feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Lord Jim/section_26_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Lord Jim.chapter 27
feat_summary_id: chapter 27
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter 27", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820051943/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmLordJim36.asp", "summary": "With the help of Doramin's people as allies, Jim oversees the hauling of two cannons up the mountain, working all night. Sherif Ali watched in disbelief as Doramin had himself carried up the mountain to have a good view of the fighting. The Bugis fired at Sherif Ali's stronghold on the opposite mountain, destroying it with cannon balls. The Bugis then attacked the remains. Jim and Dain Waris were the first to enter the ruins. Jim's servant, Tamb'Itam was constantly by his side. Sherif Ali fell on his knees and asked for forgiveness. He pledged obedience and was forgiven. Joy spread round Patusan, and Jim became a hero on whom the natives depended. Jim took their devotion very seriously and felt great responsibility towards them.", "analysis": "Notes Because of the defeat of Sherif Ali, Jim becomes a hero in the eyes of the Malays and is soon referred to as Tuan Jim, or Lord Jim. The Bugis think he has supernatural powers and begin to worship him. They accept his word as the truth; \"his word decided everything.\" Marlow comments that Jim is one of those exceptional men whose fame spreads like wild fire; unfortunately, his adoration leads to his isolation from the common people and the attendant loneliness. For the most part, he is cut off from his world. Only Tamb'Itam, Jim's personal servant who follows him like a shadow until the last day of Jim's life, gives him regular human contact."}
text: 'Already the legend had gifted him with supernatural powers. Yes, it
  was said, there had been many ropes cunningly disposed, and a strange
  contrivance that turned by the efforts of many men, and each gun went
  up tearing slowly through the bushes, like a wild pig rooting its way in
  the undergrowth, but . . . and the wisest shook their heads. There was
  something occult in all this, no doubt; for what is the strength of
  ropes and of men's arms? There is a rebellious soul in things which must
  be overcome by powerful charms and incantations. Thus old Sura--a very
  respectable householder of Patusan--with whom I had a quiet chat one
  evening. However, Sura was a professional sorcerer also, who attended
  all the rice sowings and reapings for miles around for the purpose of
  subduing the stubborn souls of things. This occupation he seemed to
  think a most arduous one, and perhaps the souls of things are more
  stubborn than the souls of men. As to the simple folk of outlying
  villages, they believed and said (as the most natural thing in the
  world) that Jim had carried the guns up the hill on his back--two at a
  time.
  
  'This would make Jim stamp his foot in vexation and exclaim with an
  exasperated little laugh, "What can you do with such silly beggars? They
  will sit up half the night talking bally rot, and the greater the lie
  the more they seem to like it." You could trace the subtle influence of
  his surroundings in this irritation. It was part of his captivity. The
  earnestness of his denials was amusing, and at last I said, "My dear
  fellow, you don't suppose _I_ believe this." He looked at me quite
  startled. "Well, no! I suppose not," he said, and burst into a Homeric
  peal of laughter. "Well, anyhow the guns were there, and went off all
  together at sunrise. Jove! You should have seen the splinters fly," he
  cried. By his side Dain Waris, listening with a quiet smile, dropped his
  eyelids and shuffled his feet a little. It appears that the success in
  mounting the guns had given Jim's people such a feeling of confidence
  that he ventured to leave the battery under charge of two elderly Bugis
  who had seen some fighting in their day, and went to join Dain Waris and
  the storming party who were concealed in the ravine. In the small hours
  they began creeping up, and when two-thirds of the way up, lay in the
  wet grass waiting for the appearance of the sun, which was the agreed
  signal. He told me with what impatient anguishing emotion he watched the
  swift coming of the dawn; how, heated with the work and the climbing,
  he felt the cold dew chilling his very bones; how afraid he was he
  would begin to shiver and shake like a leaf before the time came for
  the advance. "It was the slowest half-hour in my life," he declared.
  Gradually the silent stockade came out on the sky above him. Men
  scattered all down the slope were crouching amongst the dark stones and
  dripping bushes. Dain Waris was lying flattened by his side. "We
  looked at each other," Jim said, resting a gentle hand on his friend's
  shoulder. "He smiled at me as cheery as you please, and I dared not stir
  my lips for fear I would break out into a shivering fit. 'Pon my word,
  it's true! I had been streaming with perspiration when we took cover--so
  you may imagine . . ." He declared, and I believe him, that he had no
  fears as to the result. He was only anxious as to his ability to repress
  these shivers. He didn't bother about the result. He was bound to get to
  the top of that hill and stay there, whatever might happen. There could
  be no going back for him. Those people had trusted him implicitly. Him
  alone! His bare word. . . .
  
  'I remember how, at this point, he paused with his eyes fixed upon me.
  "As far as he knew, they never had an occasion to regret it yet,"
  he said. "Never. He hoped to God they never would. Meantime--worse
  luck!--they had got into the habit of taking his word for anything and
  everything. I could have no idea! Why, only the other day an old fool he
  had never seen in his life came from some village miles away to find
  out if he should divorce his wife. Fact. Solemn word. That's the sort
  of thing. . . He wouldn't have believed it. Would I? Squatted on the
  verandah chewing betel-nut, sighing and spitting all over the place for
  more than an hour, and as glum as an undertaker before he came out with
  that dashed conundrum. That's the kind of thing that isn't so funny as
  it looks. What was a fellow to say?--Good wife?--Yes. Good wife--old
  though. Started a confounded long story about some brass pots. Been
  living together for fifteen years--twenty years--could not tell. A long,
  long time. Good wife. Beat her a little--not much--just a little, when
  she was young. Had to--for the sake of his honour. Suddenly in her old
  age she goes and lends three brass pots to her sister's son's wife, and
  begins to abuse him every day in a loud voice. His enemies jeered at
  him; his face was utterly blackened. Pots totally lost. Awfully cut up
  about it. Impossible to fathom a story like that; told him to go home,
  and promised to come along myself and settle it all. It's all very well
  to grin, but it was the dashedest nuisance! A day's journey through the
  forest, another day lost in coaxing a lot of silly villagers to get at
  the rights of the affair. There was the making of a sanguinary shindy
  in the thing. Every bally idiot took sides with one family or the other,
  and one half of the village was ready to go for the other half with
  anything that came handy. Honour bright! No joke! . . . Instead of
  attending to their bally crops. Got him the infernal pots back of
  course--and pacified all hands. No trouble to settle it. Of course not.
  Could settle the deadliest quarrel in the country by crooking his little
  finger. The trouble was to get at the truth of anything. Was not sure
  to this day whether he had been fair to all parties. It worried him. And
  the talk! Jove! There didn't seem to be any head or tail to it. Rather
  storm a twenty-foot-high old stockade any day. Much! Child's play to
  that other job. Wouldn't take so long either. Well, yes; a funny set
  out, upon the whole--the fool looked old enough to be his grandfather.
  But from another point of view it was no joke. His word decided
  everything--ever since the smashing of Sherif Ali. An awful
  responsibility," he repeated. "No, really--joking apart, had it been
  three lives instead of three rotten brass pots it would have been the
  same. . . ."
  
  'Thus he illustrated the moral effect of his victory in war. It was in
  truth immense. It had led him from strife to peace, and through death
  into the innermost life of the people; but the gloom of the land spread
  out under the sunshine preserved its appearance of inscrutable, of
  secular repose. The sound of his fresh young voice--it's extraordinary
  how very few signs of wear he showed--floated lightly, and passed away
  over the unchanged face of the forests like the sound of the big guns
  on that cold dewy morning when he had no other concern on earth but
  the proper control of the chills in his body. With the first slant of
  sun-rays along these immovable tree-tops the summit of one hill wreathed
  itself, with heavy reports, in white clouds of smoke, and the other
  burst into an amazing noise of yells, war-cries, shouts of anger, of
  surprise, of dismay. Jim and Dain Waris were the first to lay their
  hands on the stakes. The popular story has it that Jim with a touch
  of one finger had thrown down the gate. He was, of course, anxious
  to disclaim this achievement. The whole stockade--he would insist on
  explaining to you--was a poor affair (Sherif Ali trusted mainly to the
  inaccessible position); and, anyway, the thing had been already knocked
  to pieces and only hung together by a miracle. He put his shoulder to it
  like a little fool and went in head over heels. Jove! If it hadn't been
  for Dain Waris, a pock-marked tattooed vagabond would have pinned him
  with his spear to a baulk of timber like one of Stein's beetles. The
  third man in, it seems, had been Tamb' Itam, Jim's own servant. This was
  a Malay from the north, a stranger who had wandered into Patusan, and
  had been forcibly detained by Rajah Allang as paddler of one of the
  state boats. He had made a bolt of it at the first opportunity, and
  finding a precarious refuge (but very little to eat) amongst the Bugis
  settlers, had attached himself to Jim's person. His complexion was very
  dark, his face flat, his eyes prominent and injected with bile. There
  was something excessive, almost fanatical, in his devotion to his
  "white lord." He was inseparable from Jim like a morose shadow. On state
  occasions he would tread on his master's heels, one hand on the haft
  of his kriss, keeping the common people at a distance by his truculent
  brooding glances. Jim had made him the headman of his establishment, and
  all Patusan respected and courted him as a person of much influence. At
  the taking of the stockade he had distinguished himself greatly by the
  methodical ferocity of his fighting. The storming party had come on so
  quick--Jim said--that notwithstanding the panic of the garrison, there
  was a "hot five minutes hand-to-hand inside that stockade, till some
  bally ass set fire to the shelters of boughs and dry grass, and we all
  had to clear out for dear life."
  
  'The rout, it seems, had been complete. Doramin, waiting immovably in
  his chair on the hillside, with the smoke of the guns spreading slowly
  above his big head, received the news with a deep grunt. When informed
  that his son was safe and leading the pursuit, he, without another
  sound, made a mighty effort to rise; his attendants hurried to his help,
  and, held up reverently, he shuffled with great dignity into a bit of
  shade, where he laid himself down to sleep, covered entirely with a
  piece of white sheeting. In Patusan the excitement was intense. Jim told
  me that from the hill, turning his back on the stockade with its embers,
  black ashes, and half-consumed corpses, he could see time after time the
  open spaces between the houses on both sides of the stream fill suddenly
  with a seething rush of people and get empty in a moment. His ears
  caught feebly from below the tremendous din of gongs and drums; the wild
  shouts of the crowd reached him in bursts of faint roaring. A lot of
  streamers made a flutter as of little white, red, yellow birds amongst
  the brown ridges of roofs. "You must have enjoyed it," I murmured,
  feeling the stir of sympathetic emotion.
  
  '"It was . . . it was immense! Immense!" he cried aloud, flinging his
  arms open. The sudden movement startled me as though I had seen him bare
  the secrets of his breast to the sunshine, to the brooding forests, to
  the steely sea. Below us the town reposed in easy curves upon the banks
  of a stream whose current seemed to sleep. "Immense!" he repeated for a
  third time, speaking in a whisper, for himself alone.
  
  'Immense! No doubt it was immense; the seal of success upon his words,
  the conquered ground for the soles of his feet, the blind trust of
  men, the belief in himself snatched from the fire, the solitude of his
  achievement. All this, as I've warned you, gets dwarfed in the telling.
  I can't with mere words convey to you the impression of his total and
  utter isolation. I know, of course, he was in every sense alone of his
  kind there, but the unsuspected qualities of his nature had brought him
  in such close touch with his surroundings that this isolation seemed
  only the effect of his power. His loneliness added to his stature. There
  was nothing within sight to compare him with, as though he had been one
  of those exceptional men who can be only measured by the greatness of
  their fame; and his fame, remember, was the greatest thing around for
  many a day's journey. You would have to paddle, pole, or track a long
  weary way through the jungle before you passed beyond the reach of its
  voice. Its voice was not the trumpeting of the disreputable goddess we
  all know--not blatant--not brazen. It took its tone from the stillness
  and gloom of the land without a past, where his word was the one truth
  of every passing day. It shared something of the nature of that
  silence through which it accompanied you into unexplored depths, heard
  continuously by your side, penetrating, far-reaching--tinged with wonder
  and mystery on the lips of whispering men.'
feat_summary_name: Chapter 27
target: With the help of Doramin's people as allies, Jim oversees the hauling of two cannons up the mountain, working all night. Sherif Ali watched in disbelief as Doramin had himself carried up the mountain to have a good view of the fighting. The Bugis fired at Sherif Ali's stronghold on the opposite mountain, destroying it with cannon balls. The Bugis then attacked the remains. Jim and Dain Waris were the first to enter the ruins. Jim's servant, Tamb'Itam was constantly by his side. Sherif Ali fell on his knees and asked for forgiveness. He pledged obedience and was forgiven. Joy spread round Patusan, and Jim became a hero on whom the natives depended. Jim took their devotion very seriously and felt great responsibility towards them.
feat_summary_analysis: Notes Because of the defeat of Sherif Ali, Jim becomes a hero in the eyes of the Malays and is soon referred to as Tuan Jim, or Lord Jim. The Bugis think he has supernatural powers and begin to worship him. They accept his word as the truth; "his word decided everything." Marlow comments that Jim is one of those exceptional men whose fame spreads like wild fire; unfortunately, his adoration leads to his isolation from the common people and the attendant loneliness. For the most part, he is cut off from his world. Only Tamb'Itam, Jim's personal servant who follows him like a shadow until the last day of Jim's life, gives him regular human contact.