character in Conrad novel Lord Jim
Fishburn and Hughes: The protagonist of Joseph Conrad's eponymous novel published in 1900, an Englishman who controls a small community in the island of Patusan in the Far East. Previously a chief mate of the Patna sailing the eastern oceans, Lord Jim deserts his ship with its load of pilgrims when he believes it to be sinking. The Patna does not sink, and the rest of Lord Jim's life is marred by the memory of his cowardice. When the people of Patusan are threatened by a band of thieves, Jim tries in vain to protect them by pledging his life. Having failed to avert a massacre, he redeems his past by accepting the responsibility of so many deaths and facing execution. Like Razumov in Conrad's Under Western Eyes, Lord Jim is an exemplar of ambivalence between cowardice and bravery. See José Korzeniovski. The Other Death