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arishaAll apologies, guys, but it looks like the next installment in my series of awesome Pirates entries won't be up until after I return on Thursday. But to tide you over till then, here is the almost-4,000-word essay I wrote about Will's Hero's Journey for the film class I was taking the summer that At World's End was released. I'm not going to claim that this is a fantastic essay, I mean I think you can tell that I wrote it very quickly (and didn't even cite my sources, for shame!!). But I think I did a decent job at pinpointing the different stages of Will's Journey and hopefully it's a somewhat interesting read. I think it'd be fun to map out the Journeys of all the main characters in the trilogy, just to see them all show up as different things in each other's paths. xD
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“There is a Cost Must Be Paid in the End”
The Hero’s Journey in the Pirates of the Caribbean Sequels
Introduction
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) attracted audiences with its famous cast, its quirky humour, its swashbuckling fun, and its underlying Hero’s Journey, or monomyth. The film found enough success that two sequels were soon put into production: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007). It is these two sequels that this essay is concerned with. Though the two films could be interpreted as stand-alone films, when they are examined together, several sweeping Hero’s Journeys can be found, the most obvious of which is that of William Turner, one of the trilogy’s three major protagonists. His Meeting with the Goddess is a literal one, as is the death that precedes his Rebirth. Joseph Campbell described the stages that are to be found in the Hero’s Journey; this essay will look at how these stages present themselves in the character arc of Will Turner in the two sequels, Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End.
Ordinary World
When The Curse of the Black Pearl ends, Will Turner is a blacksmith who is beginning to come to terms with the more piratical and lawless aspects of his personality. He has finally found the courage to confess his love to Elizabeth Swann and together they have aided in the escape of a convicted pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow. Will and Elizabeth remain happily together in Port Royal while Jack is happily sailing the seas in his recently reclaimed ship, the Black Pearl. This is the Ordinary World of the Pirates sequels, though they do not explore it themselves.
Another important point we learn in Curse is that when Will was a child, he sailed to Port Royal in order to look for his father, whom he believed was a merchant sailor. In truth, his father was a pirate, complete with a pirate name: Bootstrap Bill Turner. As Jack tells Will, “pirate is in [his] blood,” and he will one day have to deal with that. The physical search for Bootstrap ends when Will learns that his crewmates left him for dead at the bottom of the ocean, but by accepting his more piratical traits, Will is still able to become closer to his father. This sequence of events could be considered the Atonement with the Father stage of Will’s Journey. The physical search for Bootstrap will continue in the sequels, where it is revealed that he managed to survive.
The Call to Adventure
There is little time in Dead Man’s Chest for the Ordinary World because the film swiftly opens with Will’s Call to Adventure. Its Herald is Lord Beckett, who arrests Will and Elizabeth for helping Jack, a convicted pirate, escape the gallows -- the event with which Curse ended. Beckett makes a deal with Will: Elizabeth will go free if Will hunts down Jack and his unique compass, which Beckett wants for himself. By putting Elizabeth in danger, Beckett forces Will onto the Hero Path; Will sets out to rescue her just as he did in Curse.
Refusal of the Call/Reluctant Hero
To find the compass that Beckett wants, Will travels to Pelegosto Island, where he soon finds Jack. Jack, meanwhile, has been trying to avoid paying his debt to Davy Jones, who controls the sea, by searching for the Dead Man’s Chest, in which Jones’ heart -- his only weakness -- is kept. Jack needs the compass to find the Chest and so is not eager to give it up; he strikes another deal with Will: if Will helps Jack find the key to the Dead Man’s Chest, Jack will give him the compass, which he can then give to Beckett in exchange for Elizabeth’s freedom.
With Elizabeth’s life on the line, Will does not refuse the Call to Adventure, but when he agrees to the deal proposed by Jack, his Hero Path is altered, which will soon affect Will’s final goal.
Supernatural Aid
Before the Crossing of the First Threshold, Will accompanies Jack on a visit to Tia Dalma. As we learn in At World’s End, she is a Goddess -- literally. Her main role, however, is that of Supernatural Aid. In her first scene in Dead Man’s Chest, she tells Will where to find the key, which he is now searching for. She also plays the part of the Oracle, informing Will that he has “a touch of destiny about [him].” She repeats this line in At World’s End, and also comments that “[f]or what we want most, there is a cost must be paid in the end.” These lines act as the Prophecy, strongly foreshadowing Will’s Rebirth at the end of the trilogy.
The Crossing of the First Threshold
Following his visit to Tia Dalma, Will is once again at sea, where Jack convinces him that a nearby shipwreck is Jones’ ship, the Flying Dutchman. In Will’s Journey, Jack is sometimes the Mentor, offering sound advice and useful aid, but usually a Shapeshifter, telling outright lies in order to save himself and get Will to do his bidding. Will knows that Jack cannot always be trusted but here he has no choice, and he boards the broken ship in the hope of quickly locating and easily procuring the key to the Dead Man’s Chest. When the actual Flying Dutchman and its sea monster crew make themselves known, Will is taken captive and is interrogated at the Threshold’s gates by the Threshold Guardian, played by Davy Jones himself. Jones is looking for dying sailors who will be willing to join his crew in exchange for immortality. One sailor talks back to him and is promptly killed. Will, too, at first appears to be rejected, but Jones then accepts him as a part of Jack’s payment.
And so Will crosses the First Threshold and becomes a member of Jones’ crew. This is the Flying Dutchman, the unfamiliar Underworld Will is tricked into entering. It is here that he will find the key to the Dead Man’s Chest, but he will also find something much more important: his father, Bootstrap, who was so desperate to escape his underwater grave that he agreed to serve a hundred years under Jones’ command. The physical search for his father that Will had to abandon in Curse is now renewed, and he resolves to find a way to release his father from his debt.
The Road of Trials/Allies and Enemies
With Bootstrap’s assistance, Will steals the key from Jones and escapes the Flying Dutchman. The merchant vessel that picks him up is the same vessel on which Elizabeth stowed away during her flight from the prisons of Port Royal; when Will sees her abandoned wedding dress and the ship’s captain informs him that some of his crew jumped ship at Tortuga, Will realizes that Elizabeth is safe and out of Beckett’s clutches. No longer needing Jack’s compass to save her, Will is free to follow his new Path in pursuit of his father’s freedom. By now, Jones has discovered the key’s disappearance, and, wanting Will dead, he sends his kraken to destroy the merchant vessel. Jones knows that Will has survived, but he does not know that Will has climbed up the side of his ship and is riding it to Isla Cruces, the island where Jones buried the Dead Man’s Chest.
When Will arrives, the Chest has already been dug up, and with the key and his father’s knife in hand, Will prepares to stab the heart, thus killing his father’s captor. However, Jack is quick to prevent him, as is James Norrington, whom Elizabeth left in favour of Will at the end of Curse. A swordfight ensues, at the end of which Norrington takes Jones’ heart and Will and Jack return, empty-handed, to the Black Pearl.
The Road of Trials and Allies and Enemies are two stages during which the Hero encounters a series of obstacles, and is either helped or hindered by the characters around him. Bootstrap and the crew of the merchant vessel help him; Jack and Norrington hinder him as they turn from good to evil and demand Jones’ heart for their own purposes. Jack goes so far as to knock Will unconscious to prevent him from realizing that the heart is no longer in the Chest. Will is reunited with Elizabeth on Isla Cruces but she does not affect his Journey at this point, though she does allow Norrington to run off with the Chest, believing it to be the only way to rid themselves of Jones’ attacking crew.
Ordeal
The Flying Dutchman shoots its cannons at the Black Pearl; after the Pearl escapes the attack, Will orders Jack to turn the ship around so that he might get another chance at rescuing his father, despite the fact that doing so would put the Pearl’s crew in danger. There is no time to turn the ship, as the kraken soon finds them. Will, as the only person on board who has experienced a kraken attack, leads the battle against it. He is the first to recognize the attack for what it is; he orders all the cannons to fire at the same time, causing the kraken to pull its tentacles away in pain; he puts himself in the path of danger, narrowly escaping the explosion he ordered his crew to create. Due to his efforts, the kraken retreats long enough to allow the surviving crew to abandon ship. Will has used his previous experience with the Underworld to fight the kraken; he has a better understanding of the rules of Jones’ world than do the other characters on board the ship, and he is able to use this to his advantage.
This familiarity with the Underworld, the Hero’s unconscious realm, is an important part of the Ordeal, but even so, the Ordeal is a battle that the Hero almost always loses, as Will loses his battle with the kraken. He needs the speed of the Black Pearl to rescue his father; when he and the crew abandon ship, he loses not only that important tool, but much of his hope as well. The loss of the Pearl is a large part of Will’s Approach to the Inmost Cave, but there is another contributor as well. As Will is climbing into the Pearl’s one remaining longboat, he catches sight of Elizabeth, to whom he is engaged, kissing Jack. Believing her to be in love with Jack and not knowing how exactly to speak with her about it, Will descends to his darkest point at the very bottom of the monomyth’s circular chart.
Approach to the Inmost Cave
At the end of Dead Man’s Chest, Will feels he has lost both Elizabeth and the Black Pearl -- and because he has lost the Black Pearl, he has lost his father. With nothing more to lose, he agrees to Tia Dalma’s proposal of a voyage to “fetch back witty Jack,” hiding his true goal from the rest of the crew. He is sent to Singapore to retrieve the navigational charts that will lead them to Davy Jones’ Locker, where Jack is trapped between life and the afterlife. When At World’s End begins, Will has been captured by the pirate Sao Feng, but makes a bargain with him. If Sao Feng gives Will a ship, a crew, the charts, and allows him to captain the retrieved Black Pearl, Will will give him Jack, whom Sao Feng can offer to Beckett in exchange for Beckett’s men leaving Singapore. Will makes this deal with Sao Feng behind the backs of the former crew of the Pearl, including Elizabeth. Will does not intentionally sacrifice her safety, but protecting it is no longer his main goal. He is looking to rescue his father, no matter what he has to do to accomplish that. This is the first time in the trilogy that Will has offered to sacrifice anyone but himself, and his willingness to offer Jack to an enemy is proof that his character is darker than it has ever been before.
Temptation Away From the True Path
This stage is one that perhaps does not show itself in Will’s Journey as strongly as it does in the Journeys of other Heroes, nor does it show itself so negatively. After Elizabeth trades herself to Sao Feng in order to fix the problems caused by Will’s secret bargain, Sao Feng is killed and his crew thrown into the brig of the Flying Dutchman, Elizabeth among them. It is here that she speaks with Will’s father for the first time. At first, an unstable Bootstrap shows excitement at the idea that Will is coming to save him, but that excitement soon turns to anger and then to sadness as Bootstrap realizes to whom he’s speaking. Whoever stabs the heart of Davy Jones must take his place as captain of the Flying Dutchman, Bootstrap explains. If Will chooses to save Bootstrap, he’ll lose Elizabeth, and it is for this reason that Bootstrap does not believe Will will be able to keep the promise he made to him. “He won’t pick me,” Bootstrap sighs, not realizing that his freedom is the goal of Will’s Path. “I wouldn’t pick me.”
What makes this different from the Temptation in other Journeys is that the Woman as Temptress is not portrayed in a negative light, as Elizabeth clearly feels guilty for standing in the way of Bootstrap’s rescue. Both Elizabeth and Bootstrap are portrayed as sympathetic characters, and one doubts that an audience could fault Will for struggling with the choice between them.
Reward
The Reward is a quiet moment in the middle of the second act, when the Hero is beginning to realize what he needs or what he will lose. It is also the moment when his descent to the bottom of the psyche, seen especially in the Approach to the Inmost Cave, ends and he is able to begin his return to the top. The Reward does not need to be an object, but can come in the form of wisdom, insight, or awareness that the Hero did not have before.
A quiet moment in the second act of At World’s End occurs when Will is sipping tea across from Beckett, with whom he is striking a bargain. Jones’ presence adds tension to the scene, but it also allows Will to learn more about the man and his life before he came to be captain of the Flying Dutchman, and his deal with Beckett allows him to take another step towards the liberation of his father.
The Meeting with the Goddess
As mentioned before, there is a literal Goddess in At World’s End. Tia Dalma is revealed to be the goddess Calypso, locked in her human form by Jones after she betrayed him. This Meeting of the Goddess ties in with the Reward above, as the story of Jones and Calypso both foreshadows and parallels that of Will and Elizabeth.
Will, after his return to the Pearl, speaks with Calypso just as she is being released from her mortal bonds, asking her who betrayed her, who locked her away for so long, and in this way encouraging her to seek revenge on Jones, in the process possibly freeing Will’s father. This, like the Ordeal, is a battle to which Will applies his recently acquired knowledge, but once again he does not achieve his goal, as Calypso would rather force Jones back to her than kill him. She creates a huge whirlpool into which both the Dutchman and the Pearl are pulled.
The Magic Flight
The Dutchman and the Pearl circle the whirlpool, one following the other, cannonballs flying, until the masts of the two ships make contact and stick. Some members of the ships’ crews board the opposite ship. While the two of them are fighting off Jones’ crew, Will asks Elizabeth to marry him, aware that this may be his last chance to do so, whether or not he succeeds in rescuing his father. The two are married by Captain Barbossa as they continue to battle their attackers.
The Magic Flight features the Hero using what he learned during the Reward stage as preparation for the final battle, the climax of the story. One could argue that Jones’ bitter overreaction to Calypso’s liberation, as Will seems to interpret his actions during the Reward stage, is what led Will to throw aside all his anger regarding Elizabeth’s and his own supposed betrayals, finally allowing them the wedding that was delayed by the events of Dead Man’s Chest.
However, the wedding comes in the middle of the trilogy’s final battle, not leading up to it. Perhaps a better moment to demonstrate this stage of Will’s Journey would be the scene in which the six most prominent members of the pirate war are standing facing each other, and Will and Jack trade places and sides. This scene clearly marks the end of the Reward stage and the beginning of the continuation of the Journey, for it is the point at which Will leaves Beckett’s side and rejoins Elizabeth’s, the side he was on at the start. As well, this scene is a lead-up to the final battle, a piece of Magic Flight criteria.
Apotheosis (Becoming God-like)
This is the stage at which the Hero’s abilities and idea of reality have shifted to the extent that he is able to sacrifice himself, and allow himself to be reborn. Against the opinions of the other characters, Will believes he will be able to achieve both of his apparently conflicting goals. He has married Elizabeth, something he has wanted to do at least since the end of Curse. At the same time, however, he refuses to fight back against Bootstrap, who attacks his son when he is too addled to recognize him as anything but Jones’ enemy. Though Bootstrap’s blows weaken Will just before Will must fight Davy Jones, Will never wishes him any harm. The accomplishment of one goal and the refusal to give up on another give Will a larger point of view and enable him to be sacrificed, and then reborn.
Rescue From Without
During this stage, the Hero is rescued by someone or something from the Ordinary World because the Hero’s own return to the Ordinary World has been blocked. Will’s return to the Ordinary World is blocked because he is dying after Jones plunged a sword through his chest. Jack holds Will’s hand around his broken sword and uses it to stab Jones’ heart, making Will the next immortal captain of the Flying Dutchman. Bootstrap uses the knife he gave Will to cut out Will’s heart and place it in the Dead Man’s Chest. This is Will’s death and his Rebirth, brought about by Will’s determination to free his father but also by Jack, a part of the Ordinary World.
Master of Two Worlds/Rebirth/Resurrection
Due to all that he has experienced, the Hero now sees both the divine and the human, the conscious and the unconscious. When Will is reborn, it is as the new captain of the Flying Dutchman, the Underworld. And Will must now spend his time in the literal Underworld, ferrying to the afterlife those souls who were lost at sea. He has died and been reborn, entered the darkness and emerged from it, complete with a new purpose.
The Crossing of the Return Threshold/The Road Back
As captain of the Flying Dutchman, Will must wait ten years for one day in the Ordinary World. We see his first day in the Ordinary World at the end of At World’s End, as he leaves Elizabeth in order to take up the job of the Underworld’s boatman.
With Bootstrap as his new Mentor, Will is ready to begin a new Journey, to embark on a new Path.
Freedom to Live/Return With the Elixir
Will has managed to achieve both his goals: he has married Elizabeth and he has freed his father from the clutches of Davy Jones. His first task as the captain of the Flying Dutchman is to free Port Royal from Beckett’s control; the Dutchman and the Pearl fire their cannons at Beckett’s flagship and it is destroyed, the Herald who forced Will onto his Journey is dead. And from now on, the Flying Dutchman will fulfill its original purpose, that of ferrying souls to the afterlife; the sea is now free of the evil that was Jones. This is the Hero giving the Elixir to the rest of society, using his resurrection to make the world a better place.
The Hero and His Shadow
Will’s Shadow in the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels is not clear at first, but by the end it is obvious. Parallels are drawn between Will’s life and the life of Davy Jones, and there are many mentions of Jones that foreshadow Will’s own fate. Jones is Will’s opposite, but also his equal. Because Jones is Will’s unconscious, his Ego, Will has to be rid of him before he can be reborn. This takes place during the stage of Rescue From Without. When Jack stabs Jones’ heart, Jones falls from the ship and is lost to the sea. This is representative of Will losing his Ego and regaining his Self in order to return to the top of the monomyth chart and be reborn.
Conclusion
Though many have criticized Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End for featuring stories that are overly complicated, it is not difficult to find threads that may be interpreted according to the Hero’s Journey. Will Turner, a protagonist of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, begins Dead Man’s Chest with the Call to Adventure. He travels through various stages of the Journey -- the Crossing of the First Threshold, the Approach to the Inmost Cave, the Reward -- in order to earn his Resurrection at the conclusion of At World’s End. Pirates of the Caribbean may be modern summer blockbusters, but at the heart of the trilogy is the sort of basic Hero’s Journey that appeals to a very broad audience.
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In other news, I have acquired an On Stranger Tides poster from my work!! It's totally supposed to go up in the lobby but we already have two standees and a banner promoting this movie, plus a Cars 2 poster and set of window stickers, so my managers have decided the lobby is Disney enough as it is. haha!
Today there was also some talk of me being Cast Member of the Month again, because I worked like three weeks' worth of shifts where I was supposed to have a co-worker to help me and did not ... but as I've already been Cast Member of the Month I can't decide whether my managers are joking about this or not. :X
ON THAT NOTE! See you guys Thursday! :D <3
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The Hero’s Journey in the Pirates of the Caribbean Sequels
Introduction
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) attracted audiences with its famous cast, its quirky humour, its swashbuckling fun, and its underlying Hero’s Journey, or monomyth. The film found enough success that two sequels were soon put into production: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007). It is these two sequels that this essay is concerned with. Though the two films could be interpreted as stand-alone films, when they are examined together, several sweeping Hero’s Journeys can be found, the most obvious of which is that of William Turner, one of the trilogy’s three major protagonists. His Meeting with the Goddess is a literal one, as is the death that precedes his Rebirth. Joseph Campbell described the stages that are to be found in the Hero’s Journey; this essay will look at how these stages present themselves in the character arc of Will Turner in the two sequels, Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End.
Ordinary World
When The Curse of the Black Pearl ends, Will Turner is a blacksmith who is beginning to come to terms with the more piratical and lawless aspects of his personality. He has finally found the courage to confess his love to Elizabeth Swann and together they have aided in the escape of a convicted pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow. Will and Elizabeth remain happily together in Port Royal while Jack is happily sailing the seas in his recently reclaimed ship, the Black Pearl. This is the Ordinary World of the Pirates sequels, though they do not explore it themselves.
Another important point we learn in Curse is that when Will was a child, he sailed to Port Royal in order to look for his father, whom he believed was a merchant sailor. In truth, his father was a pirate, complete with a pirate name: Bootstrap Bill Turner. As Jack tells Will, “pirate is in [his] blood,” and he will one day have to deal with that. The physical search for Bootstrap ends when Will learns that his crewmates left him for dead at the bottom of the ocean, but by accepting his more piratical traits, Will is still able to become closer to his father. This sequence of events could be considered the Atonement with the Father stage of Will’s Journey. The physical search for Bootstrap will continue in the sequels, where it is revealed that he managed to survive.
The Call to Adventure
There is little time in Dead Man’s Chest for the Ordinary World because the film swiftly opens with Will’s Call to Adventure. Its Herald is Lord Beckett, who arrests Will and Elizabeth for helping Jack, a convicted pirate, escape the gallows -- the event with which Curse ended. Beckett makes a deal with Will: Elizabeth will go free if Will hunts down Jack and his unique compass, which Beckett wants for himself. By putting Elizabeth in danger, Beckett forces Will onto the Hero Path; Will sets out to rescue her just as he did in Curse.
Refusal of the Call/Reluctant Hero
To find the compass that Beckett wants, Will travels to Pelegosto Island, where he soon finds Jack. Jack, meanwhile, has been trying to avoid paying his debt to Davy Jones, who controls the sea, by searching for the Dead Man’s Chest, in which Jones’ heart -- his only weakness -- is kept. Jack needs the compass to find the Chest and so is not eager to give it up; he strikes another deal with Will: if Will helps Jack find the key to the Dead Man’s Chest, Jack will give him the compass, which he can then give to Beckett in exchange for Elizabeth’s freedom.
With Elizabeth’s life on the line, Will does not refuse the Call to Adventure, but when he agrees to the deal proposed by Jack, his Hero Path is altered, which will soon affect Will’s final goal.
Supernatural Aid
Before the Crossing of the First Threshold, Will accompanies Jack on a visit to Tia Dalma. As we learn in At World’s End, she is a Goddess -- literally. Her main role, however, is that of Supernatural Aid. In her first scene in Dead Man’s Chest, she tells Will where to find the key, which he is now searching for. She also plays the part of the Oracle, informing Will that he has “a touch of destiny about [him].” She repeats this line in At World’s End, and also comments that “[f]or what we want most, there is a cost must be paid in the end.” These lines act as the Prophecy, strongly foreshadowing Will’s Rebirth at the end of the trilogy.
The Crossing of the First Threshold
Following his visit to Tia Dalma, Will is once again at sea, where Jack convinces him that a nearby shipwreck is Jones’ ship, the Flying Dutchman. In Will’s Journey, Jack is sometimes the Mentor, offering sound advice and useful aid, but usually a Shapeshifter, telling outright lies in order to save himself and get Will to do his bidding. Will knows that Jack cannot always be trusted but here he has no choice, and he boards the broken ship in the hope of quickly locating and easily procuring the key to the Dead Man’s Chest. When the actual Flying Dutchman and its sea monster crew make themselves known, Will is taken captive and is interrogated at the Threshold’s gates by the Threshold Guardian, played by Davy Jones himself. Jones is looking for dying sailors who will be willing to join his crew in exchange for immortality. One sailor talks back to him and is promptly killed. Will, too, at first appears to be rejected, but Jones then accepts him as a part of Jack’s payment.
And so Will crosses the First Threshold and becomes a member of Jones’ crew. This is the Flying Dutchman, the unfamiliar Underworld Will is tricked into entering. It is here that he will find the key to the Dead Man’s Chest, but he will also find something much more important: his father, Bootstrap, who was so desperate to escape his underwater grave that he agreed to serve a hundred years under Jones’ command. The physical search for his father that Will had to abandon in Curse is now renewed, and he resolves to find a way to release his father from his debt.
The Road of Trials/Allies and Enemies
With Bootstrap’s assistance, Will steals the key from Jones and escapes the Flying Dutchman. The merchant vessel that picks him up is the same vessel on which Elizabeth stowed away during her flight from the prisons of Port Royal; when Will sees her abandoned wedding dress and the ship’s captain informs him that some of his crew jumped ship at Tortuga, Will realizes that Elizabeth is safe and out of Beckett’s clutches. No longer needing Jack’s compass to save her, Will is free to follow his new Path in pursuit of his father’s freedom. By now, Jones has discovered the key’s disappearance, and, wanting Will dead, he sends his kraken to destroy the merchant vessel. Jones knows that Will has survived, but he does not know that Will has climbed up the side of his ship and is riding it to Isla Cruces, the island where Jones buried the Dead Man’s Chest.
When Will arrives, the Chest has already been dug up, and with the key and his father’s knife in hand, Will prepares to stab the heart, thus killing his father’s captor. However, Jack is quick to prevent him, as is James Norrington, whom Elizabeth left in favour of Will at the end of Curse. A swordfight ensues, at the end of which Norrington takes Jones’ heart and Will and Jack return, empty-handed, to the Black Pearl.
The Road of Trials and Allies and Enemies are two stages during which the Hero encounters a series of obstacles, and is either helped or hindered by the characters around him. Bootstrap and the crew of the merchant vessel help him; Jack and Norrington hinder him as they turn from good to evil and demand Jones’ heart for their own purposes. Jack goes so far as to knock Will unconscious to prevent him from realizing that the heart is no longer in the Chest. Will is reunited with Elizabeth on Isla Cruces but she does not affect his Journey at this point, though she does allow Norrington to run off with the Chest, believing it to be the only way to rid themselves of Jones’ attacking crew.
Ordeal
The Flying Dutchman shoots its cannons at the Black Pearl; after the Pearl escapes the attack, Will orders Jack to turn the ship around so that he might get another chance at rescuing his father, despite the fact that doing so would put the Pearl’s crew in danger. There is no time to turn the ship, as the kraken soon finds them. Will, as the only person on board who has experienced a kraken attack, leads the battle against it. He is the first to recognize the attack for what it is; he orders all the cannons to fire at the same time, causing the kraken to pull its tentacles away in pain; he puts himself in the path of danger, narrowly escaping the explosion he ordered his crew to create. Due to his efforts, the kraken retreats long enough to allow the surviving crew to abandon ship. Will has used his previous experience with the Underworld to fight the kraken; he has a better understanding of the rules of Jones’ world than do the other characters on board the ship, and he is able to use this to his advantage.
This familiarity with the Underworld, the Hero’s unconscious realm, is an important part of the Ordeal, but even so, the Ordeal is a battle that the Hero almost always loses, as Will loses his battle with the kraken. He needs the speed of the Black Pearl to rescue his father; when he and the crew abandon ship, he loses not only that important tool, but much of his hope as well. The loss of the Pearl is a large part of Will’s Approach to the Inmost Cave, but there is another contributor as well. As Will is climbing into the Pearl’s one remaining longboat, he catches sight of Elizabeth, to whom he is engaged, kissing Jack. Believing her to be in love with Jack and not knowing how exactly to speak with her about it, Will descends to his darkest point at the very bottom of the monomyth’s circular chart.
Approach to the Inmost Cave
At the end of Dead Man’s Chest, Will feels he has lost both Elizabeth and the Black Pearl -- and because he has lost the Black Pearl, he has lost his father. With nothing more to lose, he agrees to Tia Dalma’s proposal of a voyage to “fetch back witty Jack,” hiding his true goal from the rest of the crew. He is sent to Singapore to retrieve the navigational charts that will lead them to Davy Jones’ Locker, where Jack is trapped between life and the afterlife. When At World’s End begins, Will has been captured by the pirate Sao Feng, but makes a bargain with him. If Sao Feng gives Will a ship, a crew, the charts, and allows him to captain the retrieved Black Pearl, Will will give him Jack, whom Sao Feng can offer to Beckett in exchange for Beckett’s men leaving Singapore. Will makes this deal with Sao Feng behind the backs of the former crew of the Pearl, including Elizabeth. Will does not intentionally sacrifice her safety, but protecting it is no longer his main goal. He is looking to rescue his father, no matter what he has to do to accomplish that. This is the first time in the trilogy that Will has offered to sacrifice anyone but himself, and his willingness to offer Jack to an enemy is proof that his character is darker than it has ever been before.
Temptation Away From the True Path
This stage is one that perhaps does not show itself in Will’s Journey as strongly as it does in the Journeys of other Heroes, nor does it show itself so negatively. After Elizabeth trades herself to Sao Feng in order to fix the problems caused by Will’s secret bargain, Sao Feng is killed and his crew thrown into the brig of the Flying Dutchman, Elizabeth among them. It is here that she speaks with Will’s father for the first time. At first, an unstable Bootstrap shows excitement at the idea that Will is coming to save him, but that excitement soon turns to anger and then to sadness as Bootstrap realizes to whom he’s speaking. Whoever stabs the heart of Davy Jones must take his place as captain of the Flying Dutchman, Bootstrap explains. If Will chooses to save Bootstrap, he’ll lose Elizabeth, and it is for this reason that Bootstrap does not believe Will will be able to keep the promise he made to him. “He won’t pick me,” Bootstrap sighs, not realizing that his freedom is the goal of Will’s Path. “I wouldn’t pick me.”
What makes this different from the Temptation in other Journeys is that the Woman as Temptress is not portrayed in a negative light, as Elizabeth clearly feels guilty for standing in the way of Bootstrap’s rescue. Both Elizabeth and Bootstrap are portrayed as sympathetic characters, and one doubts that an audience could fault Will for struggling with the choice between them.
Reward
The Reward is a quiet moment in the middle of the second act, when the Hero is beginning to realize what he needs or what he will lose. It is also the moment when his descent to the bottom of the psyche, seen especially in the Approach to the Inmost Cave, ends and he is able to begin his return to the top. The Reward does not need to be an object, but can come in the form of wisdom, insight, or awareness that the Hero did not have before.
A quiet moment in the second act of At World’s End occurs when Will is sipping tea across from Beckett, with whom he is striking a bargain. Jones’ presence adds tension to the scene, but it also allows Will to learn more about the man and his life before he came to be captain of the Flying Dutchman, and his deal with Beckett allows him to take another step towards the liberation of his father.
The Meeting with the Goddess
As mentioned before, there is a literal Goddess in At World’s End. Tia Dalma is revealed to be the goddess Calypso, locked in her human form by Jones after she betrayed him. This Meeting of the Goddess ties in with the Reward above, as the story of Jones and Calypso both foreshadows and parallels that of Will and Elizabeth.
Will, after his return to the Pearl, speaks with Calypso just as she is being released from her mortal bonds, asking her who betrayed her, who locked her away for so long, and in this way encouraging her to seek revenge on Jones, in the process possibly freeing Will’s father. This, like the Ordeal, is a battle to which Will applies his recently acquired knowledge, but once again he does not achieve his goal, as Calypso would rather force Jones back to her than kill him. She creates a huge whirlpool into which both the Dutchman and the Pearl are pulled.
The Magic Flight
The Dutchman and the Pearl circle the whirlpool, one following the other, cannonballs flying, until the masts of the two ships make contact and stick. Some members of the ships’ crews board the opposite ship. While the two of them are fighting off Jones’ crew, Will asks Elizabeth to marry him, aware that this may be his last chance to do so, whether or not he succeeds in rescuing his father. The two are married by Captain Barbossa as they continue to battle their attackers.
The Magic Flight features the Hero using what he learned during the Reward stage as preparation for the final battle, the climax of the story. One could argue that Jones’ bitter overreaction to Calypso’s liberation, as Will seems to interpret his actions during the Reward stage, is what led Will to throw aside all his anger regarding Elizabeth’s and his own supposed betrayals, finally allowing them the wedding that was delayed by the events of Dead Man’s Chest.
However, the wedding comes in the middle of the trilogy’s final battle, not leading up to it. Perhaps a better moment to demonstrate this stage of Will’s Journey would be the scene in which the six most prominent members of the pirate war are standing facing each other, and Will and Jack trade places and sides. This scene clearly marks the end of the Reward stage and the beginning of the continuation of the Journey, for it is the point at which Will leaves Beckett’s side and rejoins Elizabeth’s, the side he was on at the start. As well, this scene is a lead-up to the final battle, a piece of Magic Flight criteria.
Apotheosis (Becoming God-like)
This is the stage at which the Hero’s abilities and idea of reality have shifted to the extent that he is able to sacrifice himself, and allow himself to be reborn. Against the opinions of the other characters, Will believes he will be able to achieve both of his apparently conflicting goals. He has married Elizabeth, something he has wanted to do at least since the end of Curse. At the same time, however, he refuses to fight back against Bootstrap, who attacks his son when he is too addled to recognize him as anything but Jones’ enemy. Though Bootstrap’s blows weaken Will just before Will must fight Davy Jones, Will never wishes him any harm. The accomplishment of one goal and the refusal to give up on another give Will a larger point of view and enable him to be sacrificed, and then reborn.
Rescue From Without
During this stage, the Hero is rescued by someone or something from the Ordinary World because the Hero’s own return to the Ordinary World has been blocked. Will’s return to the Ordinary World is blocked because he is dying after Jones plunged a sword through his chest. Jack holds Will’s hand around his broken sword and uses it to stab Jones’ heart, making Will the next immortal captain of the Flying Dutchman. Bootstrap uses the knife he gave Will to cut out Will’s heart and place it in the Dead Man’s Chest. This is Will’s death and his Rebirth, brought about by Will’s determination to free his father but also by Jack, a part of the Ordinary World.
Master of Two Worlds/Rebirth/Resurrection
Due to all that he has experienced, the Hero now sees both the divine and the human, the conscious and the unconscious. When Will is reborn, it is as the new captain of the Flying Dutchman, the Underworld. And Will must now spend his time in the literal Underworld, ferrying to the afterlife those souls who were lost at sea. He has died and been reborn, entered the darkness and emerged from it, complete with a new purpose.
The Crossing of the Return Threshold/The Road Back
As captain of the Flying Dutchman, Will must wait ten years for one day in the Ordinary World. We see his first day in the Ordinary World at the end of At World’s End, as he leaves Elizabeth in order to take up the job of the Underworld’s boatman.
With Bootstrap as his new Mentor, Will is ready to begin a new Journey, to embark on a new Path.
Freedom to Live/Return With the Elixir
Will has managed to achieve both his goals: he has married Elizabeth and he has freed his father from the clutches of Davy Jones. His first task as the captain of the Flying Dutchman is to free Port Royal from Beckett’s control; the Dutchman and the Pearl fire their cannons at Beckett’s flagship and it is destroyed, the Herald who forced Will onto his Journey is dead. And from now on, the Flying Dutchman will fulfill its original purpose, that of ferrying souls to the afterlife; the sea is now free of the evil that was Jones. This is the Hero giving the Elixir to the rest of society, using his resurrection to make the world a better place.
The Hero and His Shadow
Will’s Shadow in the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels is not clear at first, but by the end it is obvious. Parallels are drawn between Will’s life and the life of Davy Jones, and there are many mentions of Jones that foreshadow Will’s own fate. Jones is Will’s opposite, but also his equal. Because Jones is Will’s unconscious, his Ego, Will has to be rid of him before he can be reborn. This takes place during the stage of Rescue From Without. When Jack stabs Jones’ heart, Jones falls from the ship and is lost to the sea. This is representative of Will losing his Ego and regaining his Self in order to return to the top of the monomyth chart and be reborn.
Conclusion
Though many have criticized Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End for featuring stories that are overly complicated, it is not difficult to find threads that may be interpreted according to the Hero’s Journey. Will Turner, a protagonist of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, begins Dead Man’s Chest with the Call to Adventure. He travels through various stages of the Journey -- the Crossing of the First Threshold, the Approach to the Inmost Cave, the Reward -- in order to earn his Resurrection at the conclusion of At World’s End. Pirates of the Caribbean may be modern summer blockbusters, but at the heart of the trilogy is the sort of basic Hero’s Journey that appeals to a very broad audience.
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In other news, I have acquired an On Stranger Tides poster from my work!! It's totally supposed to go up in the lobby but we already have two standees and a banner promoting this movie, plus a Cars 2 poster and set of window stickers, so my managers have decided the lobby is Disney enough as it is. haha!
Today there was also some talk of me being Cast Member of the Month again, because I worked like three weeks' worth of shifts where I was supposed to have a co-worker to help me and did not ... but as I've already been Cast Member of the Month I can't decide whether my managers are joking about this or not. :X
ON THAT NOTE! See you guys Thursday! :D <3