Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
P.O. Boxes, Mailboxes and the No. 17
Cameron:
I saw the poster, real interesting and I liked it a lot.
I really do believe that the sheep are real important. Next time I watch, I will take note of all the interesting sheep details and post them.
I am glad you sort of agree.
This is serious :D
moremojo:
--- Quote from: marlb42 on February 19, 2007, 12:54:49 am ---I really do believe that the sheep are real important.
--- End quote ---
Proulx was very deliberate in making Ennis and Jack sheepherders and not cowboys (i.e., men who are working with cattle). The sheep are important, though some of their import remains mysterious (they have been neglected to a large degree in our various analyses). It might be of interest that most of 1967, when Jack and Ennis reunited, was the lunar Year of the Sheep according to Chinese astrology. Also, both men very possibly were born in 1943 ("not yet twenty" when they first meet in 1963), and most of that year was likewise the Chinese Year of the Sheep.
Front-Ranger:
I can second that, Scott. I heard Annie say in person, "If I had wanted them to be cowboys, I wouldn't have put them to work herding sheep." This was at a literary conference in Casper, Wyoming.
Brown Eyes:
Well, some of you know I have a complex theory about the sheep and their symbolism relative to both Jack and Ennis and the whole idea of "sacrificial lambs." I think sheep function in very specific ways (at least in the movie... a lot of their importance I think comes from visual cues that we don't experience in the written text of the story). I'll briefly summarize... The only visions of bloody violence that we're shown in the film are the gory death of the sheep after TS1 and the brutal image of Earl's mutilated body and then later Ennis's vision of what Jack's death might have been like. To me the sheep that Ennis sees after losing his virginity upon first-viewing of the film seems like an overdetermined symbol of loss of virginity, but after we know about the Earl story the mutilated sheep in hindsight seems much more like an ominous warning (from Ennis's perspective). The dead sheep may activate some of his old fears. Jack frequently seems to be juxtaposed with lambs and sheep (I'm thinking particularly of the moment where he's holding a lamb across his lap and tending to something in its hoof... and then also right after Ennis sees the dead sheep there's a quick cut to Jack naked by the stream). My theory is that sheep come to symbolize Jack (and gay men more generally) and Ennis's sense of duty to protecting the sheep becomes very, very important. He won't shoot the sheep for food and he's adament that they're responsible for guarding the sheep. He takes this very seriously. The sheep might not function in the same way from Jack's perspective because he does not have the Earl scenario as part of his world-view. It's not a part of his worries in the same way that it is for Ennis.
I also have a complex theory about the identity of Jack and Ennis as cowboys (in the film... again, some of this is visual and not communicated in Annie's actual text). Ennis is shown to be a cowboy in the film. We see him working with cows and he talks about the heifers calving. He's literally a cowboy during much of his life in Riverton. Jack loses any true claim to being a cowboy (either through ranch work or through rodeoing) by the time the Reunion happens. Being a cowboy becomes nostalgic and part of Jack's fantasy as early as the "prayer of thanks" camping trip. He proposes the "cow and calf operation" as part of his ideal scenario of living with Ennis. But Ennis already works for a cow and calf operation... we know this because of the grocery scene. The cow and calf operation is grunt work and part of Ennis's daily experience. Jack maintains an image of a cowboy through his hats and the clothes that he wears. And we know he maintainis the cowboy idea as an ideal and probably had since childhood. I think this is one reason why the little cowboy toy in his childhood room is so poignant when Ennis finds it. He'd been dreaming of cowboys since he was very young.
Front-Ranger:
I was reading Adam's prop book for the movie today, and it does call for the numbers 1 and 7 to be used in the mailbox scene. What's more, the prop book says that Ennis throws the other numbers into the big garbage can outside his trailer door when he's finished. That, to me, is also very significant!!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version