Character Analysis
Before Leo was the darling of Martin Scorsese, he was the darling of…every single teen girl in America.
And that's all because he played Jack Dawson, a.k.a. the most perfect fantasy boyfriend ever.
Rose may be the protagonist of the film, but Jack's definitely the man behind that woman. He's pretty fundamental in Rose's growth throughout the film, and he does his best to ensure her safety…even at the expense of his own.
And so, without further ado, the many faces of Jack Dawson.
A Lucky Man…Depending on Your Definition of "Lucky"
Jack ends up on the Titanic by winning the tickets in a poker game just a few short minutes before the ship's departure. Jack shouts as they rush onto the ship, just in time for departure:
JACK: We are the luckiest sons of bitches in the world, you know that?
He echoes that feeling later while he's dining with Cal, Rose, and all their rich friends, telling them:
JACK: I won my ticket on Titanic here in a lucky hand at poker. A very lucky hand.
Of course, that seems pretty ironic to the audience, since we know the ship is going down—but Jack doesn't change his tune even after the ice hits the fan and he knows he and Rose (and a bunch of others) are headed into the ocean.
He still thinks winning those tickets was lucky because it brought him and Rose together; in fact, he tells her:
JACK: Winning that ticket, Rose, was the best thing that ever happened to me. It brought me to you. And I'm thankful for that, Rose. Thankful.
We wouldn't say Jack is some wide-eyed, naïve optimist—he just seems able to see the good and the beautiful in unlikely places. Which brings us to his profession…
"Mr. Artiste"
Rose affectionately nicknames Jack "Mr. Artiste" when he draws her (and blushes—she's naked, after all). Jack's art is actually what ends up thawing Rose's reserve toward him. We know from her collection of Picassos and Monets that she loves art, and even though she's trying to maintain the distance from Jack that society/her class demands, her walls come down when she realizes how talented Jack is at drawing.
As Rose soon learns when she starts asking him a zillion questions (yup, reserve totally abandoned), Jack is most interested in people—and not necessarily the kind of people you would normally expect.
For example, when Rose finds several drawings of a single girl, she jumps to the natural (if a little cliché) assumption that this woman was Jack's lover. However, she's totally wrong. As Jack quickly clarifies, the woman was a one-legged prostitute he knew, not a girlfriend, and he drew her because she had beautiful hands.
Also, there was a woman he dubbed "Madame Bijoux" who would dress up in all of her jewelry and go sit at a bar. What's the point? Well, that he fixates on one particular feature (e.g., hands) or quirk (i.e., putting on all your jewelry to go sit in a bar alone) and draws it out of a person via a picture.
In short, he definitely likes to watch and analyze people, and his art is one of the major ways we see that tendency.
Mr. Selfless
Another way we know Jack loves people (and is good with them): he does his best to help them, even when it screws up his own life.
Jack and Rose meet when he finds her trying to get up the nerve to throw herself off the back of the boat. You can see him carefully reading Rose and trying to find the right way to coax her back over the side—and he eventually succeeds by telling her how cold the water is and how painful her death (and his attempt to rescue her) would be:
JACK: I can't. I'm involved now. You let go and I'm going to have to jump in there after you.
ROSE: Don't be absurd. You'll be killed.
JACK: I'm a good swimmer.
ROSE: The fall alone would kill you.
JACK: It would hurt. I'm not saying it wouldn't. Tell you the truth, I'm a lot more concerned about that water being so cold.
ROSE: How cold?
Unfortunately, Jack's reward for helping Rose is the threat of arrest, when he is mistaken for trying to attack her. This is the kind of thing that happens to Jack over and over—he can't win for trying.
Sure, he pursues Rose because he's totally into her, but he also really wants to help her—and his refusal to leave her alone gets him in trouble time and time again. Cal doesn't really appreciate Jack's attentions to his fiancée, of course, and—very long story short—he and his valet end up:
- Chasing Jack (with Rose) around the boat, trying to get him away from her
- Framing Jack for a crime he didn't commit
- Getting Jack arrested for said crime
- When all else fails, trying to shoot Jack
And then, of course, there's the fact that Jack eventually dies trying to save Rose. Although he finds his ladylove a piece of debris (a door) to float on, he stays in the water…which means he freezes to death.
That all said, you get the sense that Jack believes he's gotten a lifetime's worth of fulfillment from meeting and loving Rose, if only briefly, so that adds some comfort at the end of the film.
And of course, he takes a suicidal, snobby girl and convinces her to turn her life around, which is a pretty amazing feat. It's hard not to feel good about that.
Jack's Timeline