creeping twenty feet underground: the politics of representation

Jim’s willingness to stand trial after abandoning the Patna, and his habit of running away from areas where the story of his role in the Patna might circulate, work together to comment on the politics of representation.

After his ‘abandonment’ of the Patna and the consequent loss of his seaman’s certificate, Jim slides away from public view, hopping from shore to shore in order to avoid re-encountering traces of his unhappy past. Instead he locates himself in places where knowledge of his disgrace has not yet circulated. In the words of Michael Valdez Moses, Jim seeks the places “where narration lags behind the event” (64). When Jim’s story is narrated by others, he becomes defined by his representation within that narrative. Jim does not want to be defined by the shameful narrative of his past, seeking instead a clean slate where he can “rewrite” his story.

Ashamed as he is of his actions following the non-sinking of the Patna, Jim does not shirk from the public or from legislative judgment. “Do you not think you or anyone could have made me if I…I am – I am not afraid to tell?” asks Jim (112). This ‘telling’ constitutes an act of agency – when he speaks for himself Jim can at least try to bring out the nuances of his subjective experience on the ship, an agency that is denied him when his story is related by a third party.

To me, Jim’s escapist tendencies derive not so much from a desire to forget/deny his actions on the Patna, but rather, the desire to tell his own story in his own words, to define himself in his own narrative. This desire is not dissimilar to post-colonial writers and such who “write back” against colonial inscriptions.

(293 words, excluding reference)

* Quote from Moses taken from:
Moses, Valdez Michael. "Disorientalism: Conrad and the Imperial Origins of Modernist Aesthetics. from Modernism and Colonialism. Ed.Richard Begam and Michael Valdez Moses. London: Duke University Press, 2007.