Conrad's "serried circle of facts" in "Lord Jim"

Of the Patna and Patusan sections of Lord Jim, F.R. Leavis concluded about sixty years ago that the first section worked well but that, in its reliance on romance, the second section "has no inevitability". Critics since have often disagreed with Leavis on the issue of structure, and have suggested various ways by which to understand Conrad's complex narrative. In one such rejoinder, Robert F. Haugh argues that, on the contrary, "a second look at Lord Jim will reveal the fruit of Conrad's deliberation: integral elements of structure which provide the inevitability, the rightness, for Patusan." There is indeed a unity of structure, a "design," to the novel, contends Haugh, and while the "dominant figure in the design is the jump from the 'Patna,'" there are actually three "progressive" jumps in the novel. Here, Sanchez examines these three jumps.