He is independent in a way that nobody who was not a king or an aristocrat in the past has ever been -- a new kind of man, the backbone of the polis as it emerges.
The Titanic, that splendid vessel, is like the 20th century itself, launching forth in all its looming luxe and promise, with Jack as the symbolic new man on the rise -- the aristocrat of the spirit who uses his charm and talent to enter realms from which he would previously have been barred.
He much approves of the 18th-century English aristocrat who moved out of his crumbling pile in order to admire, from his new house on the hill, how quickly wild nature took control of the elegant rooms he had lived in.
