Cryptic Creepy Crawlies

Stein’s room was filled with “horrible miniature monsters, looking malevolent in death and immobility, and his cabinet of butterflies, beautiful and hovering under the glass cases of lifeless wings” (167). The “[c]atacombs of beetles” and “graves of butterflies” sets the stage for the discussion of Jim (168, 175). 

Pondering over an “extraordinary perfect specimen” of a butterfly he had chanced upon and captured after surviving an ambush by his adversaries, Stein draws references between butterfly (masterpiece) and Man (amazing, but not a masterpiece). 

There are obvious parallels between the butterfly and Jim. Both are associated with death. The butterfly was found and caught after a killing, while Jim was known for the Patna incident. Both are extraordinary and rare. Both are admired by their respective collectors (Stein - entomology and Marlow - human specimens). 

One can draw references between the studying of the butterfly to the study of Jim. However, Marlow and Stein talked in coded terms and “avoided pronouncing Jim’s name” (177). It seems to me whether Jim should be a beetle (unsavory image) and “creep twenty feet underground and stay there” (165) or “fly high with a strong flight” like the butterfly (172). 

The discussions on being a romantic, of Absolute Truth and Beauty as “elusive, obscure, half-submerged” (178) suggest a pained nostalgia of the departure of Victorian values and perhaps, literary style (butterfly as a Victorian symbol too). The prospect of preserving the dead  (tradition and culture) with the dead (literature?), similar to what entomology does, is not a satisfying one. However, there are no other options, giving rise to an immense pessimism of loss and mortality, themes closely associated to modernism, and the Empire (through Stein). 

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