Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
fffffffzzzzzzzzzzzzzap! (lightning and electricity references)
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Mikaela on November 03, 2006, 12:30:20 pm ---To me that is one quite intense mood-setter. Hearing a phone ringing like that, there's an anxious tension building: Something's gotta give. (Ie. Waiting for someone to pick up, or for the phone to stop ringing). Something's not right. (Why is it ringing in an apparently empty room? Where is the person who was supposed to be there? What's the urgency?)
Also, it represents the outside world with all its demands and obligations encroaching on J&E's private little bubble of togetherness, reminding them of the rest of the world's continued existence - the harsh persistent sound from outside cutting into their space, and disturbing it, calling them "back to earth".
--- End quote ---
Thanks, Mikaela. That all makes sense. I guess it's possible to find ways to see the ringing as foreshadowing something: Ennis' phone call to Lureen, the unanswered phone hinting that someone eventually won't be there (maybe Jack or even, because it coincides with Ennis calling Alma, maybe Alma after the divorce), a toll ringing for Ennis and Jack ... whatever.
But I like your explanation (an annoying and even disturbing reminder of the outside world). And the fact that it carries vague hints of SOME kind of foreshadowing, perhaps of all those things to some degree, just makes it more complex and interesting without chaining it to any specific symbolism.
I'm learning so much about writing (and reading) by picking this story apart!
:)
LauraGigs:
I always thought "Lightning Flat" was an intriguing name for Jack's home, and didn't understand her choice of it until I thought about how it connotes vulnerability: a flat, shelterless plane in which you're in constant danger of lightning strikes.
There's the obvious symbolism of lightning as the wrath of God/Zeus and consequence of sin. Short karma and vulnerability to consequence followed Jack everywhere: his humiliation by Aguirre, rejection by Jimbo, and being blamed for sheep dying — from lightning strikes.
And Jack's demise fit his origin: either "struck down" from above for his sin, or in an accidental "sudden burst" of the tire.
(And it's fitting that the Twist home featured a prominent cross and pentagram — symbols used for protection and appeasement.)
nakymaton:
Lightning at night also creates a sudden burst of illumination: bright light for a moment that makes it difficult to see in the darkness that follows.
That summer on the mountain might have felt a bit like a flash of lightning. Especially for Ennis.
Mikaela:
Mel, that post simply makes it a necessity for me to add the first verse of Shelley's "Mutability" to this thread:
The flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow dies;
All that we wish to stay
Tempts and then flies.
What is this world's delight?
Lightning that mocks the night,
Brief even as bright.
On that background it seems altogether fitting that J&E's reunion occurs accompagnied by lightning.........
Meryl:
There's an awful lot to say about the metaphors Proulx uses for the reunion and the motel scene that follows it. I always get a chill at "Behind her in the room lightning lit the window like a white sheet waving and the baby cried." Revelation, danger, foreshadowing, fear, a cry for help, surrender--everything is implied in that one sentence.
"A few handfuls of hail rattled against the window followed by rain and slippery wind banging the unsecured door of the next room then and all through the night." If Alma symbolizes water, the hail is her impotent rage, followed by tears. The wind represents unchecked desire, the banging door the sexual act.
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