Power and authority. Treason and loyalty. Guilt and innocence. Mutiny on the Bounty wrestles with all of these issues—although it may not actually resolve any of them, at least in a satisfactory manner. On the surface, the direction of this film’s moral compass might seem clear: a sadistic, abusive captain is forcibly removed from his post by an inferior who has better rapport with the sailors and an intent to treat them compassionately and more as equals. The dilemma, one which is perhaps best verbalized by the character of Roger Byam later in the film, is whether or not mutiny, the uprising of the inferior against the superior, is the most moral way of protesting abuse of power.

Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh

For that’s just it. Captain Bligh has the power. Or, rather, he holds authority on the ship—courtesy of even greater authorities above him. Those who sail under Bligh’s command must yield to his decisions, direction, and discipline—whether or not he is correct or ethical in any of these areas. Here’s the catch with that, though. At the film’s beginning, several men in a pub are commandeered for the Bounty’s two-year (at least) mission. They do not voluntarily place themselves in submission to Bligh’s rule. Instead, they are forced to serve on his ship. Do they then have the right to protest their treatment on that vessel?

Furthermore, Fletcher Christian has been chosen deliberately by Bligh as his first officer. While he was, therefore, not forced onto the ship like the seamen are, by coming aboard, he places himself under the command of Bligh. His duty is to carry out Bligh’s orders, even when he doesn’t agree with them. Here’s the problem with that, though. Christian takes issue with Bligh’s command not because Bligh makes navigational errors or mismanages his men, but because Bligh is deliberately cruel. He creates scenarios of his subordinates’ misconduct to cover for his own indiscretions. His punishments for perceived crimes are extreme. He has no regard for the human lives on the Bounty, except his own. Men have started dying from his “corrective” methods. Can the others aboard sit idly by? Should they? What are their options? Does loyalty to the king demand absolute submission to the captain? Or, does loyalty to one’s God sometimes require rebellion against human authority in order to preserve the sanctity of human life? Do the mutineers even consider either of these key questions, or is their revolt simply an expression of how much they are fed up with being the scum of Bligh’s earth?

As is obvious from the film’s title, Christian and most of the other sailors choose mutiny as the solution to the problem of Captain Bligh’s mistreatment. They violently take over the ship, subdue those who resist their coup (even killing some of them), and force the defeated into the launch to face their fate at the capricious hands of the sea—a fate which all assume will be a watery grave. Now the mutineers share Bligh’s disregard for how precious human lives are. They have imitated him fully at last in shedding blood—taking the lives of men who believed their duty was to obey and protect their captain. The result of their rebellion is that they must now flee—forever. Mistakenly thinking at first that Tahiti can offer them a new life and a reprieve from the ramifications of their seditious acts, the mutineers soon realize they will always be hunted, sought across the world until they face justice for deposing their leader.

Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian

And for Christian, the man who should have been the foremost supporter and protector of Bligh, as Byam states during the court-martial at the end of the film, “Christian lost too…God knows he’s judged himself more harshly than you could judge him…I don’t try to justify his crime, his mutiny, but I condemn the tyranny that drove him to it.” Although Christian’s violence can be blamed on the violence of Bligh, his decision to take what he perceives as justice into his owns hands ruins his life as well. As is often the case in history when an inferior overthrows a superior, Christian comes to fear rebellion against his own leadership. He is careful to reject calling himself captain and laying more burdens upon his men, and he has the seamen pledge not to take up arms against him. But their lives of leisure for the brief time they are in Tahiti after the mutiny are also lives without purpose. They have lost their livelihoods, their English homes, their families. As a result, they establish pseudo ones with people from another land who do not understand their history, beliefs, and way of life. But this life of pretend, fear, and denial is not enough. Nor is it a safe life. When the Pandora arrives in search of the mutineers, Christian and those loyal to him must flee. When they finally reach Pitcairn Island, a barely inhabitable rock in the film, they decide to burn the Bounty so no one will ever know where they are. Both Pitcairn and the Bounty could symbolize Christian’s new life. Stripped of what is familiar and never to be the same after the mutiny, Christian’s existence is as barren as his new home and as final as the lost ship. A glimmer of hope exists in the fact that he seems to love his Tahitian wife and their infant daughter, but it would appear a life of lonely hardship awaits them on Pitcairn, a self-exile due to rebellion against corrupt authority.

For Me Then…

It seems that much of the film’s debate about whether mutiny is an appropriate method of eliminating violence (how ironic does that sound!) revolves around social status. Captain Bligh observes to Fletcher Christian that he (Bligh) has chosen Christian as his first officer because, while Bligh is a “self-made man,” Christian is a gentleman. In turn, the three midshipmen, including Byam, are for the most part treated better than the average crewman because they come from upper-class families, even though Byam, for one, has no experience on a ship. Throughout the film the sailors are portrayed as rough men of doubtful history—with the exception of Seaman Thomas Ellison who has a wife and child he is devastated to leave at the film’s beginning. (Spoiler alert!) Though Ellison is the most sympathetic of the captured mutineers who are tried at the film’s end, he nevertheless hangs for his role in the mutiny, having chosen to be carried as prisoner to England instead of escaping with Christian—his reasoning being that he may be able to get a final glimpse of his wife and child again before his death. Yet Ellison does die. Byam, on the other hand, gifted with the fine speech that comes from an upper-class education and possessed of influential friends, is pardoned and returns to seafaring as the hero whose words lead to improved conditions for sailors on British ships. Hence, while Mutiny on the Bounty attempts to address big-time issues such as guilt and innocence, it cannot extract itself from the eighteenth-century reality that some lives were more valued than others. Exhibit A: Captain Bligh’s only punishment is the refusal of a handshake from a prestigious admiral.

In addition to the film’s struggle with the conflicts between social status and justice, I feel this movie has staggering implications for our world today. Doubtless, here’s where some of you, my friends, may take offense (it’s ok, I still love you for reading this post!). Our President is vastly unpopular. This was bound to happen whatever the election results, right? Two abominable candidates. One very divided country.

Trump has made poor choices. He has said ridiculous things. Yet, he is our leader. And we face the same type of ethical dilemma that Christian and his fellow sailors did. How do we react in the face of a leader whom we may struggle to respect and with whose policies we may disagree–especially for those of us who did not choose him ourselves? Some people have answered this question with childish criticism of all Republicans. Others have answered this question with violence. Still more have answered with apathy or ignorance. Rather than thanking the God this country was founded on for allowing this nation to continue and putting all our effort into working together to right the wrongs of this great land, we have disintegrated into a rabble of “us vs. them,” blindly advocating only our own party’s ideas and coloring ourselves as good and others as evil. If Fletcher Christian is to be our example of what happens when bad ethics collide with bad ethics, then the reactive hostilities and venomous slander won’t get us anywhere either. We as a nation are abandoning our morality. We are allowing ourselves to lose out on a prosperity of unity that could be ours, just as both Christian and Bligh lost out on a voyage of harmony in the name of their king. The question then becomes: What can each of us do to right this great American ship?