Jim, young and promising, freezes during a crisis at sea and abandons ship, and the rest of his life is an attempt to redeem that one moment of cowardice. Conrad tells the story through Marlow's narration, fragmentary and meditative, circling the question of what makes a man and whether a single act can define him. The prose is dense, the moral inquiry relentless. Conrad knew about ships and about moral failure; he had been both sailor and immigrant, living always in a second language. Jim finds his second chance in a remote trading post called Patusan. Whether he achieves redemption depends on how you read the ending.