The Hidden Ocean

[Front-Ranger]

Why should marine and nautical references appear in a story about Wyoming? There is a very good reason. Let's examine some of these references and explore why they're there.

The first marine reference appears early in the story. I like the way the screenwriters subtly emphasized it. Jack is introducing himself to Ennis with a handshake and Ennis replies by just saying his first name. Jack calls him on the omission immediately: "Your folks just stop at Ennis?" Ennis looks down as he reluctantly says his last name, "Del Mar" with emphasis on the "DEL." As if he were saying he was FROM the ocean, not of the ocean. Why should Ennis want to hide his last name or distance himself from it? We shall see.

This is a random revelation from the Castro showing.

[Front-Ranger]

Meditation: Ennis on the beach.

[Front-Ranger]

The second marine reference. I'll give you a visual hint:

[Front-Ranger]

I'm sure there are other marine references that I'm passing over. But these are a few that struck me as I was watching the movie on the big screen at the Castro Theater.

On the day that Jack and Ennis come down from the mountain, their communications are strained and misfire as badly as the spark plugs on the old truck Jack drives. Then, they part, and Jack swerves around Ennis who is going off on foot. As Jack zooms by, we see an old truck with a one-horse trailer parked by the road. The truck is a solid aquamarine color and the trailer is dark gray.

Later on, when Jack comes back the next year to apply for a job again there (in vain, it turns out) the truck/trailer are still parked there!

[Front-Ranger]

I'm sure there are other marine references that I'm passing over.

And one of them, in the story, is the reference to the doomed submarine, the Thresher. The fact that the sub is named after a prairie harvesting machine shows how tightly Annie Proulx has meshed her metaphors in the story.

Sometimes the metaphors come so thick and heavy that I think I will drown looking up!!

[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.     Maybe some more Freudian sexual banter between the two boys before gettin' busy.   

[Penthesilea]

"...the submarine Thresher lost two months earlier with all hands and how it must have been in the last doomed minutes..."

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.

[moremojo]

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.

Jack became a brother in death to those lost men on the Thresher.

Drowning is an horrific, painful death, at least if occurring while the victim is conscious. Mary Wollstonecraft survived a suicide attempt by drowning, and wrote of the pain that came in with the lungs filling with water. Even more fundamental than water, sleep, or food in sustaining the body's life, is the need for breathable air. Lack of air quickly induces panic, and panic is always a horrifying experience.

[Brown Eyes]

Lee!!  This is an awesome topic.  And, I think aside from the verbal/ text references to the ocean or sea, I think it's important to continue to look for visual clues.

The color of the truck is a good observation, because it really is such a striking and almost flamboyant color for Ennis (who would usually rather blend into the woodwork than call attention to himself in an aqua blue truck).

But, I think the really crucial visual clue is the anchor on the wall in Jack's room in Lightning Flat.  It's on the wall above his bed and near the window.  It's a great reminder of the ocean reference in Ennis's name.  But, also, it occurs to me that it could be almost an analogy...

If Ennis is in the middle of an ocean (an island in the sea) than Jack is his anchor.  Something like that.  It can be read as really romantic perhaps.

[Penthesilea]

Lee!!  This is an awesome topic.  And, I think aside from the verbal/ text references to the ocean or sea, I think it's important to continue to look for visual clues.

The color of the truck is a good observation, because it really is such a striking and almost flamboyant color for Ennis (who would usually rather blend into the woodwork than call attention to himself in an aqua blue truck).

As an argument within the story, I'd say that Ennis didn't pay attention to the color at all. He bought what he could afford, not what he liked. He looked for a used truck in a reasonable good condition for a prize he was able to pay. Or maybe someone (a coworker?) offered his old truck on good conditions to Ennis when buying himself a newer one.

But of course there's the question why Ang Lee decided to make Ennis's truck so brightly turquoise. And I agree that it is a visual reference to the ocean.

But, I think the really crucial visual clue is the anchor on the wall in Jack's room in Lightning Flat.  It's on the wall above his bed and near the window.  It's a great reminder of the ocean reference in Ennis's name.  But, also, it occurs to me that it could be almost an analogy...

If Ennis is in the middle of an ocean (an island in the sea) than Jack is his anchor.  Something like that.  It can be read as really romantic perhaps.

We just have a discussion about the anchor at another thread. It starts with Lynne's reply #42
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,5702.40.html

It sure would better fit into this topic than the mettle of man. Should we move the last replies (#42-45) to this thread? Lee, what do you say? You created both threads. Would you like to move the anchor discussion from the mettle of man thread to the hidden ocean thread?

[Front-Ranger]

Excellent discussion, everyone. Another reference I would like to bring up is in the story. During foreplay, Ennis is described as stimulating Alma with his hand, "all the way to the north pole or the equator depending on which way you thought you were sailing...."

For Ennis, it was the north pole, for Alma, it may have been the equator!!

[RossInIllinois]

Hmmm, submarines are long, hard, and full of seamen.     Maybe some more Freudian sexual banter between the two boys before gettin' busy.   

I was going to ask for my mouse click back on this thread now im not...

[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! 

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]

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.

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.