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Lord Jim Chapter 7 Summary

  • At dinner with Marlow, Jim slowly starts to talk about everything that happened. Now we're talking.
  • He tells Marlow about his shame and how hard everything has been for him with the trial. And then he tells us what we've really been dying to know: what happened in the moments after the collision aboard the Patna. Go on, Jimmy, we're all ears.
  • After examining the ship, Jim, along with the rest of the crew, was totally convinced that the Patna was about to sink.
  • Seizing a storyteller's opportunity, Marlow breaks in to let us know that the crew of the Patna was found floating in a lifeboat the day after the collision, shipless, and passengerless, too.
  • The crew said the Patna had sunk. But the ship didn't sink after all. Nope, no matter what they say, this crew abandoned ship, and that is a Big Scandal. Huge.
  • We go back to Jim, who describes the horror he was feeling, thinking that the ship was about to sink. We get it, Jimmy. It was awful.
  • Standing there frozen, Jim is unable (and unwilling) to warn any of the passengers about the impending doom.
  • Jim's overactive imagination, Marlow tells us, fueled his panic.