In the Second Discourse Rousseau explores the difference between the savage man and the societal man. He states, “In reality, the source of all these differences is, that the savage lives within himself, while social man lives constantly outside himself, and only knows how to live in the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the consciousness of his own existence merely from the judgment of others concerning him.” So then in the case of Jake Sully, is he a savage or a social man?
Much of what Rousseau states is that a savage is one that is not tampered by society and where “Nature lays her commands on every animal, and the brute obeys her voice.” Jake may be a savage man at points in the movie when he is his Avatar but he is always going back and forth. So to say that he is merely a societal man is not necessarily true either. He indeed is affected by his militaristic past and which is where a lot of the judgment is passed onto him. Not to mention the judgment by the scientists who don’t see him as up to par. Jake walks a thin line back and forth between being a savage man and a societal man…
Rousseau is able to sum it up like this, “whereas nothing is more gentle than man in his primitive state, as he is placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes, and the fatal ingenuity of civilized man.” The word “gentle” connotates a whole host of different meanings, in the sense applied to Jake I believe delicate is the best synonym for it. Sully is going back and forth between two worlds and he is having to learn so much about the Na’vi and at the same time having to be conducting research and trying to obtain the unobtainium. He is stuck between a rock and a hard place and although what Rousseau may have meant was that the further you are away from each the more equilibrium there will be in your life, which in a cultural studies viewpoint may be true, Jake is having to deal with two extremes that are shaping his life savage vs. societal.
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