what possessed Jack to take that shirt in the first place?

[Mikaela]

Jack was lucky in that Ennis was called the relatively distinct Ennis del Mar and didn't have a more John Doe'ish type of name too, I supppose. That would have limited Jack's chances even further of someone remembering and connecting the name and the person when Jack asked around....

[tiawahcowboy]

I think Jack sort of swore to himself he was going to find Ennis again one way or another. He goes back to Aguirre a year afterwards pretending to look for work when he was actually looking for Ennis. And I bet at the rodeos and later at his job as a farm machinery salesman, he didn't hesistate to ask, especially among the folks from Wyoming, if someone knew Ennis del Mar by a chance.

However, I think it's odd they don't exchange addresses when they part ways. But I guess Ennis wanted to avoid any temptation, and Jack didn't want to be punched in the face again.

The movie made it look like Jack Twist went back to Aguirre's trailer office the next year under pretense of looking for work; when he was inquiring about Ennis Del Mar.

But, Annie Proulx actually had Jack going back to see if work was available and he never mentioned Ennis Del Mar. (Since Annie Proulx's story is fiction, we really don't have to use the "argument from silence" excuse here as one might use when talking about real live human beings.)

Besides, according to Annie Proulx, K. E. Del Mar, Ennis's brother, lived in Signal, Wyoming. That's probably how Jack found out that Ennis had moved to Riverton and why he decided to send a postcard to him general delivery there.  

Annie Proulx's Jack Twist did not work for the farm machinery company until long after Alma divorced Ennis, after Ennis had Thanksgiving dinner at Alma and the grocers' with the girls, and after Lureen's father died.

Added note: In 1963, the only married sibling of Ennis Del Mar who was mentioned in the book was his sister.

[nakymaton]

Jack was lucky in that Ennis was called the relatively distinct Ennis del Mar and didn't have a more John Doe'ish type of name too, I supppose.

Do you think "Ennis" was an unusual enough name that Ennis never bothered telling anyone his last name, until Jack asked for it?

(I suddenly had an image of Jack hanging out with some guys from Wyoming after a rodeo, swapping some kind of exaggerated tales from childhood, and then suddenly saying, "Hey, you know a guy named Ennis del Mar? I got this shirt a his, been meanin to get it back to him one a these days." But, you know? Not realistic at all. )

[Mikaela]

Or:

""Hey, you know a guy named Ennis del Mar? I got something belongin' to him, been meanin to get it back to him one a these days."


Then we could have argued back and forth on whether Jack was talking of his heart, the shirt, both, or something else entirely. 


Concerning the name, perhaps someone once taunted Ennis about del Mar being a pansy kind of name. Ennis being Ennis, he would have worried over that after he punched the someone's lights out. Could be the reason he just tells Jack he's Ennis. Wouldn't want to give the man the wrong impression from the very first, you know.

[tiawahcowboy]

Do you think "Ennis" was an unusual enough name that Ennis never bothered telling anyone his last name, until Jack asked for it?

(I suddenly had an image of Jack hanging out with some guys from Wyoming after a rodeo, swapping some kind of exaggerated tales from childhood, and then suddenly saying, "Hey, you know a guy named Ennis del Mar? I got this shirt a his, been meanin to get it back to him one a these days." But, you know? Not realistic at all. )

I have never met a guy whose first name was Ennis; but, I know several people with the surname of Ennis. I know people have the last name of Del Mar and I have been friends with more than one person named "Delmar."

[opinionista]

I have never met a guy whose first name was Ennis; but, I know several people with the surname of Ennis. I know people have the last name of Del Mar and I have been friends with more than one person named "Delmar."

It's funny because in Spanish Del Mar is a girl's name. It's usually a middle name, as in Maria del Mar.

[tiawahcowboy]

It's funny because in Spanish Del Mar is a girl's name. It's usually a middle name, as in Maria del Mar.

Yep, an' thar's a whole passel of Hispanic men who have "Maria" as first name. John Wayne's and Pat Robertson's legal first names? Marion. I used to know a woman whose first name was spelled "Marion."

In my life, I have known men named, Sharon, Shirley, and Sherrill.  Sharon Parks was a great big country boy and nobody fun of his name. Shirley Rogers McKenzie preferred to be called "Roger;" his mother name him after a male Cherokee relative whose full name was "Shirley Rogers." Sherrill Booker told people to just call him "Booker."

[Meryl]

My mom's name was Marion.  

It seems more likely to me that Jack may have tracked Ennis by asking about him when he was actually in Wyoming himself.  He would have driven up through the state to see his parents from time to time anyway and could have asked at diners or gas stations, or he could have asked other ranch hands from the Lightning Flat area if they'd done jobs with him.

When I first saw the movie, I thought it was hardly credible that Jack and Ennis would have parted without exchanging addresses, but actually neither of them had an address to offer.  Jack knew Ennis could look him up through his parents in Lightning Flat, and that was about it.  But even if they'd had addresses to exchange, Ennis was in such denial about what Jack really meant to him that I think he really thought he'd be able to go back to his life with Alma without a huge adjustment.  He'd feel safer, too, if Jack couldn't write him a letter or show up on his doorstep, no matter how welcome he might be.  After all, Jack had been his lover, and Ennis didn't dare let the world have a chance to figure that out.  He couldn't fix it, so he'd just have to stand it.  Four years of marital disillusionment and diaper changing made him a lot more receptive to the idea, though. 

[tiawahcowboy]

Riverton, in Fremont County, is more or less in the Middle of Wyoming (slightly to the West, somewhat); but, Lightning Flat, where Jack is from, is in the extreme NE corner of the state in Crook Country. (Lightning Flat used to have a post office and it was in NW Crook County a the Wyoming-Montana state line.)

Jack probably went through Denver on his way up to his folks from Childress, Texas. The US Highway between Denver and almost Crook county is # 85. By taking that route, he still wouldn't get within 180+ miles of Riverton.

So, since the book Ennis told Jack that his brother, K. E., lived in Signal when both of the guys worked together in 1963, I say that Jack might have known where Ennis's brother lived and contacted him. And, it might have been possible that K. E. told or wrote Jack that Ennis had moved to Riverton but he did not have his address.

While we, as observers, can say "Jack was Ennis's lover," Ennis himself would never admit to that. He could only think of Jack as a buddy and nothing more than that. (Oh, ramblin' here . . . I would say that the reason the Movie Ennis said that Jack was his fishin' buddy to Alma was that Ennis did go fishing before Jack showed up in 1964, or he had already planned to do that.)

Oh, by the book again, Ennis had not been married to Alma 4 years yet when Jack showed up. It was more like 3 1/2 years.

[vkm91941]

Scent is tied very closely with memory for some of us.  I cannot smell my Mother's perfume without a tear or two and my oldest son has taken to wearing the same aftershave his late father wore and ahhh the memories that evokes.

Ennis is the same way.  It is most clear in the story where he is always talking about the scents around him.  In the film, for me, it is most evident in the scene where he first finds the shirts and buries his face in them as he embraces them and sighs.  Then again later after Junior leaves at the end and he discovers her forgotten sweater, he tenderly carresses it, smells and kisses it before placing it in his closet...so poignant, and devestating when combined with, the gentle ministration to the now reversed shirts and  "Jack, I swear" <sigh>