Going Down With the Ship

Going down with your ship means roughly the same as give me liberty or give me death. The Ship is freedom, especially for a Pirate or a sailor.

Odysseus, in order to keep his freedom from the Sirens must be tied to the mast of the ship.

Jack Sparrow is overtly after freedom. "It's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs but what a ship is... what the Black Pearl really is... is freedom. ..." What he tempts Elizabeth Swan with in the second movie is freedom. We could discuss the symbol of Swan and of Sparrow until we were blue. But a bird is freedom. A bird can fly, while we cannot. In the end of the second movie Elizabeth traps Jack in his own freedom. His freedom to kiss her, his beloved ship. Jack goes down with the Ship.

A ship is a woman, a woman is a ship. Both are freedom. You don't marry a ship, you marry the sea. Perhaps you can marry what gives a woman freedom, you can marry what keeps her afloat, what gives her life, but you cannot marry a woman.

Our modern day pirates and sailors drive cars, a car is freedom. A car is a woman.

At the end of Hannibal, a similar exchange occurs.

"Hannibal Lecter: Given the chance, you would deny me my life, wouldn't you?
Clarice Starling: Not your life.
Hannibal Lecter: Just my freedom. You'd take that from me."

Clarice is attached to a refrigerator. She makes out with Hannibal, and pulls the same trick, only instead of being cuffed to a ship Hannibal is cuffed to her. A Starling is a bird. This is what Hannibal thinks of Starling:

"He was using genetics in roller pigeons as an example. They go way up in the air and roll over and over backwards in a display, falling toward the ground. There are shallow rollers and deep rollers. You can't breed two deep rollers or the offspring will roll all the way down, crash and die. What he said was: 'Officer Starling is a deep roller, Barney. We'll hope one of her parents was not."'

This rolling is freedom. This rolling is something done for no obvious survival reasons. Rolling all the way down, is going down with the ship.

Rather than give up his freedom, and rather than wound Clarice, Hannibal chops off his own hand. He gives up part of his freedom for freedom. For his freedom, and for Clarice's freedom, and for the freedom provided him by the existence of Clarice.

A woman is the kind of freedom that traps you. If we say, for example, a woman will end my freedom so I am not allowed to go near women, then we are not really free. Freedom is the kind of freedom that traps you. "Man is condemned to be free... he did not create himself, yet, in other respects is free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."

It's a continuous game of Tom/Jerry, Bugs/Elmer, Wiley/Roadrunner. In order for the spell to be broken one side has to prevail, neither side can prevail because we don't want either side to lose their life or freedom. Because neither side can lose, neither side can win. Their freedom becomes their slavery. Freedom becomes their friendship. Real freedom, would be "just another word for nothing left to lose." Every day they push the rock up the hill, every day it rolls back down.It's flirting at its finest, that's what it is.

If you go down with your ship, the very thing that was meant to represent your freedom takes away your freedom. Isn't that just the way it goes. And yet, it is still so fascinating. The rock goes up, and the rock rolls down, and I am mesmerized and happy all the while. But heck if I'm going down with my particular ships.(But then again, ain't I a woman? As the ship, am I forced to go down with my Self?)

Falstaff:
"To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of
a man who hath not the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying,
when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true
and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valor is
discretion, in the which better part I have sav'd my life."
Henry The Fourth, Part 1 Act 5, scene 4, 115–121


Roller Pigeons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGwDOzpTcgs