Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum

The Hidden Ocean

<< < (4/4)

Front-Ranger:
Thank you, Ross, for making sure that post did not get buried and thank you Eric, for posting it in the first place!! LOL! Now, another related thought:

Today as I picked up my son from school, he asked me about my day. I said that something big happened to me today. He said, "Did you get fired?" "No" I answered. "Hired?" "No." "Promoted?" "No." "Demoted?" "Again, no."

Pause. "Well, did you get a box of soup?"

"No, why do you ask that?" I said, suddenly very interested.

"Well, when you get a box of soup, it's a big pain, cause it leaks out all over the place."

I never thot of it that way. A new way of looking at a box of soup. "Them soup boxes is real bad to pack."

Ruthlessly Unsentimental posted a very interesting translation of the Basque's speech to Ennis when he picked up the provisions at the bridge. But it didn't discuss the soup as I recall. And we all have puzzled over the meaning of the soup boxes. Until the exchange with my son, I always thot the soup was powdered or dried and that's why it was in boxes. But now I think the soup is liquid, and we all know by now what liquids mean in the tale of Brokeback Mountain. Especially liquids in containers.

Meryl:
Great topic, Lee!  8)

Regarding Ennis's name, as Casey Cornelius points out in his great "Deliberate Classical References" thread, Ennis is a variation on the Greek name Aeneas.  The legendary Aeneas, written of by both Homer and Virgil, sailed from Troy to Carthage to Sicily in his wanderings and was subject to the whims of both the Wind (stirred up by a jealous Juno) and Love (Venus, his mother).  All of this has resonance with our own Ennis, of course.

delalluvia:
Just a quick comment:

The submarine Thresher was named after a shark - the Thresher shark.

# Threshing machine (or thresher), a device that first separates the head of a stalk of grain from the straw, and then further separates the kernel from the rest of the head

# Thresher shark, a type of shark with a distinctly scythe-shaped tail

I'm trying not to read too much into the thresher thing - it was big news back in the day, and Proulx may not have meant its inclusion in the story to mean anything more than the two men aren't exactly isolated from the outside world, hence Jack's knowledge and usage of 25 cent words.

Front-Ranger:
Good points, Della. People wonder why Proulx references the Thresher but doesn't even mention the Kennedy assassination, and this could be a clue why.

I'm reading the other stories in the collection that ends with Brokeback Mountain, and one of them is called "The Lost Ocean." In this story, the prairie is the ocean and instead of waves there is the incessant wind.

Front-Ranger:

--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on January 02, 2008, 12:43:35 pm ---I'm reading the other stories in the collection that ends with Brokeback Mountain, and one of them is called "The Lost Ocean." In this story, the prairie is the ocean and instead of waves there is the incessant wind.

--- End quote ---

The prairie of central North America is actually an ancient sea bed. Covered wagons that crossed the prairie (and Wyoming, via the Oregon Trail and others) were covered with a white cloth and were called Prairie Schooners (a type of boat). The Rocky Mountains rose up on the western edge of this sea and many remnants of the sea can be found there. Walking around my neighborhood, I have found interesting shells and beautiful coral rocks.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page