Jack Sparrow: My compass is unique.
Norrington: "Unique" here having the meaning of "broken"?
Jack Sparrow: True enough.
He'd had the compass for as long as he'd remembered. (He didn't.) He remembered the many nights spent staring at its face, the spinning needle as undecided and wild as his untameable soul. He remembered his first few years as captain, the good years, before everything was shot to hell and he lost his beloved Pearl to the depths of the ocean.
Those years were the good years. He had no true course save for what his compass told him and he charted his ways thus, literally following the whims of his heart. Some days they would set sail for Tortuga and dock there for weeks, accumulating new crew members and losing some. Other days, they would float aimlessly on, letting the wind and compass take them where they ought to go. Those were the years where he sat up late at night in his bunk, the snores of his crew permeating the floorboards as he listened to the comforting lap of water against his ship.
Then the Black Pearl sank and with it, he broke and with him, the compass.
He could no longer trust the compass, but he couldn't trust himself either to make the choices the compass had been making for him for so long. Everything became about getting the Pearl back but he didn't know how. The compass was no longer a friend, but an enemy, just like how he was now a threat to himself. He could no longer understand the compass he understood so intimately in the past, he could no longer understand the thoughts in his heads and the actions they engendered.
The nights were no longer about listening to the water but listening to the steady roar of his heartbeat and watching the needle spin as he pined for the Pearl, the one thing that made him whole. He didn't know where to start and the compass didn't know how to help him. The compass, once so comforting, so sure, was now a danger, a distraction, that would surely get himself killed.
When he finally got the Pearl back, finally stepped on board the worn floorboards, touched the rigging and breathed in the cabin air, he knew he was home. The compass was once again sitting comfortably against his hip. He was where he belonged, where the love he gave his ship was reciprocated.
But things were different.
The air was darker. The comfort was tinged with an edge of menace, like an evil lurking in the corner that would jump out of nowhere and devour him whole. The compass was like a two-faced liar, one minute with him and the next not and he knew he could no longer trust what he had come to think of as his best friend and lover.
By extension, he knew that he could no longer trust himself either and that probably was what scared him the most.
I was trying to bring across the message that the compass is a metaphor for Jack. The compass points the way to a person's desire so if it shows nothing, what does it mean? I hope I managed to bring that across.
Thank you for reading! (: