"Cliff Notes - Lord Jim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)sympathetic ear, supplies all the painful details. Though
there's no excusing Jim, it's also clear that he's not as great a scoundrel as the other crew members. Marlow develops some compassion for the young man. (It's Marlow who narrates most of the novel.) One of the judges at the inquiry is a highly successful and extremely conceited captain named Montague Brierly. The inquiry disturbs him, and he tries to talk Marlow into bribing Jim to run away. Brierly is so anguished by the potential for human cowardice that Jim has demonstrated that he kills himself at sea a short time later. After the inquiry, Marlow comes to Jim's aid by recommending him to a friend who owns a rice mill. Jim does well there, but when the second engineer of the Patna shows up looking for work, Jim leaves. He can't stand being reminded of his humiliation. For the next several years he drifts from port to port, working as a water clerk for suppliers of provisions to ships. As soon as he's recognized, he leaves. But eventually he becomes so well-known that there's almost no place left for him to hide. At this point Marlow seeks advice and help from his old friend Stein, a wealthy German merchant whose chief interest is collecting butterflies and beetles. Stein hires Jim as a trade is tyrannized by its ruler, the Rajah Allang. The Rajah's main rival is old Doramin, who leads a settlement of Muslim immigrants and is, incidentally, an old friend of Stein's. A third political force is Sherif Ali, a cult leader who hasterrorized the countryside. The Rajah takes Jim prisoner as soon as he arrives. But Jim escapes and seeks out Doramin, who protects him for the sake of his old friendship with Stein. Jim hatches a plot to rout Sherif Ali, and with the help of Doramin's son, Dain Waris, they drive him out of Patusan. Jim rises to a position of leadership in the community, and the Rajah's power is curbed. But the person who hates Jim most isn't the Rajah but Cornelius, the man Jim replaced as Stein's representative. Cornelius' dead wife bore a daughter by another man, and Jim falls in love with this daughter. He calls her Jewel. Jewel loves Jim fiercely, but she's terrified he'll abandon her as her father abandoned her mother. Under Jim's leadership, life for the villagers becomes stable and secure. But that changes when a malicious British pirate named Gentleman Brown invades Patusan, bent on plunder. Jim is away when Brown's men sail up the river, but Dain Waris leads the defense, cornering Brown and his men on a hill. When Jim |
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