fffffffzzzzzzzzzzzzzap! (lightning and electricity references)

[nakymaton]

Jack and Ennis set off sparks in each other.

Story:

...the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity... (dozy embrace scene)

His shaking hand grazed Ennis's hand, electrical current snapped between them. (reunion... and there's also a storm brewing in the background, which, ummmm... comes to a climax when it starts hailing on the Motel Siesta. Weather-as-sexual-tension metaphor?)

...the lightning storm that killed 42 sheep...

And in the movie, there are a number of thunder storms, aren't there? Not just the one where Ennis is washing the coffee pot and looking up the mountain toward Jack? There's thunder with the hail storm that scatters the sheep, I think.

At the reunion, Ennis's lighter-flicking kind of takes the place of lightning-flickering to build the tension.

(Don't ask me how the electric carving knife fits into this. That knife scares me.)

[Front-Ranger]

I like the scene where Jack is sleeping up on the mountain, a blue heeler beside him, and lightning/thunder is seen/heard off in the distance. That pesky director/editor almost cuts off the lightning/thunder in his haste to move forward the story, as he does so often!!

[serious crayons]

(Don't ask me how the electric carving knife fits into this. That knife scares me.)

Well, you know my theory about that, right? But it's less about Jack and Ennis than it is about Alma and Monroe. 

I have always been curious about the storm in the story's reunion scene. It seemed somehow portentious, but of what? Sexual tension makes sense. Though there's something a little ominous about it, too.

(OT, I am also curious about the sound of the phone ringing in the next room at the motel, if anyone has any ideas about that.)

[Front-Ranger]

All of the weather theatrics add to the drama of the story, as well as liven up the setting and convey a feeling of Wyoming-ness. But in addition, I think it is a custom of Western writers and artists to treat the weather as another character in the story. They use it to echo, underscore, or complement the action/mood/feelings. Ang Lee also said that since he didn't use narration to tell what the characters were feeling, he had to do it in other ways, through setting, props, atmospheric effects, etc.

I love the way the general wetness of the story/movie works with the electrical currents. There's a technical term for this in my line of work called "electrowinning." You run an electrical charge through a solution, and there is a chemical reaction which results in you "winning" whatever you were seeking to gain: gold or another type of metal. What a metaphor!!

[Mikaela]

(OT, I am also curious about the sound of the phone ringing in the next room at the motel, if anyone has any ideas about that.)

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".

But to me definitely mostly an effective mood-setter, more than an integral and specific plot element. It goes hand-in-hand, btw, with the banging of the unsecured door in the next room. Another annoying, encroaching sound. No peace and quiet for Jack and Ennis.

[serious crayons]

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".

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.