Jake Sully’s outward journey in Avatar

I found one aspect of Avatar to be Jake Sully’s journey outward – a journey towards freedom from the trap that he is in — the trap that is his limited self.

Jake Sully wakes up to find himself trapped and somewhat claustrophobic. When he is let out of his cryo chamber, he finds himself surrounded with the artificial insides of the spaceship that is taking him to Pandora. He asks if they are there yet. But he is half-hearted and knows that they are not.

Jake’s feeling of being trapped is symbolised by the artificial, closed nature of his surroundings. He makes a journey across the vastness of space trapped in a box. He does not have the freedom to move about freely; for that he depends on another machine – his wheelchair. The new world he steps into, by its very nature, doesn’t allow humans a lot of freedom either. Humans have to breathe filtered air through machines.

In many ways, Jake stays in the trap out of his own choosing too. His ego has created the walls of the trap around him, causing him to withdraw inside himself and refuse help from those around him. Remember the scene where Jake tells Dr Augustine he doesn’t need help getting himself into the avatar machine? Remember Jake telling her that he is tired of people telling him what he can’t do? He likes to think of himself as self-sufficient and independent. But he is only too acutely aware of the fact that he is not, and perhaps never will be.

The first step of Jake’s outward journey is when he literally runs out of his trap. He gets his Na’vi avatar body and all walls come crashing down in an instant. Gone is his reliance on the wheelchair. Gone is the reliance on the air filter. As for the people telling him he can’t just run out, he literally brushes them aside and runs out. He stops running only when he feels the soil under his bare feet.

This becomes his first moment of happiness in the movie. He literally touches the world outside the walls of his prison.

As he ventures farther and farther out into the brave new world of Pandora, Jake revels in his newfound independence. But he also learns the value of depending on the world around him when he finds he can’t deal with Pandora alone. His encounter with the dog-like predators in the forest leaves him with an appreciation for help. He realises he isn’t as self-sufficient as he thought he was. He learns to be thankful for Ne’yitri’s help, and then, for the general help of the Na’vi as he becomes more and more a part of the tribe. As he learns the details of Na’vi rituals, he comes to appreciate the importance of connecting (quite literally) with the world he is in. Jake Sully learns the beauty and value of being part of something greater than himself.

Symbolically enough, every time Jake returns to his human body, he finds himself in a box again, as if underlining the trap that his artificial world has become. He has seen the world outside and he can never seem to have enough of it. He finds himself making a commitment to Pandora. His life as a Na’vi begins to appear more genuine to him than his life among the humans does.

In a way, Jake’s going out into Pandora as a Na’vi is an out of body experience (literally) – a spiritual experience even. Many traditions of Earth speak of dreams as being gateways to worlds of spirit. The movie demonstrates that with a great metaphor. Pandora becomes Jake’s own personal spiritual world — one where he finds peace, purpose, and humility.

When Jake ends up leading the Na’vi resistance against the human forces, he is forced to rely on the cooperation of not only his tribe, but that of many tribes across Pandora. In fact, he makes the ultimate surrender to something higher when he connects with Eywa (the Pandoran spirit of the forest) in private and asks her for help in the war.

This is, by no means, a definitive account of what Avatar is. I believe that the meanings a person finds in a work of art, define him. This post therefore, is a definition of me. I only penned it down because the movie struck me as something very vivid and powerful and full of many meanings.