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Lord Jim
By Joseph Conrad
Jim is a young sailor from Britan who is promoted to first mate on the Patna, a ship carrying a group of Mulsim prilgrims to Mecca on the Hajj. During an accident, Jim abandons the ship, full of passengers, along with his captain and other ranking crew members. They are picked up, and learn that the entire ship was also saved. The other crew members evade justice, but Jim is stripped of his navigation command certificate. Jim is furious with himself for what he sees as a moment of weakness in an otherwise exemplary career.
At the trial, he meets Marlow, another captain, who sees Jim as morally unsound, but eventually comes to befriend him as a fellow seaman. Marlow helps Jim find work, but the stain of the Patna incident catches up with him, and he packs up and moves east. He repeats this cycle several times, getting further and further east each time, until Marlow's friend Stein suggests placing Jim as his agent in Patusan, a tiny inland settlement of mixed Malay and Bugis populace. Jim's past can remain hidden there.
Jim moves, and rapidly gains the respect of the people by ending the prowl of the bandit Sherif Ali and protecting them from the corrupt local Malay chief, Rajah Tunku Allang. He falls in love with a mixed-race woman named Jewel, and lives happily for a couple of years. He describes his own state as "satisfied…nearly."
Eventually, the town is attacked by a marauder named "Gentleman" Brown. In driving the marauders away, the leader of the Bugis community, Doramin Waris, loses his sone Dain. Jim pushes to drive the marauders further away, and in the effort, Doramin shoots Jim in the heart in vengeance for the loss of Dain, which he sees as Jim's fault.
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