"Cliff Notes - Lord Jim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

struggles, and his exceptional courage led him through one
adventure after another. He married, but both his wife and
daughter are long dead. The old man's main interest now is his
remarkable collection of butterflies and beetles--Conrad's
symbols for the two poles of human nature. You will hear more
about these later.

Stein's appearance in Chapter Nineteen heralds a shift in the
basic assumptions of the novel. The early chapters are grimly
realistic, with heavy emphasis on the futility of illusions. In
the first half, Jim's idealism is viewed as commendable,
perhaps, but obviously impractical and even dishonest in the
distance between Jim's fantasies of himself and his behavior on
the Patna. Stein expresses this point of view even as he
contradicts it. He explains that the distance between your
dreams and accomplishments is necessarily a source of pain. But
all the same, he advises, "In the destructive element
immerse"--that is, keep following your dreams even though you
can't attain them.

The reason Stein partly undercuts his own advice is that he
seems to have attained all his own dreams. Of course, as he
explains to Marlow, a casual observer can't see his failures,
his lost dreams. Still, he seems like exactly the kind of
romantic dreamer that Jim was criticized for being--and exactly
the kind of man Jim would like to be.

Stein plays a small part in the plot of the novel, sending Jim
to Patusan as his trade representative. But his position in the
center of the book lends great weight to his words. In fact,
the novel ends with Stein and his butterflies.

^^^^^^^^^^
LORD JIM: MOHAMMED BONSO

Mohammed Bonso is Stein's princely ally in the regional power
struggles, assassinated when peace was at hand. Stein married
his sister, "the princess." Both she and their small daughter,
Emma, later died of an infectious fever (Chapter Twenty).

^^^^^^^^^^
LORD JIM: RAJAH ALLANG (TUNKU ALLANG)

The nominal ruler of Patusan is the retarded Sultan (Chapter
Twenty-two), but the real power is his corrupt old uncle, the
Rajah Allang. The rajah is a dirty, wrinkled opium addict, and
he's a tyrant. Any peasant who violates his trade monopoly by
doing commerce with someone else faces a death sentence. The
rajah takes Jim prisoner when he first arrives in Patusan.
Later, after Jim has risen to power, the rajah can't afford to