We're Not Free Yet, Love
[An essay on freedom and love in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series - contains spoilers for all three movies.]
The Pirates of the Caribbean movies are about freedom. I actually managed to figure this out all by myself, but if you want confirmation, the screenwriters (Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio) have said as much many times, like here, here, here, here, and here. Also, the executive producer says so. Oh, and Orlando Bloom. And Keith Richards. And Johnny Depp. And pretty much every critic, even those who hate the movies. So I guess it's pretty obvious.
We often explore concepts by showing their opposite. That being so, it is not surprising that one of the most common motifs employed in these movies is imprisonment. This tableau from the original Disney ride is developed and played off of throughout all three movies:
Send This Pestilent Traitorous Cow-hearted Yeasty Codpiece To the Brig
In At World's End, Elizabeth tells Sao Feng "Pretty words for a captor... but words whispered through prison bars lose their charm." This may be true, but prison bars are a very cinematically-effective way to set a mood and frame a face, a fact that director Gore Verbinski has clearly realized. Many important words throughout these three movies are indeed whispered (or spoken) through prison bars, including "you know nothing of hell," "they took Miss Swann," "last we saw of ol' Bill Turner, he was sinking to the crushing black oblivion of Davy Jones' locker," "if it weren't for these bars I'd have you already," "What are you doing?"-"Choosing a side," and "you weren't there - why weren't you there?"
The number of times in these three movies that someone is actually confined in a prison, brig, ship cabin, or cage is huge - so astoundingly huge that I think I'm going to have to make a list of them all:
CotBP
Keep Your Guns On Him, Men... Gillette, Fetch Some Irons
The above list is only the beginning of the physical restraints that limit our characters' freedom of movement - we also see them manacled, shackled, bound with ropes, tied to sticks, trapped by a fallen mast, nailed in a casket, caught in a net, stranded on a desert island or floating barrel, held at swordpoint or gunpoint - or simply held. Or perhaps, as happened to Sao Feng's steamroom attendant in AWE, they might end up knocked out with a dwarf sitting on their stomach, repeatedly hitting them on the head with a shovel.
But of course this accumulation of incarceration, this cornucopia of captivity, this superfluity of subjugation beyond a bondage fetishist's wildest daydream is the mere physical symbol and outward manifestation of the deeper theme of the loss of freedom. The true threats to our characters' freedom in these movies are much less straightforward and more abstract; they belong to the realms of psychology, sociology, mysticism, and metaphysics.
My Freedom Was Forfeit Long Ago
When Ted and Terry are exploring a theme, they don't hold back. Just as "more is more" is evidently their philosophy when it comes to physical representations of human bondage, they have given us a dizzying array of plots and subplots focusing on quests for freedom. I'm not sure if there are actually any subplots that aren't about someone's quest for freedom. The primary abstractions and supernatural imperatives that bind our characters and drive the plots are these:
In these movies, the protagonists - Elizabeth, Will, and Jack - are trapped in untenable positions that they desperately desire to free themselves from. And so are the villains - at least Barbossa and Davy Jones, if perhaps not Lord Beckett. Even the supporting characters - Tia Dalma, Norrington, Bootstrap, Governor Swann - and the minor characters - Barbossa's crew, Davy Jones's crew - are actively seeking freedom from something. Finally, by the third movie, the entire maritime world (even the British Navy) is suffering under the cruel stranglehold of the EITC.
I Say It Was Divine Providence What Escaped Us From Jail
The amazing thing is that, with one possible exception that I will discuss later, at the end of the trio of movies every single character has been freed from every last bondage or curse on that list. Will and Elizabeth have broken free of class and convention and are free to marry and follow their own paths. Jack has rescued his beloved ship from the curse of the Aztec gold and regained his liberty to roam the seas. The curse on Barbossa and his crew has been broken, freeing them to live or die, as the case may be. By the end of the third movie, Jack has been freed from the Locker and seemingly escaped any remaining consequences of his bargain with Davy Jones. Beckett is dead, the EITC's control of the seas has been broken, and Will, Elizabeth, Norrington, and Governor Swann are - one way or another - beyond its sway. As Beckett demanded, they have either found their place in the new world or perished. Bootstrap Bill and all Davy Jones's other crewmen have been liberated by Will, either to life or to death. Davy Jones has been freed from his servitude to Beckett and also (by his death) from the captaincy of the Flying Dutchman. Even Calypso has been released from her mortal form.
At the end of the three movies, not everyone has gotten everything they wanted. Jack is not immortal, Raghetti doesn't have a new glass eye, Gibbs doesn't find anything shiny, Will doesn't get the Pearl, Norrington never achieved marriage with a fine woman, and Scarlett and Giselle don't get to take a ride on the Pearl. But everyone is free.
As far as we know, no one anywhere in the Pirates world is cursed or bound. Some people are bound by their choice to adhere to moral codes - pirates to follow the Code, navy members to follow military discipline, ordinary citizens to follow the law. Others are bound by affection and promises - Will and Elizabeth, Will and his father, Elizabeth and her son, Barbossa and his monkey, Cotton and his parrot, Pintel and Raghetti, Murtogg and Mullroy, Jack and the Pearl. Leaders are responsible for the well-being of their followers - Calypso for the sea, Elizabeth for all pirates as long as she is king, captains for their crews - and followers owe a return duty of obedience and loyalty. But all of this is voluntary, freely chosen and freely performed (or not) from day to day. No one that we know of is still under a geas, or suffering under the yoke of tyranny, or tied by the terms of a cruel bargain. Oh - except for one. Will.
This is the main reason why I think that Will ought to be freed from his service to the Flying Dutchman if he and his love are faithful to each other for ten years, and why I think it was a terrible mistake to cut from the movie the lines that indicated that outcome. Of course, I have lots of other reasons, like wanting to keep the reference to the Flying Dutchman legend/opera, wanting Will and Elizabeth to have lots of hot kneesex, wanting Will III to know his father, etc., but I think the most important is the thematic reason of freedom's across-the-board triumph. And the other thematic reason, where love can set you free as well as bind you, which is what I want to talk about next.
I Can Set You Free, Mate
Sometime after the first movie, I remember Ted and/or Terry making a comment about Jack (which I can't find, or I'd link to it - perhaps it was on the DVD commentary). They pointed out that Jack (unlike Elizabeth and Will) never managed to free himself from captivity. He was imprisoned three times in that movie - twice he was freed by Will and once by a lucky cannon shot. The point they wanted to make was that Jack's brand of "magic" was limited, and he mostly needed people to work with and manipulate.
But I think another reason for their choice is that these movies aren't just about "freedom" - they're about the act of "freeing." Again and again, we see characters taking positive action to free other characters. Generally, characters are not able to free themselves. Barbossa and his crew work for ten years trying to rid themselves of their curse, but in the end Will voluntary releases them - at his own (or rather, Jack's) opportune moment, not theirs. Will and Elizabeth aren't able to free themselves from the stifling bonds of their society, until Jack and Barbossa shake up their lives and their priorities. Jack fails in his attempt to use Will as leverage to regain the Pearl - and only succeeds in the end because his freedom is given to him as a gift by Will, Governor Swann, Norrington, and his returned crew. Jack needs Will to save him from the cannibals; Tia Dalma needs Barbossa and the Brethren to unbind her from her bones; the Dutchman crew is released by Jack and Will; Elizabeth and her crew are freed by Norrington; and Jack must be rescued from Davy Jones's Locker by his friends and enemies.
But just because other people can set you free does not mean that associating with other people always brings freedom. To the contrary, one of the main messages of the movies is that there is a tension, a necessary contradiction, between being free and being bound to other people. Again, if this weren't obvious in the movies - which it is - Ted and Terry have been so kind as to come out and explain it:
It's a study of what is a pirate. How free can you really be? What are those trade-offs? Jack kind of represents the ultimate free man-he really has no obligations to anybody, and, obviously, if you make an obligation to somebody, you're limiting your own freedom. But, if you're not willing to limit your own freedom, you can't have those relationships.
This tension works in the context of society as a whole. All forms of civilization are a trade-off between personal freedom and social order. Personal freedom at its worst leads to a chaotic war of all against all, which might be representated by a brutal and destructive Tortuga tavern brawl. Social order, at its worst, leads to stasis and the totalitarian oppression of the individual by society, which might be represented by the hanging scene at the beginning of At World's End. This is a central conflict dramatized in all three movies.
But, even more important in these movies, this tension also works in the context of personal relationships. Loving other people, making commitments to other people, can bring happiness, but it always brings constraints - and sometimes misery.
Have You Considered Keeping a More Watchful Eye On Her? Maybe Just Lock Her Up Somewhere...
You don't have to look hard in the movies to see examples of how love can limit your freedom. Consider:
This girl ... how far are you willing to go to save her?
I'd die for her.
Oh, good. No worries, then.
...
On my word do as I say, or I'll pull this trigger and be lost to Davy Jones' Locker.
Name your terms, Mr. Turner.
Elizabeth goes free.
...
Where's Elizabeth?
She's safe, just like I promised. She's all set to marry Norrington, just like she promised. And you get to die for her, just like you promised.
Since Will cannot be happy unless Elizabeth is safe and free, he is bound to try to rescue her, even if it requires sacrificing his own life. If you love someone, their captivity and danger is the same as your own. In the second movie, Beckett is able to control Will's actions because he holds Elizabeth under a death sentence, and he later controls Governor Swann with the (false) promise of protecting Elizabeth from all manner of remorseless metal. After his experiences with Will and Elizabeth in the first movie, Jack understands this brand of leverage as well as anyone, and he uses it to send Will after the key (to "save Elizabeth") and Elizabeth after the chest (to "save Will").
We see characters in the movies use this transitive property of love to torment other characters (Davy Jones forcing Bootstrap Bill to flog his son, Lord Beckett forcing Davy Jones to kill his Kraken) and to find out information (Sao Feng threatening to remove Will's face). To make the point even clearer, we see several failed attempts at controlling people in this way. A very amusing one is when Sao Feng tells Barbossa and Elizabeth "drop your weapons or I kill your man" and Barbossa, after a puzzled look from Elizabeth to Will, shrugs and says "kill him - he's not our man."
It is clear from Jack's dialogue that he is conscious of this particular threat to his freedom and determined to avoid it (or at least to avoid the appearance of being vulnerable to it). When Barbossa says "I suppose in return you want me not to kill the whelp?" he denies it: "No, no, not at all, by all means kill the whelp." When Davy Jones asks him "But I wonder, Sparrow, can you live with this? Can you condemn an innocent man - a friend - to a lifetime of servitude in your name, while you roam free?" he chirpily responds "yep - I'm good with it." Presumably this is the purpose of the clause in the Pirate Code that proclaims "any man that falls behind is left behind" - pirates are aware of the danger of having hostages to fortune and determined not to be limited by it.
Ah, Love - A Dreadful Bond
But, of course, love can limit your freedom in many more serious and sinister ways than merely providing leverage to your enemies and constraints to your choices. Love can lead to obsession, betrayal, and heartbreak. Jack alludes to this when he tells Davy Jones about Will:
And did I happen to mention... he's in love. With a girl. Due to be married. Betrothed. Dividing him from her and her from him... would only be half as cruel as actually allowing them be joined in holy matrimony.
To a sadist like Davy Jones, love offers a double opportunity for cruelty. He can torment Will by dividing him from his beloved Elizabeth for all eternity (or at least one hundred years). But he can - according to Jack - torment him worse by allowing him to be reunited with her.
As we will later discover, Davy Jones certainly has reason to agree that love can lead to misery - a misery so unbearable to him that he carves out him own heart to escape it. He and Calypso are seemingly truly in love with each other, with keepsakes, love letters, lockets, and a lovely musical theme to attest to it. And yet they lead each other into captivity. Calypso convinces Jones to take on the duty of captaining the Flying Dutchman, probably because she can't bear for him to die and wants a way to make him immortal. But in doing so, she sentences him to an eternity of service where he can only step on land one day every ten years. And when she doesn't meet him after the first ten years - ruining his chance to be free of his servitude, if you believe that interpretation - he imprisons her in revenge, betraying her to the nine pirate lords who bind her permanently in human form:
She was to be imprisoned forever! That was our agreement.
Your agreement?
I showed them how to bind her... She could not be trusted... she gave me no choice.
As it turns out, Will escapes and is reunited with Elizabeth, and this does indeed result in suffering for both of them.
But Jack also, not I think by coincidence, lays stress on the "holy matrimony" as a key part of the cruelty. From the very beginning of these movies, marriage in particular is associated with imagery of loss of freedom.
A Wedding! I Love Weddings... Drinks All 'Round! I Know, 'Clap Him In Irons,' Right?
Clap him in irons, indeed. It is interesting that although the first movie script was apparently written without any idea of the future Davy Jones/Calypso plot or Elizabeth's future temptation by Jack, the screenplay included an image strongly foreshadowing both marriage as bondage and the fear of a lover's unfaithfulness:
JACK
You're right. The quicker we get our crew and away, the better. And here's where we'll find our quartermaster.
He indicates: a tavern, THE FAITHFUL BRIDE; a hanging sign shows a bride holding a bouquet, her wrists manacled and chained. Will heads for the door, but Jack goes past to the corner, and motions "This way." Will follows.
EXT. THE FAITHFUL BRIDE - rear - night
A drunken man lays in the mud, having a friendly conversation with two pigs. He wears an old tattered Navy jacket. WATER splashes across his face, revealing: this is old Joshamee Gibbs. He sputters and roars:
GIBBS
Curse you for breathing, you slack-jawed idiot!
This sign was built and photographed, though it didn't end up being shown in the movie. I know I have seen a picture of it and I would include it here if I could find it. Can anyone lead me to it?
It is interesting to wonder if the Faithful Bride was an indication of the writers' state of mind that later resulted in the plot of the second and third movies, or if perhaps they were again inspired by images from the Disney ride:
The original Disney ride scenes - and of course these movies - contain many references to rape, one way that "love" can be anything but free. But it is not only women for whom marriage is portrayed as a bondage. The second Pirates movie contains the striking image of Will being brought to the site of his planned nuptials in his wedding finery with his hands in chains. Soon his bride-to-be is chained as well:
I believe what is going on here is more than a simple reflection of our cultural cliché of marriage as a "ball and chain." I believe that the film-makers are using marriage because although every form of love endangers your freedom and makes you vulnerable, the intensity, exclusivity, and lifelong commitment of romantic love leading to marriage provides the most potential for pain. And that goes not only for Will and Elizabeth but for Jack as well.
I Could In Fact Perform a Mar-ri-age - Right Here, Right On This Deck, Right Now...
Jack's relationship - near-relationship, non-relationship, whatever - with Elizabeth is framed in relation to marriage. When he meets her she is already in love with another man; when he meets her again in the second movie she is firmly betrothed and actively longing for marriage.
It seems natural to me that Jack would be interested in Elizabeth. Certainly she is attractive enough, and she is - we suspect - the only female in these movies that Jack has met and not had his witty way with. It is strongly implied in the first movie that he has intimate experience with his three slappers, Scarlett, Giselle, and Anamaria. In the second and third movies, it is revealed that he "knew" Tia Dalma, though not as well as she would have liked, and I have suspicions about his royal prerogatives among the Pelegostos as well. Even Sao Feng's handmaidens giggle at the mention of Jack's name. But Elizabeth is the one that got away - and after a very close call on their deserted island, too!
We gradually discover during the second movie that Jack is "vexed" about Elizabeth. In fact, she is the thing he wants most - except that he equally wants most to be as far away from her as possible. I think this makes sense. Jack is attracted to Elizabeth, and he is not the kind of person to consider her commitment to another man an insuperable bar - not even if that man has very recently risked all to save Jack from hanging. But he understands Elizabeth too well to blithely try his wiles on her - she is "the marrying kind," a respectable woman, the kind of woman who might try to change him, who would expect things of him. And, being the heroine she is, Elizabeth has a tendency to succeed in what she attempts - a truly discomfiting notion! So it is not surprising that Jack wants to stay far away from Elizabeth equally as much as he wants to approach her.
But fate - as it is so wont to do - intervenes, and Elizabeth is thrown in Jack's path. He then attempts to deal with temptation by the time-honored method of succumbing to it, possibly thinking (and I suspect correctly) that indulging himself with a taste of her would fulfill his want and allow his compass to move on to his next-most-pressing priority. As he is trying to tempt Elizabeth to sin, she tries to tempt him to virtue, and I think we are clearly meant to understand that Jack - perhaps influenced by his experiences with Elizabeth and Will or by the looming end to his life - is feeling some definite temptation in that direction. He seems to crave (and also greatly fear) things like trust and loyalty and making commitments to others - not just Elizabeth, but Will and his crew as well, perhaps even considering honoring the commitment he made to Davy Jones.
In the end, Jack doesn't get a chance to make that choice. Outraged by Jack's attempt to use Will to settle that debt, Elisabeth succumbs to temptation herself. She judges and sentences Jack, indulging her own curiousity and lust and sacrificing him to save herself, Will, and the crew at the same time. She "marries" Jack not to her but to his ship the Black Pearl, chaining him to her mast.
This is fitting, because Jack has behaved toward the Pearl much like Will and Elizabeth have behaved toward each other, having gone so far as to sell his soul for her sake - although it appears he hoped never to have to keep that bargain.
He does keep it, though, with Elizabeth's help. All Jack's negative, cynical pronouncements concerning love and marriage prove to be prophetic in his own case. His flirtation with mar-ri-age, combined with whatever love he must have felt for the Pearl that made him unable to bear her being lost to the depths, dooms him to a truly awful fate.
But these movies are not a tragedy, though the story of Davy Jones and Calypso is tragic enough. How do the writers show that love can set us free, as well as bind us?
The World Needs You Back Something Fierce, Jack
Well, of course, Jack is eventually freed from his would-be-eternal torment, if not from all its ill effects. But it is not clear that he is freed by love - though Pintel, Raghetti, Marty, and Jack the Monkey all claim that their motives are just that pure (interestingly, Gibbs, who seems to care for Jack more than anyone does, only rolls his eyes when Jack asks that question). The prime movers in Jack's rescue, however, are Tia Dalma, Barbossa, and Will (I had not realized it until writing this, but I can't think of anything in particular that Elizabeth contributes to the effort). Tia Dalma wants to retrieve Jack for her own completely selfish purpose, and more than that, she plans to kill him after he and she are both freed: "The Brethren Court, all of them - the last thing they will learn in this life, is how cruel I can be." Barbossa, assuredly, has no love for Jack. The last time they met, Jack broke an agreement with him (and Barbossa, no matter his other morals, is a man who prides himself on never reneging on a bargain once struck) and, oh yeah, killed him. Barbossa may well have it in mind to return the favor after Jack has played his necessary part at the meeting of the Brethren. And Will claims to hate Jack (though I am not sure I believe him), believes Jack to have stolen Elizabeth's love from him, and only manages to obtain the charts, ship and crew they need by promising to deliver Jack to his vengeful enemy Sao Feng. Will's primary intention is to make off with Jack's ship (and if you consider Jack's feelings for his ship as analogous to Will's feelings for Elizabeth, this is a neatly reciprocal intention).
So Jack is primarily saved by three people who wish him ill and in fact are actively planning to do him harm. I'll make the best of it I can and argue that at least some of their intentions are motivated by love. Will is the clearest case - he is motivated by love for his father. And possibly partly by love for Elizabeth, since he believes she loves Jack and wants him back (though in that case she's not likely to be pleased by Will's bargain with Sao Feng). Tia Dalma's motivation is selfish in that she wants freedom for herself - but freedom is something that she should have, and she is in some sense motivated by her love for the sea and her duty to care for it. Barbossa's a hard man to figure out. Clearly his main motivation is to free Calypso, but why? If it is because he thinks she is their only hope to free the world from the clutches of the East India Trading Company, that's actually pretty noble and motivated by love for his fellow-man. If it because he owes her for returning him to life and he never reneges on a bargain... eh, that's honorable, but it's basically self-love and self-respect. If it's because he loves Calypso, that's definitely love, but somehow I doubt it. He calls her a "fishwife" and sends her to the brig, and is unable to release her by speaking "as if to a lover." And if it's because he hopes to enjoy her legendary favor after she's released (and I strongly suspect it is, at least partly), well that's selfish, since he pretty clearly doesn't love her in return.
Of course, I can also argue that Jack isn't truly freed just because he is rescued from the Locker (it's hardly a coincidence that this is not the end of the film!). He is still subject to collection of the debt he owes to Davy Jones. That debt he frees himself from, when he holds Will's hand to stab Jones's heart. And that action by Jack is motivated purely by love, or at least altruism, for Will and Elizabeth and for every pirate that he manipulated to come out and fight Beckett's armada and can now save by turning the Dutchman to their side. That act of supreme self-sacrifice (because Jack is knowingly giving up eternal life to help others, even though I happen to think that it is a form of eternal life he is appallingly ill-suited for and would have been very unhappy with) frees everyone from bondage (I was going to say "except for Calypso," but he releases her from her need for vengeance), making every happy ending possible. Because of his correct choice, Jack is not only free of any debt to the Flying Dutchman, but the Dutchman, its captain, and all its crew owe him. He is free to be with the Pearl (if he can keep her from her other suitor), free to pursue rum and salty wenches, free to seek a much more congenial form of eternal life, and even free to explore the possibilities of being a "good man" with friendships and commitments and perhaps, someday, even love.
Speaking of love...
If You Lock Your Heart Away, You'll Lose Her For Certain
Jack's choices in the third movie are inextricably entwined (to borrow Norrington's word) with Will and Elizabeth's love story. Just as whatever fondness or loyalty he had for Will didn't prevent Jack from trying to seduce Elizabeth, whatever remaining hankering he may have for Elizabeth doesn't prevent him from giving Will good relationship advice and actually freeing Will to marry Elizabeth by offering to stab the heart and free Bootstrap himself. Will's decision to "think like Jack" and sell out his companions several times over seems to help Elizabeth come to terms with her own previous actions and realize that she may not, after all, be undeserving of Saint Will's love.
After failing to work out their problems when they were traveling together, Will and Elizabeth succeed while they are separated. As they travel their separate paths to find their place in the new world - two different places, at that - they each have experiences that teach them what they need to learn to trust each other again and find happiness together. Elizabeth learns lessons from Sao Feng, Bootstrap Bill, Norrington, Barbossa, Jack, the other Pirate Lords, and Teague. She also comes to terms with the first rival she has ever had for Will's allegiance - his promise to his father - and realizes that she has a very real chance of losing him. Will learns from interacting with Jack, Beckett, and Davy Jones, and one of the things he learns is that Jones lost his love not because of circumstances beyond his control but because in his pride, anger, and despair he chose to throw it away.
Before they part, Will asks Elizabeth "if you make your choices alone, how can I trust you?" and she answers "you can't." But by the time they meet again on the sandbar for parley, they have both been making many choices alone, yet they find they can easily communicate their intentions to each other without words and cooperate both on getting Jack onto Davy Jones's ship and on preparing for the upcoming battle. Will's appreciation of Elizabeth's courage and gallantry in leading her followers to fight for their freedom against seemingly hopeless odds removes any last doubts he may have about whether he can trust his heart to her. He can.
In the battle Elizabeth and Will find that while perhaps their bond with each other may limit their freedom of action - especially trying to fight while holding hands - that they are strong enough and instinctively in synch enough to succeed anyway, at least against normal opponents. When faced with Davy Jones's cruel determination to part them, they again need help from Captain Jack Sparrow, the personification of freedom.
Somehow I Doubt Jack Will Consider Employment the Same as Being Free
Will and Elizabeth work out their trust issues and marry themselves to each other with only a little input from Jack, but he is instrumental in helping them to find the places they belong, the roles they will play in defeating the enemies of freedom and building a new world where they can express their love for each other (if not, unfortunately, with each other). Jack serves as a kind of employment agent toward the end of the movie, personally giving Elizabeth her job as King of the Brethren Court and Will his job as Captain of the Flying Dutchman. Elizabeth reforms the material world, and Will is to clean up the immaterial one. And while Will is perfectly correct that employment doesn't equal freedom for Jack (another hint that he should not take the Flying Dutchman job), that is decidedly not true of everyone. Will and Elizabeth find a measure of power and security in their positions that helps them do what they have always wanted to do - be married to each other, start a family, finally and completely transcend the expectations and limitations of the Port Royal society they left behind them, exercise responsibility, and help those weaker than themselves.
And this is all very well and good, but the problem remains - Will is not free. And, by the transitive property of love, Elizabeth is thus not free as well. But can he not be freed, as everyone else in these movies has been?
In a recent interview, Ted Elliott spoke about the relationship between freedom and love:
the rest of the story really is about Sartre's [idea of] freedom... that if you enter into a relationship, you take on these obligations and limit your own freedom willingly and, if you objectify the [other] person, that can lead to sadism, whereas if you try to ensure that other person's freedom as well as your own, that's really the nature of love.
Judging by what we have seen so far, Will will need another person to free him. And there seem to be two methods: either someone, perhaps an enemy, can free him for purposes of his or her own, objectifying him, but coincidentally helping him, as Tia Dalma, Barbossa, and Will did with Jack; or someone who loves him can free him with self-sacrifice, as Jack has already freed both Will and Elizabeth from death. I believe we are meant to take a clue as to which it will be from the event that takes place directly after Will and Elizabeth are reunited.
It's Said It Must Be Spoken As If To a Lover
When Barbossa explains that the rite to frees Calypso must include the words "Calypso, I release you from your human bonds," spoken as if to a lover, Will and Elizabeth exchange glances. Watching Raghetti successfully perform this feat, perhaps they learn that freedom can be given by one who loves. Calypso says to Davy Jones:
I will be free... and when I am, I would give you my heart, and we would be together always - if only you had a heart.
If we have seen any clear message in the last two movies, it is that Will and Elizabeth are a parallel for Davy Jones and Calypso - but a parallel with a difference. While Davy Jones hides his heart away from the world, Will entrusts his to Elizabeth. While Davy Jones conspires to bind Calypso, Will always insists that "Elizabeth goes free." Both Jones and Calypso refer to themselves as "cruel" - but Will and Elizabeth, while they might be ruthless, thoughtless, and single-minded, are never cruel, to each other or to anyone else. Their love must have a different result than Calypso's and Davy Jones's. I agree with Terry Rossio:
For me, it doesn't make sense if you presume there is no difference, you can come to shore once every ten years if your love is true, you can come to shore once every ten years if your love isn't true.
But even if we don't believe that the curse can be broken simply by Elizabeth and Will being true to each other through one of Will's ten year terms of service, and that the happy family reunion shown in the scene after the credits is a permanent one, we can be sure of one thing: As a different pirate from a different movie once said, "Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while." One way or another, the curse will be broken, and Will can say, like Calypso but with such a crucial difference:
I will be free... and when I am, I will give you my heart, and we will be together always.
The Pirates of the Caribbean movies are about freedom. I actually managed to figure this out all by myself, but if you want confirmation, the screenwriters (Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio) have said as much many times, like here, here, here, here, and here. Also, the executive producer says so. Oh, and Orlando Bloom. And Keith Richards. And Johnny Depp. And pretty much every critic, even those who hate the movies. So I guess it's pretty obvious.
We often explore concepts by showing their opposite. That being so, it is not surprising that one of the most common motifs employed in these movies is imprisonment. This tableau from the original Disney ride is developed and played off of throughout all three movies:
Send This Pestilent Traitorous Cow-hearted Yeasty Codpiece To the Brig
In At World's End, Elizabeth tells Sao Feng "Pretty words for a captor... but words whispered through prison bars lose their charm." This may be true, but prison bars are a very cinematically-effective way to set a mood and frame a face, a fact that director Gore Verbinski has clearly realized. Many important words throughout these three movies are indeed whispered (or spoken) through prison bars, including "you know nothing of hell," "they took Miss Swann," "last we saw of ol' Bill Turner, he was sinking to the crushing black oblivion of Davy Jones' locker," "if it weren't for these bars I'd have you already," "What are you doing?"-"Choosing a side," and "you weren't there - why weren't you there?"
The number of times in these three movies that someone is actually confined in a prison, brig, ship cabin, or cage is huge - so astoundingly huge that I think I'm going to have to make a list of them all:
CotBP
- Jack (& fellow prisoners) - Fort Charles prison
- Elizabeth - Black Pearl cabin
- Jack - Black Pearl brig
- Will - Black Pearl brig
- Gibbs, Anamaria & crew - Black Pearl brig
- Elizabeth - Dauntless cabin
- Jack (& Barbossa's crew) - Dauntless brig (offscreen)
- Jack (& Barbossa's crew) - Fort Charles prison (offscreen)
- Will & Elizabeth - Fort Charles prison (offscreen)
- Jack (& other prisoners) - Turkish prison
- Elizabeth (& fellow prisoners) - Fort Charles prison
- Will, Gibbs, & crew - bone cages
- Pintel & Raghetti - Fort Charles prison (offscreen)
- Gov. Swann - Fort Charles prison (offscreen)
- Jack the monkey - cage
- Bootstrap Bill - Flying Dutchman brig (offscreen)
- Will - Black Pearl brig (offscreen)
- Elizabeth - Empress cabin
- Elizabeth & Sao Feng's crew - Flying Dutchman brig
- Tia Dalma - Black Pearl brig
- Jack - Flying Dutchman brig
Keep Your Guns On Him, Men... Gillette, Fetch Some Irons
The above list is only the beginning of the physical restraints that limit our characters' freedom of movement - we also see them manacled, shackled, bound with ropes, tied to sticks, trapped by a fallen mast, nailed in a casket, caught in a net, stranded on a desert island or floating barrel, held at swordpoint or gunpoint - or simply held. Or perhaps, as happened to Sao Feng's steamroom attendant in AWE, they might end up knocked out with a dwarf sitting on their stomach, repeatedly hitting them on the head with a shovel.
But of course this accumulation of incarceration, this cornucopia of captivity, this superfluity of subjugation beyond a bondage fetishist's wildest daydream is the mere physical symbol and outward manifestation of the deeper theme of the loss of freedom. The true threats to our characters' freedom in these movies are much less straightforward and more abstract; they belong to the realms of psychology, sociology, mysticism, and metaphysics.
My Freedom Was Forfeit Long Ago
When Ted and Terry are exploring a theme, they don't hold back. Just as "more is more" is evidently their philosophy when it comes to physical representations of human bondage, they have given us a dizzying array of plots and subplots focusing on quests for freedom. I'm not sure if there are actually any subplots that aren't about someone's quest for freedom. The primary abstractions and supernatural imperatives that bind our characters and drive the plots are these:
- Will and Elizabeth are confined by the classes and conventions of their English/Port Royal society - Elizabeth, is it entirely proper for you to...? ...at least the boy has a sense of propriety.
- Jack is suffering from the loss of his ship and resulting inability to sail the oceans - what a ship is, what the Black Pearl really is, is freedom...
- Barbossa and his crew are bound by a terrible curse dooming them to a pleasureless undead existence - we are not among the livin' and yet we cannot die.
- Jack is tied by the terms of his bargain with Davy Jones - You won't be able to talk your way out of this one, Jack. The same terms what applied to me apply to you, as well.
- Will, Elizabeth, Norrington, and finally Governor Swann are threatened with terrible consequences because their sense of justice conflicted with their nation's laws - Commodore Norrington is bound by the law. As are we all.
- Davy Jones (and, later, Will) is bound to the terms of his service to the Flying Dutchman - One day at shore, ten years at sea.
- Bootstrap Bill and all the other crew members of the Flying Dutchman are tied by their agreement to serve one hundred years before the mast. They also share the consequences of Davy Jones's corruption of his purpose - Once you've sworn an oath to the Dutchman there's no leaving it. Not till your debt is paid. By then you're not just on the ship, but of it.
- All pirates and those who associate them, and all merchant seamen, are threatened by the power, regulations, and tyranny of the East India Trading Company under Cutler Beckett - The world is shrinking, the blank edges of the map filled in.
- Davy Jones must submit to the demands of whoever controls his heart, or die - And the Captain is to sail it as commanded.
- Jack is trapped in Davy Jones's Locker - Jack Sparrow is taken body and soul to a place not of the earth, but punishment, the worst fate a person can bring upon himself, stretching on forever.
- Calypso is a goddess who has been "bound in her bones" - It has been torture, trapped in this single form, cut off from the sea, from all that I love, from you.
In these movies, the protagonists - Elizabeth, Will, and Jack - are trapped in untenable positions that they desperately desire to free themselves from. And so are the villains - at least Barbossa and Davy Jones, if perhaps not Lord Beckett. Even the supporting characters - Tia Dalma, Norrington, Bootstrap, Governor Swann - and the minor characters - Barbossa's crew, Davy Jones's crew - are actively seeking freedom from something. Finally, by the third movie, the entire maritime world (even the British Navy) is suffering under the cruel stranglehold of the EITC.
I Say It Was Divine Providence What Escaped Us From Jail
The amazing thing is that, with one possible exception that I will discuss later, at the end of the trio of movies every single character has been freed from every last bondage or curse on that list. Will and Elizabeth have broken free of class and convention and are free to marry and follow their own paths. Jack has rescued his beloved ship from the curse of the Aztec gold and regained his liberty to roam the seas. The curse on Barbossa and his crew has been broken, freeing them to live or die, as the case may be. By the end of the third movie, Jack has been freed from the Locker and seemingly escaped any remaining consequences of his bargain with Davy Jones. Beckett is dead, the EITC's control of the seas has been broken, and Will, Elizabeth, Norrington, and Governor Swann are - one way or another - beyond its sway. As Beckett demanded, they have either found their place in the new world or perished. Bootstrap Bill and all Davy Jones's other crewmen have been liberated by Will, either to life or to death. Davy Jones has been freed from his servitude to Beckett and also (by his death) from the captaincy of the Flying Dutchman. Even Calypso has been released from her mortal form.
At the end of the three movies, not everyone has gotten everything they wanted. Jack is not immortal, Raghetti doesn't have a new glass eye, Gibbs doesn't find anything shiny, Will doesn't get the Pearl, Norrington never achieved marriage with a fine woman, and Scarlett and Giselle don't get to take a ride on the Pearl. But everyone is free.
As far as we know, no one anywhere in the Pirates world is cursed or bound. Some people are bound by their choice to adhere to moral codes - pirates to follow the Code, navy members to follow military discipline, ordinary citizens to follow the law. Others are bound by affection and promises - Will and Elizabeth, Will and his father, Elizabeth and her son, Barbossa and his monkey, Cotton and his parrot, Pintel and Raghetti, Murtogg and Mullroy, Jack and the Pearl. Leaders are responsible for the well-being of their followers - Calypso for the sea, Elizabeth for all pirates as long as she is king, captains for their crews - and followers owe a return duty of obedience and loyalty. But all of this is voluntary, freely chosen and freely performed (or not) from day to day. No one that we know of is still under a geas, or suffering under the yoke of tyranny, or tied by the terms of a cruel bargain. Oh - except for one. Will.
This is the main reason why I think that Will ought to be freed from his service to the Flying Dutchman if he and his love are faithful to each other for ten years, and why I think it was a terrible mistake to cut from the movie the lines that indicated that outcome. Of course, I have lots of other reasons, like wanting to keep the reference to the Flying Dutchman legend/opera, wanting Will and Elizabeth to have lots of hot kneesex, wanting Will III to know his father, etc., but I think the most important is the thematic reason of freedom's across-the-board triumph. And the other thematic reason, where love can set you free as well as bind you, which is what I want to talk about next.
I Can Set You Free, Mate
Sometime after the first movie, I remember Ted and/or Terry making a comment about Jack (which I can't find, or I'd link to it - perhaps it was on the DVD commentary). They pointed out that Jack (unlike Elizabeth and Will) never managed to free himself from captivity. He was imprisoned three times in that movie - twice he was freed by Will and once by a lucky cannon shot. The point they wanted to make was that Jack's brand of "magic" was limited, and he mostly needed people to work with and manipulate.
But I think another reason for their choice is that these movies aren't just about "freedom" - they're about the act of "freeing." Again and again, we see characters taking positive action to free other characters. Generally, characters are not able to free themselves. Barbossa and his crew work for ten years trying to rid themselves of their curse, but in the end Will voluntary releases them - at his own (or rather, Jack's) opportune moment, not theirs. Will and Elizabeth aren't able to free themselves from the stifling bonds of their society, until Jack and Barbossa shake up their lives and their priorities. Jack fails in his attempt to use Will as leverage to regain the Pearl - and only succeeds in the end because his freedom is given to him as a gift by Will, Governor Swann, Norrington, and his returned crew. Jack needs Will to save him from the cannibals; Tia Dalma needs Barbossa and the Brethren to unbind her from her bones; the Dutchman crew is released by Jack and Will; Elizabeth and her crew are freed by Norrington; and Jack must be rescued from Davy Jones's Locker by his friends and enemies.
But just because other people can set you free does not mean that associating with other people always brings freedom. To the contrary, one of the main messages of the movies is that there is a tension, a necessary contradiction, between being free and being bound to other people. Again, if this weren't obvious in the movies - which it is - Ted and Terry have been so kind as to come out and explain it:
It's a study of what is a pirate. How free can you really be? What are those trade-offs? Jack kind of represents the ultimate free man-he really has no obligations to anybody, and, obviously, if you make an obligation to somebody, you're limiting your own freedom. But, if you're not willing to limit your own freedom, you can't have those relationships.
This tension works in the context of society as a whole. All forms of civilization are a trade-off between personal freedom and social order. Personal freedom at its worst leads to a chaotic war of all against all, which might be representated by a brutal and destructive Tortuga tavern brawl. Social order, at its worst, leads to stasis and the totalitarian oppression of the individual by society, which might be represented by the hanging scene at the beginning of At World's End. This is a central conflict dramatized in all three movies.
But, even more important in these movies, this tension also works in the context of personal relationships. Loving other people, making commitments to other people, can bring happiness, but it always brings constraints - and sometimes misery.
Have You Considered Keeping a More Watchful Eye On Her? Maybe Just Lock Her Up Somewhere...
You don't have to look hard in the movies to see examples of how love can limit your freedom. Consider:
This girl ... how far are you willing to go to save her?
I'd die for her.
Oh, good. No worries, then.
...
On my word do as I say, or I'll pull this trigger and be lost to Davy Jones' Locker.
Name your terms, Mr. Turner.
Elizabeth goes free.
...
Where's Elizabeth?
She's safe, just like I promised. She's all set to marry Norrington, just like she promised. And you get to die for her, just like you promised.
Since Will cannot be happy unless Elizabeth is safe and free, he is bound to try to rescue her, even if it requires sacrificing his own life. If you love someone, their captivity and danger is the same as your own. In the second movie, Beckett is able to control Will's actions because he holds Elizabeth under a death sentence, and he later controls Governor Swann with the (false) promise of protecting Elizabeth from all manner of remorseless metal. After his experiences with Will and Elizabeth in the first movie, Jack understands this brand of leverage as well as anyone, and he uses it to send Will after the key (to "save Elizabeth") and Elizabeth after the chest (to "save Will").
We see characters in the movies use this transitive property of love to torment other characters (Davy Jones forcing Bootstrap Bill to flog his son, Lord Beckett forcing Davy Jones to kill his Kraken) and to find out information (Sao Feng threatening to remove Will's face). To make the point even clearer, we see several failed attempts at controlling people in this way. A very amusing one is when Sao Feng tells Barbossa and Elizabeth "drop your weapons or I kill your man" and Barbossa, after a puzzled look from Elizabeth to Will, shrugs and says "kill him - he's not our man."
It is clear from Jack's dialogue that he is conscious of this particular threat to his freedom and determined to avoid it (or at least to avoid the appearance of being vulnerable to it). When Barbossa says "I suppose in return you want me not to kill the whelp?" he denies it: "No, no, not at all, by all means kill the whelp." When Davy Jones asks him "But I wonder, Sparrow, can you live with this? Can you condemn an innocent man - a friend - to a lifetime of servitude in your name, while you roam free?" he chirpily responds "yep - I'm good with it." Presumably this is the purpose of the clause in the Pirate Code that proclaims "any man that falls behind is left behind" - pirates are aware of the danger of having hostages to fortune and determined not to be limited by it.
Ah, Love - A Dreadful Bond
But, of course, love can limit your freedom in many more serious and sinister ways than merely providing leverage to your enemies and constraints to your choices. Love can lead to obsession, betrayal, and heartbreak. Jack alludes to this when he tells Davy Jones about Will:
And did I happen to mention... he's in love. With a girl. Due to be married. Betrothed. Dividing him from her and her from him... would only be half as cruel as actually allowing them be joined in holy matrimony.
To a sadist like Davy Jones, love offers a double opportunity for cruelty. He can torment Will by dividing him from his beloved Elizabeth for all eternity (or at least one hundred years). But he can - according to Jack - torment him worse by allowing him to be reunited with her.
As we will later discover, Davy Jones certainly has reason to agree that love can lead to misery - a misery so unbearable to him that he carves out him own heart to escape it. He and Calypso are seemingly truly in love with each other, with keepsakes, love letters, lockets, and a lovely musical theme to attest to it. And yet they lead each other into captivity. Calypso convinces Jones to take on the duty of captaining the Flying Dutchman, probably because she can't bear for him to die and wants a way to make him immortal. But in doing so, she sentences him to an eternity of service where he can only step on land one day every ten years. And when she doesn't meet him after the first ten years - ruining his chance to be free of his servitude, if you believe that interpretation - he imprisons her in revenge, betraying her to the nine pirate lords who bind her permanently in human form:
She was to be imprisoned forever! That was our agreement.
Your agreement?
I showed them how to bind her... She could not be trusted... she gave me no choice.
As it turns out, Will escapes and is reunited with Elizabeth, and this does indeed result in suffering for both of them.
But Jack also, not I think by coincidence, lays stress on the "holy matrimony" as a key part of the cruelty. From the very beginning of these movies, marriage in particular is associated with imagery of loss of freedom.
A Wedding! I Love Weddings... Drinks All 'Round! I Know, 'Clap Him In Irons,' Right?
Clap him in irons, indeed. It is interesting that although the first movie script was apparently written without any idea of the future Davy Jones/Calypso plot or Elizabeth's future temptation by Jack, the screenplay included an image strongly foreshadowing both marriage as bondage and the fear of a lover's unfaithfulness:
JACK
You're right. The quicker we get our crew and away, the better. And here's where we'll find our quartermaster.
He indicates: a tavern, THE FAITHFUL BRIDE; a hanging sign shows a bride holding a bouquet, her wrists manacled and chained. Will heads for the door, but Jack goes past to the corner, and motions "This way." Will follows.
EXT. THE FAITHFUL BRIDE - rear - night
A drunken man lays in the mud, having a friendly conversation with two pigs. He wears an old tattered Navy jacket. WATER splashes across his face, revealing: this is old Joshamee Gibbs. He sputters and roars:
GIBBS
Curse you for breathing, you slack-jawed idiot!
This sign was built and photographed, though it didn't end up being shown in the movie. I know I have seen a picture of it and I would include it here if I could find it. Can anyone lead me to it?
It is interesting to wonder if the Faithful Bride was an indication of the writers' state of mind that later resulted in the plot of the second and third movies, or if perhaps they were again inspired by images from the Disney ride:
The original Disney ride scenes - and of course these movies - contain many references to rape, one way that "love" can be anything but free. But it is not only women for whom marriage is portrayed as a bondage. The second Pirates movie contains the striking image of Will being brought to the site of his planned nuptials in his wedding finery with his hands in chains. Soon his bride-to-be is chained as well:
I believe what is going on here is more than a simple reflection of our cultural cliché of marriage as a "ball and chain." I believe that the film-makers are using marriage because although every form of love endangers your freedom and makes you vulnerable, the intensity, exclusivity, and lifelong commitment of romantic love leading to marriage provides the most potential for pain. And that goes not only for Will and Elizabeth but for Jack as well.
I Could In Fact Perform a Mar-ri-age - Right Here, Right On This Deck, Right Now...
Jack's relationship - near-relationship, non-relationship, whatever - with Elizabeth is framed in relation to marriage. When he meets her she is already in love with another man; when he meets her again in the second movie she is firmly betrothed and actively longing for marriage.
It seems natural to me that Jack would be interested in Elizabeth. Certainly she is attractive enough, and she is - we suspect - the only female in these movies that Jack has met and not had his witty way with. It is strongly implied in the first movie that he has intimate experience with his three slappers, Scarlett, Giselle, and Anamaria. In the second and third movies, it is revealed that he "knew" Tia Dalma, though not as well as she would have liked, and I have suspicions about his royal prerogatives among the Pelegostos as well. Even Sao Feng's handmaidens giggle at the mention of Jack's name. But Elizabeth is the one that got away - and after a very close call on their deserted island, too!
We gradually discover during the second movie that Jack is "vexed" about Elizabeth. In fact, she is the thing he wants most - except that he equally wants most to be as far away from her as possible. I think this makes sense. Jack is attracted to Elizabeth, and he is not the kind of person to consider her commitment to another man an insuperable bar - not even if that man has very recently risked all to save Jack from hanging. But he understands Elizabeth too well to blithely try his wiles on her - she is "the marrying kind," a respectable woman, the kind of woman who might try to change him, who would expect things of him. And, being the heroine she is, Elizabeth has a tendency to succeed in what she attempts - a truly discomfiting notion! So it is not surprising that Jack wants to stay far away from Elizabeth equally as much as he wants to approach her.
But fate - as it is so wont to do - intervenes, and Elizabeth is thrown in Jack's path. He then attempts to deal with temptation by the time-honored method of succumbing to it, possibly thinking (and I suspect correctly) that indulging himself with a taste of her would fulfill his want and allow his compass to move on to his next-most-pressing priority. As he is trying to tempt Elizabeth to sin, she tries to tempt him to virtue, and I think we are clearly meant to understand that Jack - perhaps influenced by his experiences with Elizabeth and Will or by the looming end to his life - is feeling some definite temptation in that direction. He seems to crave (and also greatly fear) things like trust and loyalty and making commitments to others - not just Elizabeth, but Will and his crew as well, perhaps even considering honoring the commitment he made to Davy Jones.
In the end, Jack doesn't get a chance to make that choice. Outraged by Jack's attempt to use Will to settle that debt, Elisabeth succumbs to temptation herself. She judges and sentences Jack, indulging her own curiousity and lust and sacrificing him to save herself, Will, and the crew at the same time. She "marries" Jack not to her but to his ship the Black Pearl, chaining him to her mast.
This is fitting, because Jack has behaved toward the Pearl much like Will and Elizabeth have behaved toward each other, having gone so far as to sell his soul for her sake - although it appears he hoped never to have to keep that bargain.
He does keep it, though, with Elizabeth's help. All Jack's negative, cynical pronouncements concerning love and marriage prove to be prophetic in his own case. His flirtation with mar-ri-age, combined with whatever love he must have felt for the Pearl that made him unable to bear her being lost to the depths, dooms him to a truly awful fate.
But these movies are not a tragedy, though the story of Davy Jones and Calypso is tragic enough. How do the writers show that love can set us free, as well as bind us?
The World Needs You Back Something Fierce, Jack
Well, of course, Jack is eventually freed from his would-be-eternal torment, if not from all its ill effects. But it is not clear that he is freed by love - though Pintel, Raghetti, Marty, and Jack the Monkey all claim that their motives are just that pure (interestingly, Gibbs, who seems to care for Jack more than anyone does, only rolls his eyes when Jack asks that question). The prime movers in Jack's rescue, however, are Tia Dalma, Barbossa, and Will (I had not realized it until writing this, but I can't think of anything in particular that Elizabeth contributes to the effort). Tia Dalma wants to retrieve Jack for her own completely selfish purpose, and more than that, she plans to kill him after he and she are both freed: "The Brethren Court, all of them - the last thing they will learn in this life, is how cruel I can be." Barbossa, assuredly, has no love for Jack. The last time they met, Jack broke an agreement with him (and Barbossa, no matter his other morals, is a man who prides himself on never reneging on a bargain once struck) and, oh yeah, killed him. Barbossa may well have it in mind to return the favor after Jack has played his necessary part at the meeting of the Brethren. And Will claims to hate Jack (though I am not sure I believe him), believes Jack to have stolen Elizabeth's love from him, and only manages to obtain the charts, ship and crew they need by promising to deliver Jack to his vengeful enemy Sao Feng. Will's primary intention is to make off with Jack's ship (and if you consider Jack's feelings for his ship as analogous to Will's feelings for Elizabeth, this is a neatly reciprocal intention).
So Jack is primarily saved by three people who wish him ill and in fact are actively planning to do him harm. I'll make the best of it I can and argue that at least some of their intentions are motivated by love. Will is the clearest case - he is motivated by love for his father. And possibly partly by love for Elizabeth, since he believes she loves Jack and wants him back (though in that case she's not likely to be pleased by Will's bargain with Sao Feng). Tia Dalma's motivation is selfish in that she wants freedom for herself - but freedom is something that she should have, and she is in some sense motivated by her love for the sea and her duty to care for it. Barbossa's a hard man to figure out. Clearly his main motivation is to free Calypso, but why? If it is because he thinks she is their only hope to free the world from the clutches of the East India Trading Company, that's actually pretty noble and motivated by love for his fellow-man. If it because he owes her for returning him to life and he never reneges on a bargain... eh, that's honorable, but it's basically self-love and self-respect. If it's because he loves Calypso, that's definitely love, but somehow I doubt it. He calls her a "fishwife" and sends her to the brig, and is unable to release her by speaking "as if to a lover." And if it's because he hopes to enjoy her legendary favor after she's released (and I strongly suspect it is, at least partly), well that's selfish, since he pretty clearly doesn't love her in return.
Of course, I can also argue that Jack isn't truly freed just because he is rescued from the Locker (it's hardly a coincidence that this is not the end of the film!). He is still subject to collection of the debt he owes to Davy Jones. That debt he frees himself from, when he holds Will's hand to stab Jones's heart. And that action by Jack is motivated purely by love, or at least altruism, for Will and Elizabeth and for every pirate that he manipulated to come out and fight Beckett's armada and can now save by turning the Dutchman to their side. That act of supreme self-sacrifice (because Jack is knowingly giving up eternal life to help others, even though I happen to think that it is a form of eternal life he is appallingly ill-suited for and would have been very unhappy with) frees everyone from bondage (I was going to say "except for Calypso," but he releases her from her need for vengeance), making every happy ending possible. Because of his correct choice, Jack is not only free of any debt to the Flying Dutchman, but the Dutchman, its captain, and all its crew owe him. He is free to be with the Pearl (if he can keep her from her other suitor), free to pursue rum and salty wenches, free to seek a much more congenial form of eternal life, and even free to explore the possibilities of being a "good man" with friendships and commitments and perhaps, someday, even love.
Speaking of love...
If You Lock Your Heart Away, You'll Lose Her For Certain
Jack's choices in the third movie are inextricably entwined (to borrow Norrington's word) with Will and Elizabeth's love story. Just as whatever fondness or loyalty he had for Will didn't prevent Jack from trying to seduce Elizabeth, whatever remaining hankering he may have for Elizabeth doesn't prevent him from giving Will good relationship advice and actually freeing Will to marry Elizabeth by offering to stab the heart and free Bootstrap himself. Will's decision to "think like Jack" and sell out his companions several times over seems to help Elizabeth come to terms with her own previous actions and realize that she may not, after all, be undeserving of Saint Will's love.
After failing to work out their problems when they were traveling together, Will and Elizabeth succeed while they are separated. As they travel their separate paths to find their place in the new world - two different places, at that - they each have experiences that teach them what they need to learn to trust each other again and find happiness together. Elizabeth learns lessons from Sao Feng, Bootstrap Bill, Norrington, Barbossa, Jack, the other Pirate Lords, and Teague. She also comes to terms with the first rival she has ever had for Will's allegiance - his promise to his father - and realizes that she has a very real chance of losing him. Will learns from interacting with Jack, Beckett, and Davy Jones, and one of the things he learns is that Jones lost his love not because of circumstances beyond his control but because in his pride, anger, and despair he chose to throw it away.
Before they part, Will asks Elizabeth "if you make your choices alone, how can I trust you?" and she answers "you can't." But by the time they meet again on the sandbar for parley, they have both been making many choices alone, yet they find they can easily communicate their intentions to each other without words and cooperate both on getting Jack onto Davy Jones's ship and on preparing for the upcoming battle. Will's appreciation of Elizabeth's courage and gallantry in leading her followers to fight for their freedom against seemingly hopeless odds removes any last doubts he may have about whether he can trust his heart to her. He can.
In the battle Elizabeth and Will find that while perhaps their bond with each other may limit their freedom of action - especially trying to fight while holding hands - that they are strong enough and instinctively in synch enough to succeed anyway, at least against normal opponents. When faced with Davy Jones's cruel determination to part them, they again need help from Captain Jack Sparrow, the personification of freedom.
Somehow I Doubt Jack Will Consider Employment the Same as Being Free
Will and Elizabeth work out their trust issues and marry themselves to each other with only a little input from Jack, but he is instrumental in helping them to find the places they belong, the roles they will play in defeating the enemies of freedom and building a new world where they can express their love for each other (if not, unfortunately, with each other). Jack serves as a kind of employment agent toward the end of the movie, personally giving Elizabeth her job as King of the Brethren Court and Will his job as Captain of the Flying Dutchman. Elizabeth reforms the material world, and Will is to clean up the immaterial one. And while Will is perfectly correct that employment doesn't equal freedom for Jack (another hint that he should not take the Flying Dutchman job), that is decidedly not true of everyone. Will and Elizabeth find a measure of power and security in their positions that helps them do what they have always wanted to do - be married to each other, start a family, finally and completely transcend the expectations and limitations of the Port Royal society they left behind them, exercise responsibility, and help those weaker than themselves.
And this is all very well and good, but the problem remains - Will is not free. And, by the transitive property of love, Elizabeth is thus not free as well. But can he not be freed, as everyone else in these movies has been?
In a recent interview, Ted Elliott spoke about the relationship between freedom and love:
the rest of the story really is about Sartre's [idea of] freedom... that if you enter into a relationship, you take on these obligations and limit your own freedom willingly and, if you objectify the [other] person, that can lead to sadism, whereas if you try to ensure that other person's freedom as well as your own, that's really the nature of love.
Judging by what we have seen so far, Will will need another person to free him. And there seem to be two methods: either someone, perhaps an enemy, can free him for purposes of his or her own, objectifying him, but coincidentally helping him, as Tia Dalma, Barbossa, and Will did with Jack; or someone who loves him can free him with self-sacrifice, as Jack has already freed both Will and Elizabeth from death. I believe we are meant to take a clue as to which it will be from the event that takes place directly after Will and Elizabeth are reunited.
It's Said It Must Be Spoken As If To a Lover
When Barbossa explains that the rite to frees Calypso must include the words "Calypso, I release you from your human bonds," spoken as if to a lover, Will and Elizabeth exchange glances. Watching Raghetti successfully perform this feat, perhaps they learn that freedom can be given by one who loves. Calypso says to Davy Jones:
I will be free... and when I am, I would give you my heart, and we would be together always - if only you had a heart.
If we have seen any clear message in the last two movies, it is that Will and Elizabeth are a parallel for Davy Jones and Calypso - but a parallel with a difference. While Davy Jones hides his heart away from the world, Will entrusts his to Elizabeth. While Davy Jones conspires to bind Calypso, Will always insists that "Elizabeth goes free." Both Jones and Calypso refer to themselves as "cruel" - but Will and Elizabeth, while they might be ruthless, thoughtless, and single-minded, are never cruel, to each other or to anyone else. Their love must have a different result than Calypso's and Davy Jones's. I agree with Terry Rossio:
For me, it doesn't make sense if you presume there is no difference, you can come to shore once every ten years if your love is true, you can come to shore once every ten years if your love isn't true.
But even if we don't believe that the curse can be broken simply by Elizabeth and Will being true to each other through one of Will's ten year terms of service, and that the happy family reunion shown in the scene after the credits is a permanent one, we can be sure of one thing: As a different pirate from a different movie once said, "Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while." One way or another, the curse will be broken, and Will can say, like Calypso but with such a crucial difference:
I will be free... and when I am, I will give you my heart, and we will be together always.