feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_32_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapter 33
feat_summary_id: chapter 33
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim42.asp", "summary": "Jewel confided in Marlow that she did not want to die weeping like her mother. Marlow was overwhelmed by the girl's fear and grief. He tried to convince her that Jim would never leave her, that Jim was truer than any man; but she remained doubtful and apprehensive. Her ignorance made her an object of pity. Marlow, wondering if Jim had told Jewel about the Patna, asked her what she knew about his past life. Jewel said she knew nothing, that he had only assured her that he would never leave her. Marlow explained that Jim had no one in the other world. When asked why, Marlow answered that he was not good enough. Jewel did not believe him.", "analysis": "Notes This chapter, an important one in the novel, has a very serious Mood. It shows the nature of Jewel's fears of being destroyed by a white man. Marlow assures Jewel that Jim will never leave Patusan. This is true, as long as no one discovers Jim's past or his guilt. Marlow feels that Jim does not permanently belong in Patusan; however, he knows Jim can never go back to England where he belongs. Marlow feels this fact makes Jim's existence tragic. Before he departs, he assures Jewel that he will never come back to Patusan, so she need not fear him."}
text: 
  'I was immensely touched: her youth, her ignorance, her pretty beauty,
  which had the simple charm and the delicate vigour of a wild-flower,
  her pathetic pleading, her helplessness, appealed to me with almost
  the strength of her own unreasonable and natural fear. She feared the
  unknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely
  vast. I stood for it, for myself, for you fellows, for all the world
  that neither cared for Jim nor needed him in the least. I would have
  been ready enough to answer for the indifference of the teeming earth
  but for the reflection that he too belonged to this mysterious unknown
  of her fears, and that, however much I stood for, I did not stand for
  him. This made me hesitate. A murmur of hopeless pain unsealed my lips.
  I began by protesting that I at least had come with no intention to take
  Jim away.
  
  'Why did I come, then? After a slight movement she was as still as a
  marble statue in the night. I tried to explain briefly: friendship,
  business; if I had any wish in the matter it was rather to see him stay.
  . . . "They always leave us," she murmured. The breath of sad wisdom
  from the grave which her piety wreathed with flowers seemed to pass in a
  faint sigh. . . . Nothing, I said, could separate Jim from her.
  
  'It is my firm conviction now; it was my conviction at the time; it was
  the only possible conclusion from the facts of the case. It was not made
  more certain by her whispering in a tone in which one speaks to oneself,
  "He swore this to me." "Did you ask him?" I said.
  
  'She made a step nearer. "No. Never!" She had asked him only to go away.
  It was that night on the river-bank, after he had killed the man--after
  she had flung the torch in the water because he was looking at her so.
  There was too much light, and the danger was over then--for a little
  time--for a little time. He said then he would not abandon her to
  Cornelius. She had insisted. She wanted him to leave her. He said that
  he could not--that it was impossible. He trembled while he said this.
  She had felt him tremble. . . . One does not require much imagination
  to see the scene, almost to hear their whispers. She was afraid for him
  too. I believe that then she saw in him only a predestined victim of
  dangers which she understood better than himself. Though by nothing
  but his mere presence he had mastered her heart, had filled all
  her thoughts, and had possessed himself of all her affections, she
  underestimated his chances of success. It is obvious that at about
  that time everybody was inclined to underestimate his chances. Strictly
  speaking he didn't seem to have any. I know this was Cornelius's view.
  He confessed that much to me in extenuation of the shady part he had
  played in Sherif Ali's plot to do away with the infidel. Even Sherif Ali
  himself, as it seems certain now, had nothing but contempt for the white
  man. Jim was to be murdered mainly on religious grounds, I believe. A
  simple act of piety (and so far infinitely meritorious), but otherwise
  without much importance. In the last part of this opinion Cornelius
  concurred. "Honourable sir," he argued abjectly on the only occasion he
  managed to have me to himself--"honourable sir, how was I to know? Who
  was he? What could he do to make people believe him? What did Mr. Stein
  mean sending a boy like that to talk big to an old servant? I was ready
  to save him for eighty dollars. Only eighty dollars. Why didn't the
  fool go? Was I to get stabbed myself for the sake of a stranger?" He
  grovelled in spirit before me, with his body doubled up insinuatingly
  and his hands hovering about my knees, as though he were ready to
  embrace my legs. "What's eighty dollars? An insignificant sum to give to
  a defenceless old man ruined for life by a deceased she-devil." Here he
  wept. But I anticipate. I didn't that night chance upon Cornelius till I
  had had it out with the girl.
  
  'She was unselfish when she urged Jim to leave her, and even to leave
  the country. It was his danger that was foremost in her thoughts--even
  if she wanted to save herself too--perhaps unconsciously: but then look
  at the warning she had, look at the lesson that could be drawn from
  every moment of the recently ended life in which all her memories were
  centred. She fell at his feet--she told me so--there by the river, in
  the discreet light of stars which showed nothing except great masses of
  silent shadows, indefinite open spaces, and trembling faintly upon the
  broad stream made it appear as wide as the sea. He had lifted her up.
  He lifted her up, and then she would struggle no more. Of course not.
  Strong arms, a tender voice, a stalwart shoulder to rest her poor lonely
  little head upon. The need--the infinite need--of all this for the
  aching heart, for the bewildered mind;--the promptings of youth--the
  necessity of the moment. What would you have? One understands--unless
  one is incapable of understanding anything under the sun. And so she was
  content to be lifted up--and held. "You know--Jove! this is serious--no
  nonsense in it!" as Jim had whispered hurriedly with a troubled
  concerned face on the threshold of his house. I don't know so much about
  nonsense, but there was nothing light-hearted in their romance: they
  came together under the shadow of a life's disaster, like knight and
  maiden meeting to exchange vows amongst haunted ruins. The starlight was
  good enough for that story, a light so faint and remote that it cannot
  resolve shadows into shapes, and show the other shore of a stream. I
  did look upon the stream that night and from the very place; it rolled
  silent and as black as Styx: the next day I went away, but I am not
  likely to forget what it was she wanted to be saved from when she
  entreated him to leave her while there was time. She told me what
  it was, calmed--she was now too passionately interested for mere
  excitement--in a voice as quiet in the obscurity as her white half-lost
  figure. She told me, "I didn't want to die weeping." I thought I had not
  heard aright.
  
  '"You did not want to die weeping?" I repeated after her. "Like my
  mother," she added readily. The outlines of her white shape did not
  stir in the least. "My mother had wept bitterly before she died," she
  explained. An inconceivable calmness seemed to have risen from the
  ground around us, imperceptibly, like the still rise of a flood in the
  night, obliterating the familiar landmarks of emotions. There came
  upon me, as though I had felt myself losing my footing in the midst of
  waters, a sudden dread, the dread of the unknown depths. She went on
  explaining that, during the last moments, being alone with her mother,
  she had to leave the side of the couch to go and set her back against
  the door, in order to keep Cornelius out. He desired to get in, and
  kept on drumming with both fists, only desisting now and again to shout
  huskily, "Let me in! Let me in! Let me in!" In a far corner upon a few
  mats the moribund woman, already speechless and unable to lift her arm,
  rolled her head over, and with a feeble movement of her hand seemed to
  command--"No! No!" and the obedient daughter, setting her shoulders with
  all her strength against the door, was looking on. "The tears fell from
  her eyes--and then she died," concluded the girl in an imperturbable
  monotone, which more than anything else, more than the white statuesque
  immobility of her person, more than mere words could do, troubled my
  mind profoundly with the passive, irremediable horror of the scene. It
  had the power to drive me out of my conception of existence, out of
  that shelter each of us makes for himself to creep under in moments of
  danger, as a tortoise withdraws within its shell. For a moment I had
  a view of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of
  disorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is
  as sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the mind of man can
  conceive. But still--it was only a moment: I went back into my shell
  directly. One _must_--don't you know?--though I seemed to have lost all
  my words in the chaos of dark thoughts I had contemplated for a second
  or two beyond the pale. These came back, too, very soon, for words also
  belong to the sheltering conception of light and order which is our
  refuge. I had them ready at my disposal before she whispered softly, "He
  swore he would never leave me, when we stood there alone! He swore to
  me!". . . "And it is possible that you--you! do not believe him?"
  I asked, sincerely reproachful, genuinely shocked. Why couldn't she
  believe? Wherefore this craving for incertitude, this clinging to fear,
  as if incertitude and fear had been the safeguards of her love. It was
  monstrous. She should have made for herself a shelter of inexpugnable
  peace out of that honest affection. She had not the knowledge--not the
  skill perhaps. The night had come on apace; it had grown pitch-dark
  where we were, so that without stirring she had faded like the
  intangible form of a wistful and perverse spirit. And suddenly I heard
  her quiet whisper again, "Other men had sworn the same thing." It was
  like a meditative comment on some thoughts full of sadness, of awe. And
  she added, still lower if possible, "My father did." She paused the
  time to draw an inaudible breath. "Her father too." . . . These were the
  things she knew! At once I said, "Ah! but he is not like that." This,
  it seemed, she did not intend to dispute; but after a time the strange
  still whisper wandering dreamily in the air stole into my ears. "Why
  is he different? Is he better? Is he . . ." "Upon my word of honour," I
  broke in, "I believe he is." We subdued our tones to a mysterious pitch.
  Amongst the huts of Jim's workmen (they were mostly liberated slaves
  from the Sherif's stockade) somebody started a shrill, drawling song.
  Across the river a big fire (at Doramin's, I think) made a glowing
  ball, completely isolated in the night. "Is he more true?" she murmured.
  "Yes," I said. "More true than any other man," she repeated in
  lingering accents. "Nobody here," I said, "would dream of doubting his
  word--nobody would dare--except you."
  
  'I think she made a movement at this. "More brave," she went on in a
  changed tone. "Fear will never drive him away from you," I said a little
  nervously. The song stopped short on a shrill note, and was succeeded by
  several voices talking in the distance. Jim's voice too. I was struck
  by her silence. "What has he been telling you? He has been telling you
  something?" I asked. There was no answer. "What is it he told you?" I
  insisted.
  
  '"Do you think I can tell you? How am I to know? How am I to
  understand?" she cried at last. There was a stir. I believe she was
  wringing her hands. "There is something he can never forget."
  
  '"So much the better for you," I said gloomily.
  
  '"What is it? What is it?" She put an extraordinary force of appeal into
  her supplicating tone. "He says he had been afraid. How can I believe
  this? Am I a mad woman to believe this? You all remember something! You
  all go back to it. What is it? You tell me! What is this thing? Is it
  alive?--is it dead? I hate it. It is cruel. Has it got a face and a
  voice--this calamity? Will he see it--will he hear it? In his sleep
  perhaps when he cannot see me--and then arise and go. Ah! I shall never
  forgive him. My mother had forgiven--but I, never! Will it be a sign--a
  call?"
  
  'It was a wonderful experience. She mistrusted his very slumbers--and
  she seemed to think I could tell her why! Thus a poor mortal seduced by
  the charm of an apparition might have tried to wring from another
  ghost the tremendous secret of the claim the other world holds over a
  disembodied soul astray amongst the passions of this earth. The very
  ground on which I stood seemed to melt under my feet. And it was so
  simple too; but if the spirits evoked by our fears and our unrest have
  ever to vouch for each other's constancy before the forlorn magicians
  that we are, then I--I alone of us dwellers in the flesh--have shuddered
  in the hopeless chill of such a task. A sign, a call! How telling in its
  expression was her ignorance. A few words! How she came to know them,
  how she came to pronounce them, I can't imagine. Women find their
  inspiration in the stress of moments that for us are merely awful,
  absurd, or futile. To discover that she had a voice at all was enough
  to strike awe into the heart. Had a spurned stone cried out in pain it
  could not have appeared a greater and more pitiful miracle. These few
  sounds wandering in the dark had made their two benighted lives tragic
  to my mind. It was impossible to make her understand. I chafed silently
  at my impotence. And Jim, too--poor devil! Who would need him? Who would
  remember him? He had what he wanted. His very existence probably had
  been forgotten by this time. They had mastered their fates. They were
  tragic.
  
  'Her immobility before me was clearly expectant, and my part was to
  speak for my brother from the realm of forgetful shade. I was deeply
  moved at my responsibility and at her distress. I would have given
  anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in
  its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel
  wires of a cage. Nothing easier than to say, Have no fear! Nothing more
  difficult. How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre
  through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral
  throat? It is an enterprise you rush into while you dream, and are glad
  to make your escape with wet hair and every limb shaking. The bullet is
  not run, the blade not forged, the man not born; even the winged words
  of truth drop at your feet like lumps of lead. You require for such a
  desperate encounter an enchanted and poisoned shaft dipped in a lie too
  subtle to be found on earth. An enterprise for a dream, my masters!
  
  'I began my exorcism with a heavy heart, with a sort of sullen anger in
  it too. Jim's voice, suddenly raised with a stern intonation, carried
  across the courtyard, reproving the carelessness of some dumb sinner by
  the river-side. Nothing--I said, speaking in a distinct murmur--there
  could be nothing, in that unknown world she fancied so eager to rob her
  of her happiness, there was nothing, neither living nor dead, there was
  no face, no voice, no power, that could tear Jim from her side. I drew
  breath and she whispered softly, "He told me so." "He told you the
  truth," I said. "Nothing," she sighed out, and abruptly turned upon me
  with a barely audible intensity of tone: "Why did you come to us from
  out there? He speaks of you too often. You make me afraid. Do you--do
  you want him?" A sort of stealthy fierceness had crept into our hurried
  mutters. "I shall never come again," I said bitterly. "And I don't want
  him. No one wants him." "No one," she repeated in a tone of doubt. "No
  one," I affirmed, feeling myself swayed by some strange excitement. "You
  think him strong, wise, courageous, great--why not believe him to be
  true too? I shall go to-morrow--and that is the end. You shall never be
  troubled by a voice from there again. This world you don't know is too
  big to miss him. You understand? Too big. You've got his heart in your
  hand. You must feel that. You must know that." "Yes, I know that," she
  breathed out, hard and still, as a statue might whisper.
  
  'I felt I had done nothing. And what is it that I had wished to do? I am
  not sure now. At the time I was animated by an inexplicable ardour, as
  if before some great and necessary task--the influence of the moment
  upon my mental and emotional state. There are in all our lives
  such moments, such influences, coming from the outside, as it were,
  irresistible, incomprehensible--as if brought about by the mysterious
  conjunctions of the planets. She owned, as I had put it to her, his
  heart. She had that and everything else--if she could only believe it.
  What I had to tell her was that in the whole world there was no one who
  ever would need his heart, his mind, his hand. It was a common fate, and
  yet it seemed an awful thing to say of any man. She listened without
  a word, and her stillness now was like the protest of an invincible
  unbelief. What need she care for the world beyond the forests? I asked.
  From all the multitudes that peopled the vastness of that unknown there
  would come, I assured her, as long as he lived, neither a call nor a
  sign for him. Never. I was carried away. Never! Never! I remember with
  wonder the sort of dogged fierceness I displayed. I had the illusion
  of having got the spectre by the throat at last. Indeed the whole real
  thing has left behind the detailed and amazing impression of a dream.
  Why should she fear? She knew him to be strong, true, wise, brave. He
  was all that. Certainly. He was more. He was great--invincible--and the
  world did not want him, it had forgotten him, it would not even know
  him.
  
  'I stopped; the silence over Patusan was profound, and the feeble dry
  sound of a paddle striking the side of a canoe somewhere in the middle
  of the river seemed to make it infinite. "Why?" she murmured. I felt
  that sort of rage one feels during a hard tussle. The spectre was trying
  to slip out of my grasp. "Why?" she repeated louder; "tell me!" And as
  I remained confounded, she stamped with her foot like a spoilt child.
  "Why? Speak." "You want to know?" I asked in a fury. "Yes!" she cried.
  "Because he is not good enough," I said brutally. During the moment's
  pause I noticed the fire on the other shore blaze up, dilating the
  circle of its glow like an amazed stare, and contract suddenly to a
  red pin-point. I only knew how close to me she had been when I felt
  the clutch of her fingers on my forearm. Without raising her voice, she
  threw into it an infinity of scathing contempt, bitterness, and despair.
  
  '"This is the very thing he said. . . . You lie!"
  
  'The last two words she cried at me in the native dialect. "Hear me
  out!" I entreated; she caught her breath tremulously, flung my arm away.
  "Nobody, nobody is good enough," I began with the greatest earnestness.
  I could hear the sobbing labour of her breath frightfully quickened. I
  hung my head. What was the use? Footsteps were approaching; I slipped
  away without another word. . . .'
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter 33
target: Jewel confided in Marlow that she did not want to die weeping like her mother. Marlow was overwhelmed by the girl's fear and grief. He tried to convince her that Jim would never leave her, that Jim was truer than any man; but she remained doubtful and apprehensive. Her ignorance made her an object of pity. Marlow, wondering if Jim had told Jewel about the Patna, asked her what she knew about his past life. Jewel said she knew nothing, that he had only assured her that he would never leave her. Marlow explained that Jim had no one in the other world. When asked why, Marlow answered that he was not good enough. Jewel did not believe him.
feat_summary_analysis: Notes This chapter, an important one in the novel, has a very serious Mood. It shows the nature of Jewel's fears of being destroyed by a white man. Marlow assures Jewel that Jim will never leave Patusan. This is true, as long as no one discovers Jim's past or his guilt. Marlow feels that Jim does not permanently belong in Patusan; however, he knows Jim can never go back to England where he belongs. Marlow feels this fact makes Jim's existence tragic. Before he departs, he assures Jewel that he will never come back to Patusan, so she need not fear him.