Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
The Hidden Ocean
moremojo:
Just wanted to point out that Ennis's very first name means 'island', with its implication of a surrounding body of water. So the 'del Mar' that Jack prods out of him on that initial meeting might almost be seen to be redundant.
I'm remembering the reference in the story to Jack looking up at the clear blue Wyoming sky on that last tryst and imagining himself drowning in the ocean-like vista above him.
Front-Ranger:
Thanks, Scott...Ennis is like a rock in the midst of an ocean, but when we first meet him he is denying the existence of the ocean. In Ang Lee's Taoist way of looking at the world, the solid and liquid worlds are both opposites and complements.
Here's the quote from the story about the Thresher:
"...the submarine Thresher lost two months earlier with all hands and how it must have been in the last doomed minutes..."
And, BTW, that is an incredible sentence in the story, very Joycean. We could probably discuss that one sentence for a couple weeks!!
moremojo:
One thing I find poignant in that sentence is that here we see two rough-and-tumble youths, "inured to the stoic life", giving and receiving little sympathy in this world, expressing empathy, even concern for these lost men in their last anguished moments. Male homosexual love is but one end of the spectrum encompassing the affectivity and emotion between men. Ennis and Jack are imagining what it might have been like to be those men, and feeling for them, perhaps awakening in their hearts the capacity to feel for each other.
SFEnnisSF:
Hmmm, submarines are long, hard, and full of seamen. :laugh: Maybe some more Freudian sexual banter between the two boys before gettin' busy. ;) :D
Penthesilea:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on September 19, 2007, 11:40:53 am ---"...the submarine Thresher lost two months earlier with all hands and how it must have been in the last doomed minutes..."
--- End quote ---
I can't help myself, this sentence always reminds me of Jack's comment about the boneless blue at their last trip:
"...but the boneless blue was so deep, said Jack, that he might drown looking up."
This is just an inversion of the sinking submarine: the endless blues sky is just the same as the endless blue sea, only above instead of beneath. And instead of sinking down into the blue of the ocean, it's drowning while looking up.
The sentence about the bonless blue of course leads my thought to the next two sentences:
"...he had drowned in his own blood."
"...blood choking down Jack's throat and nobody to turn him over."
It's all about drowning. Gawd, this is so depressing stuff :'(. I think it is such a cruel, cruel way to die, unconsious or not.
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