Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim is a novel bookended by two deaths. In the beginning of the novel, Jim is able to save his own skin by abandoning the passengers on the Patna and escaping with the other crew members when it is erroneously believed that the ship is about to sink. Their actions are effective in the short-term in terms of securing Jim's safety even though the members of the crew are in flagrant disregard of virtually every established ethical system regarding how seamen are supposed to behave. When it is later revealed that Jim and the crew were misguided about the likelihood of the ship's failure and the Patna sails safely to shore, Jim's self-interested actions are revealed. Although understandable to some degree, Jim's actions are in violation of the personal code he has set for himself at the beginning of the novel. Jim wants to be a hero and respected by others. His flight underlines the fact that he is an ordinary man and this incident dogs him in all of his subsequent positions. By leaving the Patna, Jim wins his life but loses his honor and the rest of the actions of the novel involve...
Jim is only able become the man he wishes to become by dying at the end of the work, where he seems to willingly sacrifice himself in retribution for the death of his friend's son. Through this action, Jim attains a kind of glory: "But we can see him, an obscure conqueror of fame, tearing himself out of the arms of a jealous love at the sign, at the call of his exalted egoism. He goes away from a living woman to celebrate his pitiless wedding with a shadowy ideal of conduct. Is he satisfied -- quite, now, I wonder?" (Chapter 45). From the arms of the native woman he loves to death, Jim finally becomes the noble creature he aspired to at the novel's inception.
Miller's Crossing gives the best example of the "ethics" of the crime film genre -- beginning as it does with the classic speech delivered by Giovanni Gasparo: "I'm talkin' about friendship -- I'm talkin' about character -- I'm talkin' about -- hell, Leo, I ain't embarrassed to use the word: I'm talkin' about ethics…" The film, of course, is full of characters whose actions are shady and unethical -- but
Hero with 1,000 Faces The classic hero seems to teach us the value of humanity, while helping us strive for excellence by understanding the value of the experiences rendered through intuition, emotions, and often feelings that are special to the hero -- often rather than logical reasoning. The paradigm of heroism transcends genre, chronology and has become so common in the human collective consciousness that it is easily recognized and repeated
O Brother, Where Art Thou? Homer in Hollywood: The Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? Could a Hollywood filmmaker adapt Homer's Odyssey for the screen in the same way that James Joyce did for the Modernist novel? The idea of a high-art film adaptation of the Odyssey is actually at the center of the plot of Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 film Contempt, and the Alberto Moravia novel on which Godard's film is
Sophocles, Shakespeare, And Walt Williams Many great writers -- including these three, Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Tennessee Williams -- use illusion in their narratives. This paper will present some instances and passages in which these writers employ illusion in their work. Sophocles' and Illusion Interestingly, author Joe Park Poe notes in his book (Heroism and Divine Justice in Sophocles' Philoctetes) that in the plays Antigone and Philoctetes, "The common quality…might be inadequately described as
Pop is tomorrow's Classical"- Paul McCartney. Discuss this contention within the context of rock/classical music collaborations since the early 1950s. Classical Rock and Popular Prophecy To the average music-listener, musical genres are easily divided into homogenous groupings without any danger of overlapping one another. Certainly, there are rare occurrences of "cross-over" hits on the radio that find airplay on both Adult Contemporary and Country stations, or those releases which find an
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