Lady Fortune and Her Wheel in Pirates of the Caribbean
I am forever amazed that one of the most classically inflected pop culture phenomena of the early 21st century was a trilogy of movies based on a Disneyland ride. Then again, perhaps the dearth of Pirates of the Caribbean source material was precisely what prompted director Gore Verbinski and writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio to turn to the likes of the Odyssey and Moby-Dick while crafting their own epic sea saga.
The films’ most overt nod to Homer is the name Calypso. In the Odyssey, Kalypso is a nymph or goddess who loves the wandering sailor Odysseus and detains him on her island, preventing him from returning home to his wife across the sea. The allusion is clear: the Calypso of Pirates is a “heathen goddess” responsible for luring the sailor Davy Jones to the sea with promises of love, only allowing him to set foot on land for one day in every ten years.
In addition to her namesake, the Calypso of Pirates shares traits with Circe, the other island-dwelling goddess, sorceress, and lover of Odysseus in the Odyssey. Circe is best known for magically transforming men into beasts, and while it is never explicitly stated, we must assume that Davy Jones and his crewmen have become monstrous half-human, half-sea creature hybrids because of the conditions of Calypso’s curse. Moreover, both Circe and Calypso inform the heroes of their respective stories that they must voyage to the land of the dead as part of their quest, and offer instruction on how to do so.
The Calypso of Pirates of the Caribbean, then, is a composite of Kalypso and Circe, but I suspect she is also meant to evoke another figure from the classical imagination: Lady Fortune. As she is most famously portrayed in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, Lady Fortune personifies the impermanent and fickle nature of worldly success.
The wheel of fortune (above) is an image of the ever-changing world in which all men live. Those at the top of the wheel have pleasure, wealth, and status, while those at the bottom of the wheel are destitute, and because Lady Fortune is forever spinning her wheel, nothing within her domain is ever secure. Those who are “on top of the world” one moment find themselves at the bottom the next. The goods of the world – wealth, pleasure, status – are constantly being gained, lost, regained, and lost again.
It is hard not to see the iconic duel in the rolling water wheel from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest as a winking visual allusion to Lady Fortune’s wheel. (Indeed, Hans Zimmer’s score for the sequence is titled “Wheel of Fortune” on the official soundtrack.)
It certainly seems, then, that Verbinski, Elliott, and Rossio had Lady Fortune and her wheel on their minds. This is not altogether surprising; Fortune’s wheel is an apt symbol to evoke in a series that revolves around pirates who are forever chasing after material goods that always seem to slip out of their grasp.
To link the figure of Lady Fortune to the character of Calypso specifically, though, we must look to Boethius’ characterization of Lady Fortune as a capricious, unfaithful woman who seduces men with lies, giving gifts which she then takes away – a woman who ought not to be loved because she always breaks the hearts of her lovers. On multiple occasions, Boethius links Lady Fortune with the sea, that great image of perpetual change and endless turmoil. When accused by her jilted lovers, for instance, Lady Fortune defends herself thus:
“The sea is allowed either to be calm and inviting or to rage with storm-driven breakers. Shall man’s insatiable greed bind me to a constancy which is alien to my ways?”
Similarly, the Calypso of Pirates of the Caribbean – the ever-changing sea, embodied in the form of a woman – draws Davy Jones to sea with words of love and then abandons him, leaving him heartbroken. And, when Davy Jones confronts her and demands an explanation for her betrayal, her reply is distinctly reminiscent of Boethius’ Lady Fortune: “It’s my nature. Would you love me if I were anything other than what I am?”
Throughout the Consolation, Boethius positions Lady Fortune and Lady Philosophy as foils to each other. Inconstant Fortune blinds and beguiles men with false, transient goods, while wise and constant Philosophy enlightens men and points them to the true Good, which is unchanging and eternal. At the conclusion of the Pirates trilogy, Calypso and Elizabeth Swann emerge as a similar pair of foils. Though Elizabeth is tempted to live the life of a pirate, forever chasing her changing passions around the seas, and thus to become like Calypso – “a woman as harsh and changing and untamable as the sea” – she ultimately commits herself to a stable life of matrimony and parenthood, even at great cost. Davy Jones is doomed because he commits his heart to Calypso, whose nature is always to desert her lovers, but Will Turner finally entrusts his heart to the safekeeping of the sober and mature Elizabeth, who has been “prepared and made wise by the experience of her own adversity.” In the end, perhaps we could say that Pirates of the Caribbean and The Consolation of Philosophy are both about learning to put your heart in a stable place.