Too bad the exam is tomorrow.
But here is some key quotes & etc. anyway for anyone else...
Basically, Jim's journey starts with a choice that isn't his own -- he is thrust into the war where he fights alienation and what he defines as reality & fantasy. However, because he is young he has no choice; yet his actions, speech, directions and attitude inform the audience that he IS willing to change and adapt to this new circumstance. Jim’s ascent into a man made hell, weighed down by history is his ascent into an awareness of the moral and spiritual possibilities of humanity.
Jim is detatched throughout the novel which is both a good thing and a bad thing. His detatched-ness gives him the ability to stand back and gain perspective on a situation rather than a semblance (appearance of what the reality is). At the start of the novel he is already saturated by the propaganda of the war yet it is also the entrance into the detachment that he retains from war. He sort of believes that it's unrelated to him -- that close up war is rather ficticious -- like the movie in the beginning of the novel. He cannot differentiate the dream world from the real world.
However, as Jim progresses, his values and ideas of war are in great contrast near the end of the novel. “These strange locations appealed to him, for the first time he felt able to enjoy the war -- it only disappointed him that his fellow prisoners failed to share his excitement”.
Anyway... I can't think of much right now. This is pretty hard.
Anyway, more quotes:
“Jim smiled at the Japanese, wishing that he could tell him that the light was a premonition of his death, the sight of his small soul joining the larger soul of the dying world”
“As the box floated away, like the coffin of a Chinese child, the circles of oil raced to embrace it and sent tremors of light across the river” -- this is significant because he's disconnecting himself from his old life. Like his new name, he is Jim, not Jamie. This is because the war has CHANGED him completely. This is also a motif of the Chinese coffins - this is how the novel began, and this is how, in essence, it finishes for Jim.
