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Jim's Jump and Officer's Response to Him
Summary
The officers started scolding Jim, mistaking him as George for the delay in jumping. But Jim's tormented soul was thinking about those pilgrims whom he had left to their fate. The ship's light disappeared and the officers thought that the ship has drowned. The chief engineer said that he had no doubt that 'Patna' had sunk. They again began to scold Jim but suddenly realized that they were talking to Jim. They became angry because they didn't want to save him due to his refusal to help them in towering the boat. One officer said that if he would have known that the man who jumped into the boat was Jim, he would have thrown him into the water. They thought that Jim had killed George in order to jump into the boat. They called him a "murdering coward" but Jim told them to keep their mouth shut. They threatened to kill Jim but Jim, by picking up a tool, told them that if anybody would dare to attack, he would kill that person.
After a few hours of relaxation, Jim felt guilty at the thought of abandoning the ship. He was very exhausted, tired and sick, he dropped the piece of wood into the water and tried to relax. The officers asked him to support the story they were preparing to tell later on, but he didn't reply. They, again, started discussing details of the story, they would tell.
Analysis
In this chapter The perplexity and confusion of Jim has been elaborated and vividly discussed. Jim's jump to save his own life symbolizes, "the romantic idealist's fall into the bare real world, the fall from the star, from the top of the proud tower, the drop from the dream into the lower element: for Jim, it is the abandonment of the heroic heights, a precipitous tumble from a high conception of himself, from his trust, his honor, from everything which he thought gave glamour and glory to life."