The Short Unhappy Life of Lord Jim

Well, perhaps. He regained his honor, but only in that village. In the outside world he was still a dishonorable man. So long as he could stay in the village he had a life; outside the village he did not. Or did he??

Yes, he could have lived in the outside world. But that was not the ultimate point. In fact, in the novel he did not suffer the extreme ostracism that the movie portrays. He had a number of good jobs in the world at the seaports, but would leave when the Patna incident was mentioned; even though nobody at those ports seemed to know that he was connected to that incident. Yet, the point was that HE knew what he had done and could not live with that. When he found a place where he could regain his honor then he could accept himself again.

Our hardest critic is ourselves. When he made that terrible mistake in the village he was not about to throw away what he had regained. The only way to keep what he had regained is shown in the film, and is not regarded as taking honor too far, even in our day and age.

By the way, we are in the early part of the century. I guess you mean the previous century. ;-)

In his author's note to Lord Jim, written about 1917, Joseph Conrad had this to say:

A friend of mine returning from Italy had talked with a lady there who did not like the book. I regretted that, of course, but what surprised me was the ground of her dislike. 'You know,' she said, 'it is all so morbid.'

The pronouncement gave me food for an hour's anxious thought. Finally I arrived at the conclusion that, making due allowances for the subject itself being rather foreign to women's normal sensibilities, the lady could not have been an Italian. I wonder whether she was European at all? In any case, no Latin temperament would have perceived anything morbid in the acute consciousness of lost honour. Such a consciousness may be wrong, or it may be right, or it may be condemned as artificial; and, perhaps, my Jim is not a type of wide commonness. But I can safely assure my readers that he is not the product of coldly perverted thinking. He's not a figure of Northern Mists either. One sunny morning, in the commonplace surroundings of an Eastern roadstead, I saw his form pass by--appealing--significant--under a cloud--perfectly silent. Which is as it should be. It was for me, with all the sympathy of which I was capable, to seek fit words for his meaning. He was 'one of us'.

I don't think it's so much about honour, as in a societal code, as it is about integrity. Quite apart from what societal honour might dictate, the fact that the crew quit without even launching the other lifeboat meant that had the ship sunk they would have been directly responsible for the drowning of those who would otherwise have been saved by the lifeboats. Plus, Jim's word had reassured the pilgrims so he had special personal responsibility. Most of all, he was the last to leave and therefore it was down to him personally, and not the captain or anybody else, whether the passengers were left entirely to their fate or at least one of the crew stayed to try to launch the other lifeboat, steer, etc. It's very dangerous to equate societal honour and integrity (Imperial Japan was honour-obsessed, but genocide was not considered dishonourable), but in this case both integrity and societal honour demanded that he seize control of the ship.
Again, when he stayed to be killed, it had been entirely down to him to let the bandits leave and, therefore, it was a matter of integrity to assume responsibility for the consequences, particularly as he had given his life as guarantee entirely of his own volition (just as he had given his word that he would not abandon the Patna). He could not have lived with himself if he had fled.

In addition to the posts here regarding honour, especially that of a naval officer, I would add that Jim's determination to forfeit his life as recompense for abandoning the SS Patna was flawed. It is harder to live and make for one's self a good life with such a blight on the conscience but that is precisely Jim's challenge and he 'jumps ship' again by going into death and oblivion. Jim can be contrasted with Dr Monygham in Nostromo.

SPOILERS BELOW

In Nostromo Dr Monygham is an ex-pat with a chequered past. He had been tortured and given information that led to the deaths of others. He cannot forgive himself for this betrayal and leads a life held separate from others. That is until he finds himself in love with Mrs Gould and motivated by his love for her he sacrifices himself. He is not aware that his actions will cost his life but they do and he is committed to them because of love. The difference between him and Jim is that Monygham acts from love; Jim to try and restore some balance of conscience. Monygham is the more admirable because he lives and loves in spite of his betrayal; Jim never does.

The distance is nothing. The first step is the hardest.

**SPOILERS**