Love is blind, or so they say. In the case of romantic love this colloquial saying refers to a lack of fault in the eyes of a significant other for their partner, but perhaps another form of blind love exists that trumps everything else, love for oneself. Can the need for self-dependency, confidence, and acceptance conquer all other emotional needs? Is the thirst for self-assurance something so strong it could lead to hallucinations, false memory, even psychosis? In the 1997 film Titanic directed and written by James Cameron, an underlying mystery presents an engaged audience with these very questions. Titanic is one of the most well renowned motion pictures in the history of the film industry. It provides a fictional, romantically engaging plot that is intricately entwined with the real historical event, the infamous sinking of the ship, the RMS Titanic, which occurred in April of 1912. The film is particularly popular for it’s epic love story involving Rose DeWitt Bukater and Jack Dawson, but what if it wasn’t really a tale of a couple’s romance and actually one of self affirmation? Consider this; Jack is a figment of Rose’s imagination, a tool her psyche invents to save her from herself. He is merely a mental device that Rose conceives to cope with her depression and the deep sense of dissatisfaction surrounding her life, and eventually, Jack ends up being a coping mechanism for her near death experience aboard the Titanic. Jack helps her to justify the massive amount of mental anguish she experienced courtesy of her mother, her arranged marriage, and the ultimate sinking of the ship.
At first this theory may seem like a bit of a stretch, but with further exploration of Rose’s current mental state on the Titanic, in combination with Jack’s character traits, dialogue, and lack of proof that he was ever even aboard the ship, it all becomes very possible. Although in the film the audience is shown many scenes where Jack is on his own, without Rose, or is interacting with other characters, the fact remains that the entirety of the story is being told from Rose’s memory 84 years after this love affair took place. Rose sailed on the titanic at 17 years old, this would make her 101 when she is telling her story, not only does human memory fade and fill in the gaps over time, but when Rose was aboard the titanic she was in an extremely unstable state of mind. The film presents us with some strong evidence to indicate that she suffered a psychotic episode aboard the titanic, and as a result her fractured psyche formed the character Jack.
We learn early on in the film that Rose’s family, her mother, in particular, has burdened her with marrying a man for the financial security of her family, not for love. Her mother is highly disparaging towards Rose, always criticizing and questioning her. Rose’s fiance, Cal, is viciously abusive towards her. The combination of these things ultimately prompt Rose to view death as the only end to her anguish, leading her to the verge of stepping over the edge of the ship on the brink of committing suicide. Just when it appears she will let go and fall into the black water below, Jack appears. “Come any closer and I’ll jump!” she yells. “No you won’t,” says Jack (Titanic) The first time the two characters interact is when Rose has hit her absolute lowest point and is the most mentally unstable. What she had in her life already wasn’t enough, so she had to find something more, so she invents Jack Dawson. He is merely a projection of her mind, a dream compelling her to hold on to life in a moment where all of the pieces of her reality could not.
The first piece of evidence to suggest that Jack was created to fill the empty space in Rose’s life lies in the fact that Jack is the complete opposite of her fiance Cal. Where Cal is rich, possessive, entitled, arrogant, and judgemental, Jack is poor, humble, kind and charming. He encompasses all that Rose wishes for in a significant other, he is everything for her that she knows Cal will never be. Secondly Jack’s dialogue throughout the film is extremely clairvoyant although the couple has just met. He offers Rose constant affirmation that she deserves to be happy, that her depression is justified and that she is a worthy human being. His lines greatly reflect those of Rose’s own conscious thought; “They’ve got you trapped, if you don’t break free you’re gonna die! Maybe not right away because you’re strong but… sooner or later that fire that I love about you, Rose. That fire’s gonna burn out” (Titanic). This quote is shockingly parallel to Roses line earlier in the film, “It was the ship of dreams to everyone else. To me it was a slave ship, taking me back to America in chains. Outwardly, I was everything a well brought up girl should be. Inside, I was screaming” (Titanic).
Jack is a representation of the emergence of Rose’s self-esteem, inner strength, and individuality. Rose reflects on her perspective surrounding her life by saying
“I saw my whole life as if I’d already lived it. An endless parade of parties and cotillions, yachts and polo matches. Always the same narrow people, the same mindless chatter. I felt like I was standing at a great precipice, with no one to pull me back, no one who cared… or even noticed.”(Titanic)
In the scene of her suicide attempt, Jack is the one to figureativley pull her back from the edge of the boat, and from the edge of her darkest state of mind. Jack instills in her a sense of self-worth that she was having trouble dicovering on her own.
“Rose: You have a gift Jack, you do. You see people.
Jack: I see you.
Rose: And?
Jack: You wouldn’t have jumped.”
This is Jack confirming to her that she was strong enough to stay alive and to fight back the demons that led her to even consider suicide. Jack is sure to make clear in this scene that he sees Rose and Rose alone, her narrows her broad statement that he sees other people and makes it just about her. At another point in the film, Rose says to him, “It’s not up to you to save me, Jack.” To which Jack responds with “You’re right… only you can do that” (Titanic). This yet again acts as an affirmation, provided by Jack, of Rose’s inner strength.
Outside of the dialogue between Rose and Jack, factual evidence that Jack was merely a figment of Rose’s imagination is presented by the researcher, Lewis Bodine, when he is speaking with Rose 84 years later. He says to her, “We never found anything on Jack… there’s no record of him at all” Rose responds cryptically by saying
“No, there wouldn’t be, would there? And I’ve never spoken of him until now…But now you know there was a man named Jack Dawson and that he saved me in every way that a person can be saved. I don’t even have a picture of him. He exists now…only in my memory.” (Titanic)
Not only does this provide some factual evidence that Jack was never actually a passenger on the Titanic, but Rose herself alludes to him as a private thought, kept in her hidden memory. It is possible that because Jack won his ticket aboard the titanic there was no documentation of his presence on the voyage, or perhaps there was no official record keeping system for the lower cabins, but these two things both seem unlikely.
Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence that we see in the dialogue between the two iconic characters comes at the end of the film, in possibly the most frustrating and heart-wrenching scene. After all of the trauma that Rose has experienced while abroad the ship, and during the sinking of the boat, she finally finds herself floating on a piece of driftwood in the frigid ocean water, surrounded by death, looking into Jack’s eyes. As she begins to accept her fate and say her goodbyes Jack says to her,
“Listen, Rose. You’re gonna get out of here, you’re gonna go on and you’re gonna make lots of babies, and you’re gonna watch them grow. You’re gonna die an old… an old lady warm in her bed, not here, not this night. Not like this, do you understand me? Promise me you’ll survive. That you won’t give up, no matter what happens, no matter how hopeless. Promise me now, Rose, and never let go of that promise.” (Titanic)
She promises him, and in his final line Jacks pleads to her, “never let go”and shortly afterwards Rose is presented with the hope of survival when a life boat appears, and lifts her head to discover that Jack has died. She takes just a few moments to grieve for him, and she releases his hands and watches him sink into the black water below. This scene is emotionally wrenching for the audience, but it also presents yet another piece of evidence that Jack is not in fact a real person, as his death is a massive misrepresentation of basic human biology. When Rose lets go of him, Jack’s body sinks into the water until he is entirely out of sight, yet all of the other dead bodies surrounding them, with and without life jackets, are afloat. Now if Jack’s lungs had filled with water shortly before he died his body sinking would make sense, but he died with his head and neck above water on the piece of driftwood with Rose. This iconic scene also presents the audience with the question, why on earth Rose would let go when Jack specifically asked her not to? When Jack told Rose to never let go he was not referring to her physical hold of him, but rather her will to live. This is why she is able to muster the strength to let him sink away from her and fight to reach the lifeboat, and live out the life she promised him. Under the assumption that Jack exists only as a figment of Rose’s imagination, this scene would represent the most defining episode of her psychosis. Releasing Jack acts as the pivotal moment where Rose ultimately finds her will to live knowing that he is gone, pulling her strength from within herself. Jack initially appears to her when death is the only escape in her mind, and Jack leaves her in a moment where Rose is already in death’s clutches, but she finds the will to live in a situation where letting go would be so much easier than holding on to life. This symbolizes a massive amount of character development on her part, and Jack’s body sinking represents the resolution of his vivid existence within Rose’s mind, and transitions him into a comfortable memory. He served his necessary purpose within her mind, and as she let him go she found the ultimate resolve to carry on.
The film ends with Rose at 101 years old walking to the end of the stern of the researcher’s ship, where she lifts herself onto the ship’s railings and retrieves a necklace containing the diamond, the Heart of the Ocean (the Hope Diamond) which was stolen by Jack in the film and finds itself in Rose’s jacket pocket following the sinking of the Titanic. 84 years later Rose again is on a ship looking out into the black water of the ocean, she lets out a small laugh and releases the diamond into the water below where it sinks away until it is out of sight. Rose then returns to her bed, where she quietly passes away. The film ends with Rose, restored to her beautiful 17-year-old self, reuniting with the souls lost in the sinking of the ship. She makes her way up the grand staircase and is reunited with her beloved Jack. This scene is the finalization of Rose releasing the final piece her reality, and reuniting with Jack and therefor solidifying her contentedness with herself, and the life she lived.
Titanic will always be one of the crowning jewels of the film industry, its story of love and tragedy will live on forever. Possibly because the world will forever idealize a timeless love story, or maybe because its true underlying theme of humankind’s thirst for self-fulfillment, actualization, and acceptance strikes a subconscious cord with the audience. What Jack was for Rose is hidden in all of us, and if the nature of our existence pushed us to the brink of psychosis, maybe we too would invent our own versions of Jack Dawson, perhaps some of us already have.