Lord Jim

by

Joseph Conrad

The Skipper Character Analysis

The skipper (or captain) of the Patna is a white man charged with leading a passenger ship of mostly nonwhite Muslim pilgrims. Jim is the skipper’s chief mate. As a leader, the skipper is a total failure: he abandons the ship with no consideration for anyone’s life but his own, and then he later refuses to stand trial and face the consequences of his actions. The skipper represents what Jim fears most—the failure to be a hero—but when things get difficult, Jim flees just like the skipper, suggesting that despite the skipper’s seemingly exceptional cowardice, he might be more representative of the average person than many would like to admit.

The Skipper Quotes in Lord Jim

The Lord Jim quotes below are all either spoken by The Skipper or refer to The Skipper. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2 Quotes

The Patna was a local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a greyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water-tank. She was owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort of renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly his native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck’s victorious policy, brutalized all those he was not afraid of, and wore a ‘blood-and-iron’ air,’ combined with a purple nose and a red moustache. After she had been painted outside and whitewashed inside, eight hundred pilgrims (more or less) were driven on board of her as she lay with steam up alongside a wooden jetty.

Related Characters: Jim, The Skipper, The two engineers
Related Symbols: The Patna
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

What had happened? The wheezy thump of the engines went on. Had the earth been checked in her course? They could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of yawning destruction. The engineer rebounded vertically full length and collapsed again into a vague heap. This heap said ‘What’s that?’ in the muffled accents of profound grief. A faint noise as of thunder, of thunder infinitely remote, less than a sound, hardly more than a vibration, passed slowly, and the ship quivered in response, as if the thunder had growled deep down in the water. The eyes of the two Malays at the wheel glittered towards the white men, but their dark hands remained closed on the spokes. The sharp hull driving on its way seemed to rise a few inches in succession through its whole length, as though it had become pliable, and settled down again rigidly to its work of cleaving the smooth surface of the sea. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of vibrating water and of humming air.

Related Characters: Jim, The Skipper, The two engineers
Related Symbols: The Patna
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Skipper Quotes in Lord Jim

The Lord Jim quotes below are all either spoken by The Skipper or refer to The Skipper. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2 Quotes

The Patna was a local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a greyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water-tank. She was owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort of renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly his native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck’s victorious policy, brutalized all those he was not afraid of, and wore a ‘blood-and-iron’ air,’ combined with a purple nose and a red moustache. After she had been painted outside and whitewashed inside, eight hundred pilgrims (more or less) were driven on board of her as she lay with steam up alongside a wooden jetty.

Related Characters: Jim, The Skipper, The two engineers
Related Symbols: The Patna
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

What had happened? The wheezy thump of the engines went on. Had the earth been checked in her course? They could not understand; and suddenly the calm sea, the sky without a cloud, appeared formidably insecure in their immobility, as if poised on the brow of yawning destruction. The engineer rebounded vertically full length and collapsed again into a vague heap. This heap said ‘What’s that?’ in the muffled accents of profound grief. A faint noise as of thunder, of thunder infinitely remote, less than a sound, hardly more than a vibration, passed slowly, and the ship quivered in response, as if the thunder had growled deep down in the water. The eyes of the two Malays at the wheel glittered towards the white men, but their dark hands remained closed on the spokes. The sharp hull driving on its way seemed to rise a few inches in succession through its whole length, as though it had become pliable, and settled down again rigidly to its work of cleaving the smooth surface of the sea. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of vibrating water and of humming air.

Related Characters: Jim, The Skipper, The two engineers
Related Symbols: The Patna
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis: