Courage and cowardice are seen through the eyes of Jim, a young British seaman left to take the blame for the abandonment at sea of a group of pilgrims bound for Mecca to make their hajj. When the ship Patna starts to take on water, the crew abandons both the ship and its passengers, only to discover later that the Patna and the pilgrims had also been saved. The crew evades justice, with the exception of Jim, who alone must face a judicial inquiry and bear the burden of its judgment.

Told through a series of stories by and to Charles Marlow, the narrator from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Jim's tortured life is pieced together—exploring the consequences and difficulties of a life spent at sea.

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