feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_16_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapter 17
feat_summary_id: chapter 17
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 17", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim25.asp", "summary": "Because of the storm, Jim stays at Marlow's awhile. Marlow tries to encourage him, saying he has faith in his goodness and abilities. He also tells him that he has written a letter of recommendation for him and sent it to a man who is willing to give him a second chance. As the storm subsides, Jim leaps up with animation. Marlow's offer and words of encouragement have brightened the young sailor. He claims that Marlow has given him \"a clean slate.\" Jim then turns and walks out, leaving Marlow sitting alone in the candlelit room.", "analysis": "Notes This chapter is in strong contrast to the last one. In spite of his guilt and humiliation, Jim is still filled with pride. He refuses any offer of money; he will not take his past pay from the Patna and he will not accept monetary help from Marlow. When Marlow tells him that he has recommended him for a job, Jim becomes animated. He moves from somberness to gratitude, from desperation to confidence. With Marlow's help, Jim feels he may be able to face the future. Although the chapter ends on a note of hope for the young sailor, Marlow, who is wiser and older, is not as hopeful as Jim. Conrad uses vivid images throughout the chapter to make the scene come alive. The \"shadows huddled together in corners,\" the water- pipe was \"shedding tears,\" and the flame of the candle was \"flaring upright in the shape of a dagger.\" The inanimate object in the room seems to take on the pain that Jim is feeling."}
text: 
  'He came in at last; but I believe it was mostly the rain that did it;
  it was falling just then with a devastating violence which quieted
  down gradually while we talked. His manner was very sober and set; his
  bearing was that of a naturally taciturn man possessed by an idea. My
  talk was of the material aspect of his position; it had the sole aim of
  saving him from the degradation, ruin, and despair that out there close
  so swiftly upon a friendless, homeless man; I pleaded with him to
  accept my help; I argued reasonably: and every time I looked up at that
  absorbed smooth face, so grave and youthful, I had a disturbing sense of
  being no help but rather an obstacle to some mysterious, inexplicable,
  impalpable striving of his wounded spirit.
  
  '"I suppose you intend to eat and drink and to sleep under shelter in
  the usual way," I remember saying with irritation. "You say you won't
  touch the money that is due to you." . . . He came as near as his sort
  can to making a gesture of horror. (There were three weeks and five
  days' pay owing him as mate of the Patna.) "Well, that's too little to
  matter anyhow; but what will you do to-morrow? Where will you turn? You
  must live . . ." "That isn't the thing," was the comment that escaped
  him under his breath. I ignored it, and went on combating what I assumed
  to be the scruples of an exaggerated delicacy. "On every conceivable
  ground," I concluded, "you must let me help you." "You can't," he said
  very simply and gently, and holding fast to some deep idea which I
  could detect shimmering like a pool of water in the dark, but which
  I despaired of ever approaching near enough to fathom. I surveyed his
  well-proportioned bulk. "At any rate," I said, "I am able to help what
  I can see of you. I don't pretend to do more." He shook his head
  sceptically without looking at me. I got very warm. "But I can," I
  insisted. "I can do even more. I _am_ doing more. I am trusting
  you . . ." "The money . . ." he began. "Upon my word you deserve being
  told to go to the devil," I cried, forcing the note of indignation. He
  was startled, smiled, and I pressed my attack home. "It isn't a question
  of money at all. You are too superficial," I said (and at the same time
  I was thinking to myself: Well, here goes! And perhaps he is, after
  all). "Look at the letter I want you to take. I am writing to a man of
  whom I've never asked a favour, and I am writing about you in terms that
  one only ventures to use when speaking of an intimate friend. I make
  myself unreservedly responsible for you. That's what I am doing. And
  really if you will only reflect a little what that means . . ."
  
  'He lifted his head. The rain had passed away; only the water-pipe went
  on shedding tears with an absurd drip, drip outside the window. It was
  very quiet in the room, whose shadows huddled together in corners, away
  from the still flame of the candle flaring upright in the shape of a
  dagger; his face after a while seemed suffused by a reflection of a soft
  light as if the dawn had broken already.
  
  '"Jove!" he gasped out. "It is noble of you!"
  
  'Had he suddenly put out his tongue at me in derision, I could not have
  felt more humiliated. I thought to myself--Serve me right for a sneaking
  humbug. . . . His eyes shone straight into my face, but I perceived
  it was not a mocking brightness. All at once he sprang into jerky
  agitation, like one of those flat wooden figures that are worked by a
  string. His arms went up, then came down with a slap. He became another
  man altogether. "And I had never seen," he shouted; then suddenly bit
  his lip and frowned. "What a bally ass I've been," he said very slow
  in an awed tone. . . . "You are a brick!" he cried next in a muffled
  voice. He snatched my hand as though he had just then seen it for the
  first time, and dropped it at once. "Why! this is what I--you--I . . ."
  he stammered, and then with a return of his old stolid, I may say
  mulish, manner he began heavily, "I would be a brute now if I . . ." and
  then his voice seemed to break. "That's all right," I said. I was almost
  alarmed by this display of feeling, through which pierced a strange
  elation. I had pulled the string accidentally, as it were; I did not
  fully understand the working of the toy. "I must go now," he said.
  "Jove! You _have_ helped me. Can't sit still. The very thing . . ." He
  looked at me with puzzled admiration. "The very thing . . ."
  
  'Of course it was the thing. It was ten to one that I had saved him from
  starvation--of that peculiar sort that is almost invariably associated
  with drink. This was all. I had not a single illusion on that score, but
  looking at him, I allowed myself to wonder at the nature of the one he
  had, within the last three minutes, so evidently taken into his bosom.
  I had forced into his hand the means to carry on decently the serious
  business of life, to get food, drink, and shelter of the customary kind
  while his wounded spirit, like a bird with a broken wing, might hop and
  flutter into some hole to die quietly of inanition there. This is what
  I had thrust upon him: a definitely small thing; and--behold!--by the
  manner of its reception it loomed in the dim light of the candle like
  a big, indistinct, perhaps a dangerous shadow. "You don't mind me not
  saying anything appropriate," he burst out. "There isn't anything one
  could say. Last night already you had done me no end of good. Listening
  to me--you know. I give you my word I've thought more than once the top
  of my head would fly off. . ." He darted--positively darted--here and
  there, rammed his hands into his pockets, jerked them out again, flung
  his cap on his head. I had no idea it was in him to be so airily
  brisk. I thought of a dry leaf imprisoned in an eddy of wind, while a
  mysterious apprehension, a load of indefinite doubt, weighed me down in
  my chair. He stood stock-still, as if struck motionless by a discovery.
  "You have given me confidence," he declared, soberly. "Oh! for God's
  sake, my dear fellow--don't!" I entreated, as though he had hurt me.
  "All right. I'll shut up now and henceforth. Can't prevent me thinking
  though. . . . Never mind! . . . I'll show yet . . ." He went to the
  door in a hurry, paused with his head down, and came back, stepping
  deliberately. "I always thought that if a fellow could begin with a
  clean slate . . . And now you . . . in a measure . . . yes . . . clean
  slate." I waved my hand, and he marched out without looking back; the
  sound of his footfalls died out gradually behind the closed door--the
  unhesitating tread of a man walking in broad daylight.
  
  'But as to me, left alone with the solitary candle, I remained strangely
  unenlightened. I was no longer young enough to behold at every turn
  the magnificence that besets our insignificant footsteps in good and in
  evil. I smiled to think that, after all, it was yet he, of us two, who
  had the light. And I felt sad. A clean slate, did he say? As if the
  initial word of each our destiny were not graven in imperishable
  characters upon the face of a rock.'
feat_summary_name: Chapter 17
target: Because of the storm, Jim stays at Marlow's awhile. Marlow tries to encourage him, saying he has faith in his goodness and abilities. He also tells him that he has written a letter of recommendation for him and sent it to a man who is willing to give him a second chance. As the storm subsides, Jim leaps up with animation. Marlow's offer and words of encouragement have brightened the young sailor. He claims that Marlow has given him "a clean slate." Jim then turns and walks out, leaving Marlow sitting alone in the candlelit room.
feat_summary_analysis: Notes This chapter is in strong contrast to the last one. In spite of his guilt and humiliation, Jim is still filled with pride. He refuses any offer of money; he will not take his past pay from the Patna and he will not accept monetary help from Marlow. When Marlow tells him that he has recommended him for a job, Jim becomes animated. He moves from somberness to gratitude, from desperation to confidence. With Marlow's help, Jim feels he may be able to face the future. Although the chapter ends on a note of hope for the young sailor, Marlow, who is wiser and older, is not as hopeful as Jim. Conrad uses vivid images throughout the chapter to make the scene come alive. The "shadows huddled together in corners," the water- pipe was "shedding tears," and the flame of the candle was "flaring upright in the shape of a dagger." The inanimate object in the room seems to take on the pain that Jim is feeling.