A thesis on Jack; past, present and future
ok ye bewarned!!!
its a long read so i've picked out the relevant parts that you will probably find the most interesting...even though ALOT of it is actually VERY relevant 🙂
its not my work; its the work of a very indulgent fan of POTC over on the sparrabeth[/b] livejournal forums...
http://ladyofthesilent.livejournal.com/4845.html#cutid1
^^^ here is the site if you want to read all of it....but beware it is LONG but VERY insightful....
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[i]Looking for facts, one will soon come to find that not much is known about Jack Sparrow: He’s male, white and probably in his 30s.
He speaks English which might indicate that his parents were English as well, though his looks (mainly due to Johnny’s Cherokee origins) might also suggest Spanish or Portuguese ancestors. We have never seen him use any language other than English (apart from Pelegosto ;-) but he is able to explain the origin of the words “parley” and “mayonnaise”,
Furthermore he uses the French pronunciation for marriage which makes me think that he has some knowledge of that language. French was commonly used among members of the British Upper Class, so here’s maybe a hint at Jack being an educated man.
Notice he is also able to read and write and though he has the compass, we see him using charts and navigating instruments in DMC.
It has been stated by the writers that Jack started out as a cartographer-turned-pirate in an early draft of PotC-CotBP but the storyline was dropped, probably to link his backstory with Beckett’s. So here’s our proof that Jack was never meant to simply be a pirate but rather an honest man who was forced into piracy when someone (Beckett, as it turns out in DMC) branded the “P” into his skin.
Now we are to meet his father in AWE, a guy named “Teague” who is said to be dressed just like Jack, but with a differently coloured bandana. It has been assumed that Teague will make his appearance as a member of the Bretheren (the pirate council) but I rather doubt this since it has been stated he is in a scene with Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley. It’s hard to say whether he’s supposed to be a pirate or not.
The story goes Jack Sparrow was born on a ship during a typhoon, so he might very well be the son of a pirate. However, this contradicts the theory of him starting out as an honest, possibly educated man – except his story is going to be similar to Will’s and he was raised by his mother, refusing to become a pirate like his father.
There are rumours, surely to be taken with a grain of salt, that Jack was once a merchant sailor, working for Beckett and the EITC as captain of a ship called “The Wicked Wench”. When ordered to transport slaves to the Americas, he turned his ship around to take them back to Africa. Maybe he succeeded, maybe he did not – in any case, Beckett learned of Jack’s betrayal and sent the Wench to the bottom of the sea after (or before?) having branded its captain a Pirate.
Having lost everything he owned in this world, Jack sold his soul to Davy Jones to get his ship back, renamed it “Black Pearl” and made his first appearance as a pirate in Tortuga.
There are actually quotes from DMC as well as from the leaked AWE script which support this story:
1. In DMC, Beckett tells Will that it was him who branded Jack a pirate, which corresponds with the rumour quoted above
2. Beckett seems to know quite a lot about Jack – remember he knows about the Compass
3. Beckett wants Will to offer the letters of the marque to Jack; what made him think Jack might want them? Norrington uses the letters to “get his life back” – Beckett might (wrongly?) have assumed that Jack would want the same.
4. In CotBP, Gibbs mentions that no one knows about Jack Sparrow’s past up to the day he appeared in Tortuga
5. In the leaked 56 pages of the AWE-script, Barbossa mentions the Wench while talking to Sao Feng. Elizabeth (wrongly) assumes that he’s talking about her but in the script, it’s Wench, not wench!
6. The “Black Pearl” and her mysteries seem to be an important part of AWE. There’s a scene in which Will tries to question Gibbs about the ship (but to no avail – Gibbs seems to know as little as does everyone else)
So I think we have every reason to believe that there might be at least some truth in the EITC-story. But where does this lead us?
First of all, we learn that Jack has been already a captain before he became a pirate – and that he must have been pretty young back then for he is not THAT old in DMC, 13 years after he assumingly lost the “Wench”. Let’s face it, poor children, orphans, children of whores, etc. don’t become captains. You need to be able to read and write, you need to navigate and read charts – in short: You need a kind of education that must have been pretty expensive those days.
Which brings us back to Jack’s upbringing: As early as CotBP (deleted scenes) Jack talks about him and Elizabeth as “peas in a pod”. Of course, he is referring here to the fact that each of them doesn’t trust the other. But I think he’s already suggesting that they resemble each other in more than one respect. In DMC, Jack makes it quite clear that he thinks they’re very much alike. Because both of them are pirates or because both of them turned pirates though their biographies didn’t suggest such a career? The latter might very well be the case.
Now this would differ them from every other pirate we’ve met so far. There’s another dimension to their being an outlaw which, in my opinion, has to do with rebellion. It has already been stated that Jack is essentially an anarchist, opposed to authority and governmental structures. I think it can be safely assumed that he is opposed to a society which enslaves people and chooses to condemn him for every good deed he does in his life (freeing the slaves, rescuing Elizabeth).
As I have said in another essay, there are similarities to the story of Robin Hood, though Jack doesn’t work for a greater good.
(As for Elizabeth, I think it becomes quite clear that she is essentially unhappy with the restrictions of her class and society. She rebels against it not so much because of bad experiences but because she consciously decided that she doesn’t want this kind of life. Her motivations are, in my opinion, a lot more selfish than Jack’s which makes her more of a real pirate than he is – which has been confirmed by the writers.)
The question whether Jack is a good man or not has been brought up on numerous occasions. The writers themselves have stated that Jack is NOT a good man – which doesn’t mean he is completely free of any moral restrictions. He is said to have his own internal moral landscape which means his actions depend entirely on the situation at hand.
Now, in my opinion, it has not always been like that. Notice the way he smiles at Elizabeth in the curiosity scene when she tells him that he IS a good man. There’s an honest smile on his face, a rather sad one, not his usual pirate-grin. This makes me think that Jack may have started out like Will: A courageous young man, maybe a little naïve, determined to do the right thing. As for Will, being good didn’t get him very far. In fact,
I think Jack Sparrow wasn’t born a trickster, a liar and a murderer – like any other person, he only adopted certain strategies to counteract what life did to him. I don’t want to claim that his behaviour in certain situations can be excused, I am just trying to say that it doesn’t come out of nowhere and is certainly not based on him being such a bad person.
If you look at the leaked AWE script, you’ll notice that Jack almost certainly seems to host feelings for Elizabeth. Will is trying to make him say it, but obviously to no avail – as Tia Dalma said in DMC, he knows what he wants but is loath to claim it as his own. In many fanfictions, Jack confesses his love for Elizabeth – honestly, I don’t see him do it, even though I think he actually does love her.
Jack is known for playing his cards “close to his vest”. Furthermore, life has taught him that emotions like pity, friendship or love only make you weak and might lead to your downfall. In DMC, he didn’t want to be vexed by Elizabeth, he struggled not to fall in love with her – and in the end, when he finally couldn’t help it anymore, when he tried to be a good man, she sent him to his death. Although his smile might suggest that he actually doesn’t blame her for doing it, I highly doubt that her actions left him completely unmoved.
After what might have been a long time, he allowed himself to have feelings and what happened? They were used against him – as always!
I think the situation he finds himself in is very similar to when he was first marooned on the island. As can be seen above, Barbossa knows an awful lot about Jack’s past, he might even know the whole story which to me suggests that he and Jack may have been friends - remember Jack even agreed to tell him the coordinates of the Isla de Muerta. And where did his trust and friendship lead him? He was left to die on an uninhabited island.
In DMC, Jack fell for Elizabeth and in the end, he trusted her as much as to allow her to get really close to him. Again, he was left to die.
This is not funny and though we all want to see Jack happy, I can actually see why the writers made him a lot darker in AWE. Now they have compared Jack to Rick from “Casablanca”; it has been said that Rick’s character didn’t change in the course of the movie but was rather “revealed” – and that the same will be true for Jack.
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