Lord Jim

by

Joseph Conrad

The Patna Symbol Analysis

The Patna Symbol Icon

The Patna, the ship where Jim once served as first mate, represents the failures in Jim’s life: both his failure to live up to his romantic ideas about himself as well as his failure to let go of the past. When the Patna hits an unseen object and begins taking on water, Jim initially thinks that he’ll have an opportunity to be a hero. Instead, however, he ends up fleeing the (seemingly) sinking ship with the skipper and the two engineers—abandoning the Patna and its 800 passengers to their fate. But when the ship doesn’t sink, Jim and the others are exposed as cowards. The Patna incident briefly becomes notorious, and Jim stands trial for his actions and faces a possible death sentence. In the end, though, he gets a relatively minor sentence: he is stripped of his sailing certifications. Though the lenient sentence gives Jim a second chance at life, Jim can’t escape his past. Instead, he hops from job to job, fleeing the moment something comes up that reminds him of the Patna. Eventually, with help from Marlow and his associate Stein, Jim runs away to the remote Malay village of Patusan. But even Patusan isn’t far enough away to make Jim forget his past. When a cunning, evil sailor nicknamed Gentleman Brown makes an offhand comment that reminds Jim of the Patna, he is so distracted that he makes a series of bad decisions that ultimately ends with his own death. The Patna thus symbolizes guilt and the feelings of inadequacy that haunt Jim as he continuously fails to make peace with his failures and put the past behind him. 

The Patna Quotes in Lord Jim

The Lord Jim quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Patna. 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:
Chapter 5 Quotes

‘My eyes met his for the first time at that inquiry. You must know that everybody connected in any way with the sea was there, because the affair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious cable message came from Aden to start us all cackling. I say mysterious, because it was so in a sense though it contained a naked fact, about as naked and ugly as a fact can well be. The whole waterside talked of nothing else.’

Related Characters: Marlow (speaker), Jim
Related Symbols: The Patna
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

‘He seemed consumedly bored by the honour thrust upon him. He had never in his life made a mistake, never had an accident, never a mishap, never a check in his steady rise, and he seemed to be one of those lucky fellows who know nothing of indecision, much less of self-mistrust. At thirty-two he had one of the best commands going in the Eastern trade—and, what’s more, he thought a lot of what he had.’

Related Characters: Marlow (speaker), Jim, Brierly
Related Symbols: The Patna
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:

“I will soon show you I am not,” he said, in a tone suggestive of a crisis. “I declare I don’t know,” I protested earnestly at the same time. He tried to crush me by the scorn of his glance. “Now that you see I am not afraid you try to crawl out of it,” he said. “Who’s a cur now—hey?” Then, at last, I understood.’

Related Characters: Jim (speaker), Marlow (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Patna
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

‘I can’t tell you whether Jim knew he was especially “fancied,” but the tone of his references to “my Dad” was calculated to give me a notion that the good old rural dean was about the finest man that ever had been worried by the cares of a large family since the beginning of the world. This, though never stated, was implied with an anxiety that there should be no mistake about it, which was really very true and charming, but added a poignant sense of lives far off to the other elements of the story. “He has seen it all in the home papers by this time,” said Jim. “I can never face the poor old chap.”’

Related Characters: Jim (speaker), Marlow (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Patna
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 59
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

‘The last moment had come, as he thought, and he did not move. His feet remained glued to the planks if his thoughts were knocking about loose in his head. It was at this moment too that he saw one of the men around the boat step backwards suddenly, clutch at the air with raised arms, totter and collapse. He didn’t exactly fall, he only slid gently into a sitting posture, all hunched up, and with his shoulders propped against the side of the engine-room skylight. “That was the donkey-man. A haggard, white-faced chap with a ragged moustache. Acted third engineer,” he explained.

‘“Dead,” I said. We had heard something of that in court.’

Related Characters: Jim (speaker), Marlow (speaker), George
Related Symbols: The Patna
Page Number: 80
Explanation and Analysis:

‘“I had jumped . . .” He checked himself, averted his gaze. . . . “It seems,” he added.’

Related Characters: Jim (speaker), Marlow (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Patna
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

‘“Pray—tell me,” he began, coming up ponderously, “what was there at the bottom of this affair—precisely (au juste)? It is curious. That dead man, for instance—and so on.”’

Related Characters: Marlow (speaker), The French Lieutenant (speaker), Jim, George
Related Symbols: The Patna
Page Number: 109
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

‘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.’

Related Characters: Marlow (speaker), Jim
Related Symbols: The Patna
Page Number: 140
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

‘All this was in the past, but I knew the story of his life and the origin of his fortune. He was also a naturalist of some distinction, or perhaps I should say a learned collector. Entomology was his special study. His collection of Buprestidae and Longicorns—beetles all—horrible miniature monsters, looking malevolent in death and immobility, and his cabinet of butterflies, beautiful and hovering under the glass of cases on lifeless wings, had spread his fame far over the earth. The name of this merchant, adventurer, sometime adviser of a Malay sultan (to whom he never alluded otherwise than as “my poor Mohammed Bonso”), had, on account of a few bushels of dead insects, become known to learned persons in Europe, who could have had no conception, and certainly would not have cared to know anything, of his life or character. I, who knew, considered him an eminently suitable person to receive my confidences about Jim’s difficulties as well as my own.’

Related Characters: Marlow (speaker), Jim, Stein
Related Symbols: The Patna, Patusan, Butterflies
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

‘I don’t suppose any of you have ever heard of Patusan?’ Marlow resumed, after a silence occupied in the careful lighting of a cigar. ‘It does not matter; there’s many a heavenly body in the lot crowding upon us of a night that mankind had never heard of, it being outside the sphere of its activities and of no earthly importance to anybody but to the astronomers who are paid to talk learnedly about its composition, weight, path—the irregularities of its conduct, the aberrations of its light—a sort of scientific scandal-mongering. Thus with Patusan.’

Related Characters: Marlow (speaker), Jim, Stein
Related Symbols: Patusan, The Patna
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

‘The conquest of love, honour, men’s confidence—the pride of it, the power of it, are fit materials for a heroic tale; only our minds are struck by the externals of such a success, and to Jim’s successes there were no externals. Thirty miles of forest shut it off from the sight of an indifferent world, and the noise of the white surf along the coast overpowered the voice of fame.’

Related Characters: Marlow (speaker), Jim
Related Symbols: Patusan, The Patna
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 171
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

‘Why did I come, then? After a slight movement she was as still as a marble statue in the night. I tried to explain briefly: friendship, business; if I had any wish in the matter it was rather to see him stay. . . . “They always leave us,” she murmured. The breath of sad wisdom from the grave which her piety wreathed with flowers seemed to pass in a faint sigh. . . . Nothing, I said, could separate Jim from her.’

Related Characters: Marlow (speaker), Jewel (speaker), Jim
Related Symbols: Patusan, The Patna
Page Number: 235
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 45 Quotes

‘Who knows? He is gone, inscrutable at heart, and the poor girl is leading a sort of soundless, inert life in Stein’s house. Stein has aged greatly of late. He feels it himself, and says often that he is “preparing to leave all this; preparing to leave . . .” while he waves his hand sadly at his butterflies.’

September 1899—July 1900.

Related Characters: Marlow (speaker), Jim, Doramin, Dain Waris, Stein, Gentleman Brown, Jewel, The Privileged Reader
Related Symbols: Patusan, Butterflies, The Patna
Page Number: 318
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Lord Jim LitChart as a printable PDF.
Lord Jim PDF

The Patna Symbol Timeline in Lord Jim

The timeline below shows where the symbol The Patna appears in Lord Jim. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
One night on the journey of the Patna, all is still, and Jim feels at peace. He paces and looks around at the... (full context)
Chapter 4
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...events of the previous chapter, Jim gives testimony in a police court about how the Patna went over whatever it hit very easily. It’s a bright day outside the courtroom. Jim... (full context)
Chapter 5
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...Marlow tells a group of people that he remembers going to an inquiry about the Patna. He begins telling a very long story of Jim’s life. Marlow says there’s something about... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...it was like being there to witness it after having heard sailors talking about the Patna. When Marlow gets his first view of Jim in court, he’s surprised at how comfortable... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
Marlow remains obsessed with the Patna. He speaks with one of the two engineers from the ship who had to be... (full context)
Chapter 6
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
Marlow continues his story. All the authorities at the Patna’s trial seem to have already made up their minds, but they’re still holding a trial... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...himself spoke to Captain Brierly while he was still alive, when the inquiry about the Patna was still going on. Brierly complained about the inconvenience of being chosen to conduct the... (full context)
Chapter 7
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...situation is, and Jim says he couldn’t just clear out of town the way the Patna’s skipper did. Jim speaks admirably of his father, the parson, worrying that he has already... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...he’s a cur. He says that he and four others, including the skipper of the Patna and two engineers, were out floating at sea in a boat when a steamer came... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...for 10 days before it reached shore and before he heard the conclusion of the Patna affair. Hearing the news made him sulky and antisocial. As it turns out, the bulkhead... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Racism and Colonialism Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...pity, but Jim keeps going. He swears to Marlow that when he was inspecting the Patna, he really felt like it was destined to sink. He recalls how he and the... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Racism and Colonialism Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
Jim swears to Marlow that on the Patna he wasn’t afraid of death—he just truly believed that there was no time for boats... (full context)
Chapter 8
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Racism and Colonialism Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
Jim stands still for a long time by a hatch on the Patna, expecting it to sink at any moment. At last, he gets the idea to cut... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Racism and Colonialism Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...muses that Jim has such an active imagination that he could easily have pictured the Patna wrecking in his mind’s eye. Marlow admits that in that situation, he himself would not... (full context)
Chapter 9
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Racism and Colonialism Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
Over dinner, Jim tells Marlow that when he was back on the Patna, he just wished the boat would sink. The skipper, meanwhile, orders them around as they... (full context)
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Jim sees George, the third engineer of the Patna, collapse and die, seemingly of a heart attack. Jim muses that if George had just... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
Jim sees himself as a passive observer of the actions on the Patna. After a while, Jim gets up and stumbles over the legs of George, the dead... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...where he was until he looked up. In the process he injured his ribs. The Patna looms over their smaller boat. (full context)
Chapter 10
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
Jim has just jumped from the Patna to a small boat, and now the sea around him is dark and hissing. Jim’s... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...he almost wishes that he had been forced to see the horror of the sinking Patna rather than just darkness. But Marlow doesn’t think this isn’t strange: Jim’s imagination can come... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
On the rescue boat, Jim fights back the urge to swim over where the Patna (supposedly) sank so he can drown there. Eventually, everything goes still. The skipper and two... (full context)
Chapter 11
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...was nice for an older man like Marlow to listen to Jim’s story about the Patna. Marlow doesn’t normally feel that old, but Jim’s comment makes him feel much older. (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
Jim tells Marlow about how he felt so lost on the Patna. It was worse than being in a proper fight. The fake story that the skipper... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...He wants to face what he did. He wonders if he would’ve stayed on the Patna if not for the skipper and the others. Jim paces around and asks Marlow what... (full context)
Chapter 12
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...is still haunted by the shouts for help that he remembers from those on the Patna, but none of the others remember hearing shouts for help. Later, when the Patna is... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...liars, the skipper and the two engineers maintain that they saw the lights of the Patna were off when they were in their rescue boat. Jim remembers this too. Jim wonders,... (full context)
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
Later, Marlow hears more of the story of the Patna from a French lieutenant who was on a gunboat coming from Reunion when the crew... (full context)
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
The French lieutenant tells Marlow about overseeing the rescue of the abandoned Patna. He describes the events calmly and complains about being on the Patna for 30 hours... (full context)
Chapter 13
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...strong effect on Marlow. The lieutenant asks Marlow what was so important about the whole Patna affair, anyway, mistakenly believing that dead George is the most important part. Marlow replies that... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...of adventure discourages Jim, who has become withdrawn, except for when the topic of the Patna comes up. Then, Jim turns violent. (full context)
Chapter 14
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Racism and Colonialism Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
In the inquiry, the court begins to give its judgment. They rule that the Patna wasn’t seaworthy for the voyage, and then they surprise Marlow by saying that up until... (full context)
Chapter 16
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...still uncertain about what’s to come. Slowly, Jim becomes more confident, saying that if the Patna affair can’t touch him, nothing can. He thanks Marlow for being so good to him... (full context)
Chapter 17
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
...help. Jim refuses to accept the money he would have earned as mate of the Patna, even though he needs money to live. (full context)
Chapter 18
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...under Jim’s arm, and that was too much for Jim. The friend also mentioned the Patna case. While Jim and Marlow talk, the chandler’s two owners argue in the background. Jim... (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...Jim’s sudden disappearance confuses the owners. Marlow asks if there was any mention of the Patna case, and the owners say there was, shortly before Jim disappeared. (full context)
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...time replacing him. Marlow reveals that Jim was in fact the first mate of the Patna. The shop owners ask who actually cares about that, and Marlow agrees it might not... (full context)
Chapter 19
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
Jim continues to lead a wandering life after the Patna inquiry—there are many similar incidents. Marlow can’t decide whether this behavior means Jim is facing... (full context)
Chapter 23
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Justice and Duty Theme Icon
Racism and Colonialism Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...seeing how excitable Jim is. He tells Jim bluntly that the world doesn’t remember the Patna incident that much—it’s mostly Jim himself who remembers. Jim, however, remains so excited about going... (full context)
Chapter 36
Fantasy vs. Reality Theme Icon
Truth and Perspective  Theme Icon
...his writing desk. Jim’s father wrote the letter a few days before Jim joined the Patna, so this means Jim kept it with him for a long time. In the letter,... (full context)