The Captive White Man

I was immersed in Marlow’s narrative of Jim’s state of flux without an anchored centre, moving from port to port as the memories of the Patna catches up with him. And just as he seems to be anchored, figuratively and literally, the heroics of his adventures at Doramin’s Bugis stronghold throw up an analogy that provoked my thoughts on his Hollywood cinema-style road to fame á la Rambo.

Marlow describes Jim as a “captive in every sense”. He even goes as far to say that he was also “captivated” by Dain Waris. He describes Dain Waris as “open to the Western eye” but at the same time embodying the “mystery of unrecorded ages” (164). From this I infer that Dain Waris serves as perfect specimen of the cultured native, and yet a better European than most real ones. The two characters’ fascination in Dain Waris then directs our attention to their gravitation towards an amalgamation of both Occidental and Oriental categories as prescribed by Edward Said – and yet their continued “captivity” in those separate roles.

This complicates the relationship of the European and the Asian that is viewed through a lens of binary oppositions, for Dain Waris and Jim are figures in the liminal middle ground of these two polarities. And perhaps, for a way to reach the middle ground, violence must be exacted. Jim the Occidental assures himself a space in the midst of the Orientals by violence in leading the attack on Sherif Ali’s fort, and Dain Waris the Oriental gains recognition by the Occidental by being instrumental in the war effort (169).

But still, their basic differences in ethnicity render their positions in this hybrid class unequal in power. Jim the Occident-turned-Hybrid obviously holds more power over Dain Waris the Oriental-turned-Hybrid. The shackles of “captivity” remain.