characters to keep my interest.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Oh Ho Hum

next to the most boring book I've ever read. Just putting words on the paper to use words is not my cup of tea.

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boring

I thought the first half of the book was pretty good but it went downhill from there. I really struggled to finish this one. Boring!

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

excellent book!

I think that this was an wonderful book. It was one book out of many on my 9th grade reading list, and I am so glad that I read it. THe characters are memorable, and the storyline is wonderful. Conrad is a very elegant writer with an interesting style. I would definitly recommend this book.

classics

Too many Americans have difficulty reading material that has not been simplified. This is too bad for many books involve vocabulary and an appreciation for dialect. This book is one that requires an education to appreciate. Yet, I hope readers do not shy away from it. You need not have a teacher, only a curious mind.

Professional Readers Only

In LORD JIM Joseph Conrad is telling of a story of a man how he has to deal with guilt and how he is going to try and find redemption. In the beginning of the book it goes pretty smooth then the dialect starts jumping from the present time to the past and back again. If the author would have just wrote the story line with out so much detail in trying to describe every little thing, it would go much faster and easier to keep up. I only recommend this book for a class project or expert readers.

not a Conrad fan

I wish that Conrad did not have such a penchant for making almost his entire book one long quotation. Distinguishing the embedded quotes, as well as figuring out the antecedents of pronouns in text such as 'he exclaimed,' was frustrating. I thought, however, that the moral of the story in this book was more worth telling than the one in 'Heart of Darkness,' and it was a more satisfying 'atonement' than the recent novel of that name. Still, I found the writing difficult to wade through. It is easy to become mesmerized by the prose to the point of almost missing significant details of the story.

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