There is a tension in the book between the codes by which ordinary and unsung men live their lives of duty and self-sacrifice, and the ambitions of those who, in their own view at least, transcend the rules because they are born to a higher destiny.

Jim is inarticulate, self-obsessed, easily duped, and ultimately destroyed by his tendency to refer everything around him to the way in which he perceives himself. However natural they are to youth, they are, in themselves, not only an obstacle to a true understanding of the world, but treacherous to the exercise of practical virtue. The reader is given to understand that the narrator, at least, regards these qualities, on which so much store is sometimes set, as being of at least doubtful value. He is, as the older, and more world-weary narrator emphasises, deeply romantic, highly imaginative, and extremely idealistic. What is interesting about Jim is that the flaw, in his case, lies in his romantic idealism. It seems to me that Conrad's novel is tragic in form, and that Jim is a flawed character, of the type which Aristotle famously defined as requisite to true tragedy. I wonder whether this book is really to be read in as optimistic a light as that in which some of your contributors appear to have understood it?

The journey this man embarks on is actually courageous but fate is against him and whatever adventure befalls him and how many times his courage saves himself and others, the publicity of his past mistakes never dies until one day, thinking he is safe from further recriminations, he makes a promise.-Submitted by Anonymous. Nevertheless, as the story progresses, the reader can identify and sympathize with his very human actions in difficult circumstances and will him to find a way for absolution. The hero of this book suffers from a guilty conscience brought on by cowardice. The waters he travels reward him with the ability to explore the human spirit, while Joseph Conrad launches the story into both an exercise of his technical prowess and a delicately crafted picture of a character who reaches the status of a literary hero. An English boy in a simple town has dreams bigger than the outdoors and embarks at an early age into the sailor's life. This compact novel, completed in 1900, as with so many of the great novels of the time, is at its baseline a book of the sea.

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