Parallel captures?
Subtitle: Lord Jim and Lawrence of Arabia
Publisher: Falcon Books
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Whitmore Lake, Mich
Language: eng
Number of pages: 44
Subjects: Lawrence, T. E. 1888-1935; Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924.
First sentence: Chapters 24 and 25 of Joseph Conrad's novel Lord Jim relate how the title character, Jim, was captured by a hostile Rajah, held for three days and threatened with death, then escaped from the Rajah's stockade.

Chapter 80 of T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, his controversial memoir of the Arab campaign in the First World War, relates how Lawrence was captured by the Turks at Deraa railway station, held overnight by the Bey and tortured, then escaped the next day.

Lawrence's notorious "Deraa incident" has long been questioned by many of his biographers, both critical and sympathetic.  Did it really happen?  There is virtually no independent evidence for the incident, and much evidence apparently contradicting it.  To the extent that it has been believed, Lawrence's realistic detail has certainly been the major persuasive factor.

Only decades after his death in 1935 was it noticed by a few scholars that Lawrence had been reading Conrad's Lord Jim at the very time he was drafting Seven Pillars of Wisdom, during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.  Lord Jim was an appropriate work for Lawrence to be reading, since many of his real-life experiences of Asian freedom-fighting, betrayal, guilt, honor and atonement are to be found in Lord Jim, published in 1900.  Seven Pillars of Wisdom, published in 1926, reflects such fascinating parallels.
Description: Description: This short monograph examines several dozen remarkably similar words and phrases in two famous works of literature: Joseph Conrad's novel Lord Jim (1900) and T. E. Lawrence's war memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926).  Most of the passages in question are found in episodes involving the capture, mistreatment, and escape of their respective heroes.  The various possible connections or implications of these "parallel captures" are then explored.
Notes: CONTENTS:
Preface,
Acknowledgments,
Parallel Captures,
Notes,
Appendix: Lawrence's Alleged Battle Wounds,
Afterword,
Index,
Bibliography