P.O. Boxes, Mailboxes and the No. 17

[Brown Eyes]

Greetings Open Forum Denizens!

So, a new topic has recently come to mind.  The themes of mailboxes, the post office and related things seem to be very vital to the movie. And, I don't recall discussing this much around here.  There was an old thread (it was relatively silly) on imdb about the importance of numbers and the instances of different numbers recurring in the film.  During that discussion, the importance of that "17" that we see Ennis very deliberately put on his new mailbox was brought up... but not in a very satisfying way.  So, I'll throw a few specific questions out there to start things off...

Why does the camera focus so specifically on Ennis putting the number "17"... or more accurately the number "1" and then the number "7" one after the other on his trailer's mailbox?  He even stands back to look at it.  Both the amount of time the camera lingers on it and Ennis's attention to it seem to indicate that the filmmakers want the audience to focus on this too.  So, why?

Ennis seems a bit excited about this new mailbox... Why?  Who is he expecting to get fun mail from now?  It's a sad thought really.

After all of those years sending postcards back and forth... and Ennis's mail being relatively visible in the p.o. box in the tiny post office... is it safe to assume that much of Riverton was completely on to Ennis's big secret?  Even though the postcards were written to seem innocent enough... don't we think that a lot of people would have started putting 2 and 2 together?

Why didn't they send letters in envelopes?  If they had they could have communicated with each other better.  They could have written longer notes and with the cover of an envelope they could have told each other more private things without so much worry about other people seeing. 

[serious crayons]

Good topic, Amanda!

Front-Ranger started a discussion about phones over on the CT board that eventually spread into mail issues, so maybe we can get into other forms of communication here, too.

OK, how about this. Hasn't it been 17 years since Jack sent Ennis the first postcard? (Reunion 1967, last scenes 1984, according to Barbara's timeline.)

Maybe the mailbox represents Ennis' subconscious desire to keep the lines of communication open with Jack. He's inviting Jack to "send him a postcard," so to speak, from beyond. Sorry, I am trying and trying and I can't figure out a way to phrase that so it doesn't sound kind of hokey. But my intention is serious. You know what I mean, right? He wants Jack to be with him.

[jpwagoneer1964]

I think it has been said before that Ennis would no longer want to go  to the PO so he got himself a mailbox at his trailer. he is proud of the job he did putting it up.

Ennis and Jack didn't express their feelings so much in words, written or otherwise.

[serious crayons]

This discussion gives me a new idea about that final postcard. The fact that it's signed "Ennis del Mar" I've always taken as a funny in-joke about their first meeting. But another reason could be because it sounds more formal and less intimate than a simple "Ennis." Maybe he was afraid that would arouse suspicion.

The more I think about the mailbox and the 17, the more I think they are connections to Jack. And maybe that's also the reason he's living in a trailer like the one where they first met. (And furnishing it with fans and coffee pots.)

But another possibility for the mailbox, which has been suggested elsewhere, is that it shows he's becoming even more hermitlike now -- he's not even going to go into town for his mail. A practical question: Would the PO deliver as far out as his trailer? Aren't townies more likely to have door-to-door delivery and rural folks have to go into town? Or maybe it's just a sign of the times and the postal service upgrading.
 

[nakymaton]

I just googled "rural free delivery," which was the mail service that rural people used until Emergency 911 service spread to rural areas (less than ten years ago, in a couple of the towns where I've lived) and even small country roads got street addresses. Apparently, rural mail delivery has been around since 1896. I don't know what its history is in Wyoming, but it was the norm in other parts of the country in the 70's. So that doesn't explain why Ennis wouldn't have gotten a mailbox until the 80's.

Post office boxes cost money, and rural mailboxes don't (except for buying the box in the first place, and replacing it when the neighbor's kids blow it up with leftover fireworks). I don't know if that could be part of it.

I guess as far as symbolism is concerned, the things that work best for me are that 1) the reunion (and the first postcard) was seventeen years ago (though Ennis wouldn't have had any control over what box number the post office assigned him), and 2) that the post office was the place where Ennis used to get his postcards from Jack, and it used to be a happy place, but after that last postcard... then the post office became the place where Ennis learned that Jack was dead. I'm not sure avoiding it necessarily implies avoiding people; after all, Ennis agrees to go to Alma Jr's wedding (and deal with both Alma and the memories of being 19 and in love) right after setting up the mailbox. But it might mean avoiding painful memories.

As for letters vs. postcards... maybe letters would have been more damning, in a way. I can see a nosy wife asking lots of questions about what's in a letter. With a postcard, it's all there; nothing seems to be hidden. What better place to hide than in the open?

(Also, in the short story, Ennis is far-sighted and doesn't enjoy reading, so a letter wouldn't be the same kind of pleasure it would be for other people.)

[Brown Eyes]

And of course there’s this observation: “Brokeback Mountain consists of 17 letters”

   I love that one!


And, yes I've always thought it was sort of interesting that the numbers can be read as either regular "17" or 1+7 to equal 8.  The mailbox and even the trailer (a move from the shack) do make this last bit of the movie seem like a new beginning of sorts.  Either having a mailbox does make Ennis more of a hermit or it symbolizes the idea, at least, that he's keeping communications open with the outside world.  I'm sure it must have something to do with Jack... because with the two of them some sort of connection or meaning about them as a duo is almost always the case.
 

[Front-Ranger]

Okay, this is as far-fetched as all the others, but Ennis very carefully applies the one and then the seven, to indicate that he is one (all alone) seven days a week. 

[Mikaela]

And, yes I've always thought it was sort of interesting that the numbers can be read as either regular "17" or 1+7 to equal 8.

I'm going to beat you all at being far-fetched: I like to read the 17 as 1+7=8. Because the "8" sideways becomes the sign of infinity. So the 17 really is a riddle, even a riddle within a riddle. 17 equals infinity, and what else equals infinity? The solution is "Jack and Ennis forever".

No, I don't at all think this is what was intended in the film. It's the explanation I favour even so.   

[Andrew]

I have thought a lot about the 17 since an extended discussion on the DC forum about number symbolism, quite a while back.  And most of it I was not enthusiastic about because discussions of symbolism so often go flying away from particular characters in a particular story.  The only possible interest to me was, If Ennis was thinking about those two numbers as he put them up (whether or not he had had a choice in picking his address), what would they have meant to him? 

And I don't think he was in school long enough, or was interested enough in written words, to count the letters in Brokeback Mountain, for example.

But what he was always aware of was time, how long tilll he could get free long enough to meet with up with Jack again, how long had it been since he had seen Jack.  And that as he thought about their history together he had already counted up the years.  And I think as Ennis was putting up those numbers, he was saying again to himself, Just like the seventeen years I was meeting Jack in the mountains!  And I think the thought of that, the heft of all those years in spite of the brevity of each meeting, was a consolation to him.

I will include one other correspondence with the 17 which I am absolutely sure is PURE COINCIDENCE!  Which I just came up with on my own.  And I guess, shows how easy it can be to get numbers to perform tricks for you if you enjoy getting mystical about them.   I am going to quote again the sentence from the story I cited in the thread, 'Annie Proulx, classic writer':

Years on years they worked their way through the high meadows and mountain drainages, horse-packing into the Big Horns, Medicine Bows, south end of the Gallatins, Absarokas, Granites, Owl Creeks, the Bridger-Teton Range, the Freezeouts and the Shirleys, Ferrises and the Rattlesnakes, Salt River Range, into the Wind Rivers over and again, the Sierra Madres, Gros Ventres, the Washakies, Laramies, but never returning to Brokeback. 

To give a (to me, stunningly) concrete sense of the passage of time and of the epic dimension of their love, Annie lists 17 different mountain ranges and mountains in Wyoming, other than Brokeback Mountain itself, to which they never returned.

The 17 address is only in the movie, this list of names is only in the story.  But though I highly doubt that she counted them, I think Annie would have wanted to come up with a list that was roughly proportionate to the number of years they met, and, along the lines of what I said in the other thread, convey in a single sentence what few other writers would have trusted themselves to get across in under a page or two.

[Marge_Innavera]

Could anyone conclude something was going on from just a few postcards a year? I’m not sure. I’m also not sure they would have much more to say (or want to say) in letters or even phone calls, for that matter. Because the only purpose is to arrange to see each other, “Fish should be jumping” says “Can’t wait to see you” just as well. Everything else could be said when they’re together.

On every viewing, it's seemed to me that Ennis' conviction that so many people "know" is a symptom of his insecurity and paranoia. Alma has known far longer than he thinks and by extension Monroe probably does too. But so many people think they can "tell" a person is gay based on stereotypes and since Ennis doesn't fit them -- and Jack has been in Riverton only once, I'd guess that there wouldn't be much speculation and what there was would die from a lack of visible "fuel."

In the case of the postcards, the text shown is pretty neutral; and why would people be peering through a window at his mail in the first place?