Rose Isn’t A Reliable Narrator – Titanic Theory Explained
The story of Rose and Jack in James Cameron’s Titanic is told by old Rose, which has raised many questions about the veracity of her story, and a theory suggests Rose is an unreliable and manipulative narrator. Back in 1997, James Cameron brought one of his most ambitious projects to life: Titanic, a disaster drama movie that was the most expensive movie ever made at the time and quickly became the highest-grossing movie of all time, a spot it held for many, many years.
Although it’s based on the real-life tragedy of the RMS Titanic in 1912, Cameron’s Titanic tells a fictional story led by fictional characters, but it also features characters based on real-life passengers of the ship. Titanic follows Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet), a first-class young woman, and Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a third-class passenger, who over the course of four days, meet, fall in love, and defend their romance from those who look down upon them. Sadly, Jack and Rose’s story was bound to be tragic, with Jack becoming one of the many victims of the sinking of the Titanic, and Rose being eventually rescued. All these events and more are told by old Rose (Gloria Stuart) to the crew of treasure hunter Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton), who were looking for a diamond necklace called “The Heart of the Ocean”.
Instead of revealing what happened to the necklace, Rose focused on telling the story of her romance with Jack and her experience during the sinking of the Titanic, but some details in her tale have raised some eyebrows over the years. Rose has been labeled as an unreliable narrator, but a theory goes a bit further and also calls her manipulative, as she projected some of her guilt and regret onto certain characters.
Why Rose Was Titanic’s Storyteller
The events in Titanic kick off when Lovett and his team, after recovering a safe from the wreckage of the Titanic, find the drawing of a young woman wearing the necklace they have been looking for. Rose sees the drawing on the news and contacts Lovett, telling him it’s her on the drawing, which quickly gets Lovett’s attention as that meant she knew where the diamond could be. Rose, along with her granddaughter Lizzy Calvert (Suzy Amis), are brought aboard Lovett’s research vessel, where she opens up for the first time about her experience aboard the Titanic and her romance with a young man named Jack Dawson. To Lovett’s surprise, Rose didn’t reveal much about the Heart of the Ocean and its possible owner or location, and she focused more on her tragic love story and their fight to survive as the ship sank.
Rose, then, is Titanic’s storyteller as she’s the only possible link Lovett has to the Heart of the Ocean, but Rose (perhaps purposely) left the diamond necklace mostly out of her story to share a story way more interesting than what could have happened to a rare diamond – however, that doesn’t exactly mean that Rose was telling the truth all the time.
Titanic Theory: Rose Manipulated Her Story Due To Survivor’s Guilt
There are a couple of details in Rose’s story in Titanic that have led to her being labeled as an unreliable narrator, mostly how she “tells” scenes where she wasn’t present, as are those when Jack and Fabrizio won their tickets, when Jack was confined in the master-at-arms’ office, and when her mother was drinking tea with other first-class women. Others have analyzed Rose’s story a bit deeper and suggest that she’s not only unreliable but also manipulative. A theory posted on Reddit explains that the people in Rose’s story are either “really good people” or absolutely horrible, and this mostly depends on their social class: the good ones are those from third-class, and the awful ones all come from the first-class side of the ship with a couple of exceptions, such as Molly Brown (Kathy Kates) and Thomas Andrews (Victor Garber).
