When Steve drops the shield at the end of the film, he’s not just dropping the Captain America identity; this is also a final statement that he is not, and never again will be, the property of the government.
That is, of course, the crux of the film’s conflict: whether super-powered people can be allowed to operate on their own, or whether they need to be under the control of the world’s governments - or in other words, the property of the world’s governments.
And Steve Rogers, in WW2, started out that way. He volunteered to not only be a soldier in the U.S. Army, but to be experimented upon. He gave up his bodily autonomy, in every sense of the word, in service to his country. His very body is, technically, the property of the U.S. government.
He then became a symbol to sell war bonds, and then a symbol to lead men and the allies to victory. And then decades after making the ultimate sacrifice, he was found in the ice, and thawed/woken up in the present day - adding to the government’s investment in him.
For most of his life - through the present day - the Captain America identity has been the property of the government, for all that the man Steve Rogers inhabited it. They not only gave him his shield, his uniform and other equipment; they not only assigned agents to watch over him/protect him and bugged his apartment; but they made a fucking EXHIBIT in the Smithsonian about the Captain America identity.
And in this moment, when he drops the shield, Steve is saying - no more. I will not be your dancing monkey. I will not be your puppet. I will not be your property.
Steve Rogers isn’t just dropping the shield here. He is dropping any and all debt to the government, and any and all loyalty to the government.
And by dropping the shield and everything that goes with it, Steve Rogers reclaims himself.


















