Character guide

Jim

major

Also known as Tuan Jim, Master Jim, Mr. James, Jimmy, James, Lord Jim

Jim arrives in Conrad's narrative as a promising young officer whose instinctive leap from a foundering ship brands him with a shame he cannot outrun. He carries an almost unbearable sensitivity to that failure, and it is this raw nerve that Gentleman Brown later probes with surgical cruelty, asking whether Jim himself doesn't understand that when saving one's life in the dark, one doesn't care who else goes. His flight to Patusan is not escape but a wager: that in a place beyond the reach of the world he renounced, he can prove his worth on his own terms.

Marlow

major

Also known as Captain Marlow

Marlow meets Jim at a harbor inquiry and finds himself drawn into the younger man's predicament with a sympathy that unsettles him. He is the reader's guide through the novel's moral fog, admitting his own bafflement even as he pieces together testimony from traders, officials, and Jim himself. His voice carries the weight of a man who has seen enough of the world to distrust easy judgments, yet cannot stop turning Jim's case over in his mind.

Gentleman Brown

supporting

Also known as Brown, the dying Brown, the besieged Brown, All Brown, Captain Brown

Brown is a marauder worn thin by ill-luck, starvation, and the recklessness of a man who no longer cares where he runs. He possesses a satanic gift for finding the weakest spot in his victims, and in Jim he detects a man who cannot be won over by truckling but might be broken by a mirror held to his own past. Their conversation across the creek becomes a duel in which Brown's brusque despairing frankness—asking whether Jim too once understood that saving one's life meant not caring who else went—threatens to unravel everything Jim has built.

Stein

supporting

Also known as Mr. Stein, This Stein

Stein is a man of learning and quiet authority whose own past adventures have left him with a generous, almost philosophical view of human frailty. He recognizes in Jim a romantic—one of those imaginative people who swing farther in any direction, as if given a longer scope of cable in the uneasy anchorage of life—and decides that the remedy for such a nature is not punishment but a worthy field of action. His gift of Patusan is both an act of faith and an experiment, and his brief appearances anchor the novel's meditation on whether a man can be remade.

Cornelius

supporting

Also known as Mr. Cornelius, The respectable Cornelius

Cornelius is the respectable face of petty resentment, a man whose legal paternity of Jewel gives him a claim he uses only to poison and obstruct. He moves through Patusan's margins with a peculiar twist of his mouth, aggrieved by Jim's ascendance and resentful of the world that has passed him by. His cowardice and spite make him a persistent low-grade threat, the kind of enemy who cannot be confronted honorably and cannot be ignored.

Jewel

supporting

Also known as the girl

Jewel is the daughter of Cornelius and a Malay woman, raised in Patusan's isolation and bound to Jim by a love that is fierce, possessive, and shadowed by fear. Her tenderness hovers over him like a flutter of wings, and she has absorbed his mannerisms so completely that she seems to live in his contemplation. Yet her jealousy has no clear object, and the land, the people, and the forests become her accomplices in guarding him—a vigilance that imprisons Jim within the very freedom of his power.

Doramin

supporting

Also known as old Doramin, the impassive old Doramin, O Doramin

Doramin rules the Bugis settlers of Patusan from a chair that seems less furniture than throne, issuing orders in a deep veiled rumble while lesser chiefs panic around him. Jim speaks to him alone before all others, trusting that the old man knows his heart and its greatest desire, and Doramin's stillness becomes the measure against which Jim's restless authority is taken. His weight in the story is the weight of the old world Jim has chosen to serve, and the reader watches that alliance with the uneasy sense that such gravity always exacts a price.

Dain Waris

supporting

Also known as Waris, Dain Waris Panglima, The Panglima

Dain Waris is the young Bugis leader whose decisive action against Brown's intruders prevents the town from being burned and its people shot down in their streets. He moves in the same tight circle as Jim, a son to Doramin and a brother-in-arms to the white man who has remade Patusan, and his competence is the quiet counterweight to Jim's romantic self-doubt. Because Brown reads men with a satanic eye, the friendship between Jim and Dain Waris becomes one of the pressure points through which the outside world presses back in.

Tamb' Itam

supporting

Also known as Tamb, Itam, Meantime Tamb ' Itam, Tambt' Itam

Tamb' Itam attached himself to Jim after escaping Rajah Allang's service, and his devotion runs to something excessive, almost fanatical, like a shadow that will not be shaken. He treads on his master's heels at state occasions with one hand on his kris, keeping the common people back with brooding truculent glances, and he distinguished himself at the storming of the stockade by a methodical ferocity. When Jim's world begins to crack, it is Tamb' Itam who stands at the door and tells him the truth no one else will speak.

Tunku Allang

supporting

Also known as Rajah Allang, Mr. Rajah Allang, the Rajah, Wretched old Allang, old Tunku Allang

Old Tunku Allang sits enthroned behind an improvised stockade, almost out of his mind with fear and indecision, abusing his visitors for daring to come with empty hands while Doramin's Bugis quietly hold the real power. He is the nominal ruler of Patusan, but his court is a place of jostling youths and frightened departures, and his jealousy of Jim's rising influence makes him a permanent low-grade menace. His weakness is the vacuum that Jim's arrival fills, and his resentment is one of the slow-burning fuses under the town's fragile peace.

Kassim

supporting

Also known as That long-legged old scoundrel Kassim, Meantime Kassim

Kassim is the kind of operator who survives by being indispensable to everyone and loyal to no one, the man whose quiet arrangements keep Brown's starving band supplied with the few yams and bananas that stave off collapse. He moves between the Rajah's faction and the intruders with the ease of long practice, and his name is spoken in Patusan with the particular contempt reserved for those who always seem to be standing nearby when something goes wrong. His treachery is the kind that greases the plot's machinery, and the reader learns to watch him whenever the situation looks settled.

Brierly

minor

Also known as Big Brierly, poor Captain Brierly, Captain Brierly, the late Captain Brierly, Montague Brierly

A successful sea captain who serves on the inquiry into Jim's Patna case.

Chester

minor

A cynical old seaman who proposes a shady business scheme to Jim.

Captain Robinson

minor

Also known as Ask Captain Robinson, Robinson, the notorious Robinson, Old Robinson, The notorious Robinson

A disreputable old sea captain associated with Chester's scheme.

Sherif Ali

minor

Also known as the Sherif, Sherif

A fanatical Arab leader who challenges Doramin's rule in Patusan.

Egström

minor

Also known as Egstr√ґm

A ship-chandler who helps Jim find work after the Patna affair.

Archie Ruthvel

minor

Also known as Ruthvel, Archie

The principal shipping-master who interviews Jim after the Patna incident.

Captain Elliot

minor

Also known as Old father Elliot

The harbor-master who assists with the Patna inquiry.

Alexander M'Neil

minor

Also known as Alexander M'Neil—and Jim

A Scottish trader who briefly employs Jim in the Far East.

Blake

minor

Also known as Egström & Blake

Egström's business partner in the ship-chandlery.

Mr. Jones

minor

Also known as old Jones, Jones

A minor official or acquaintance encountered during Jim's wanderings.

Mariani

minor

A trader who provides Jim with passage and introductions.

Schomberg

minor

A gossipy hotel-keeper in the Eastern port towns.

Little Bob Stanton

minor

Also known as Bob, Charley

A brave but unlucky sailor mentioned in Marlow's anecdotes.

De Jongh

minor

A Dutch trader or shipmaster mentioned in passing.

George

minor

A sailor who dies during the Patna voyage.

Bullock

minor

A minor character encountered in the Eastern ports.

Mr. Symons

minor

Also known as old Symons, Old Symons

An old sailor who shares stories with Marlow.