Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1991. British and American Philologycal Studies (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 20)

Katalin Grezsu: Psychological Implications in Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim

32 knowing nothing about it - three times as many as there were boats for, even if there had been time?

.... What couid I do what?"^ At the time of the relating of the incident Jim still cannot believe that all this happened and that it happened to him. He is always dreaming, living in a world of fantasy, but by the time he relates the whole story, everything belongs to a lost past. As Stein and Marlow realised Jim was a romantic dreamer. And not only romantic but naive and uncorrupted as well which later led to his destruction. These features enable Jim to believe in the changeability of the unchangeable and to watch himself almost as an outsider. As Marlow relates it:

" "He was silent again with a still, far-away look of fierce yearning after that missed distinction sniffing the intoxicating breath of that wasted opportunity."

7 "He was very far away from me who watched him across three feet of space. With every instant he was penetrating deeper into the o impossible world of romantic achievements."

0 Jim is paralyzed by the decision. He was sure that to save all the passengers was impossible and this way there was no responsibility on him. Jimp rotests against the thought of saving himself. The only thing that haunted his mind was the eight hundred pilgrims and seven boats. He did not want to leave the ship and he was not afraid of death or at least not of death in a physical sense. Jim might have felt that something worse would befall him, that is, death in a moral sense. He tries to convince Marlow that he did not leave the ship out of sheer cowardice, but because of some inexplicable reasons: "Do you think I was afraid of death?" he asked in a voice very fierce and low. He brought down his open hand with a bang that made the coffee-cups dance. "I am ready to swear I was not

... By God - no! But what frightened him more was the uncontrollable actions of the crowd. Jim, as it turned out later, could not control his instincts and subconscious. That is why he feared the crowd of pilgrims rushing at the news of the disaster. Jim visualizes the rushing crowd, the panic and the screams. The vivid picture his imagination draws for him is so terrifying that it makes Jim leave the ship. This is the way Marlow retells the reader Jim's experiences: "His confounded imagination had evoked for him all the horrors of panic, the trampling rush, the pitiful screams, boats swamped - all the appalling incidents of a disaster at sea he had ever heard of I think from this point Jim is not an agent

, just a patient. He was in doubt only for a second and he can no longer influence his fate. He is only tossed here and there by his