Sue, thank you so much for bringing the outside element to my attention, and twister, thank you for adding to it.
I don't think I've ever considered those outside noises as being like the world making its presence known but it makes perfect sense, just as Ennis interprets the bestial drone as being some sort of judgement as they ride off the mountain. In their tiny room they are surrounded by a hostile world. On the mountain Ennis felt that "they owned the world", they felt themselves invisible, and yet they were being spied on even up there, and the world they might have owned was very circumscribed.
Sue, the hail is a fascinating aspect. Hail crops up three times in the story:
the blowy hailstorm which scatters the sheep and leaves a disquieted Ennis feeling that "everything seemed mixed"
A few handfuls of hail rattled against the window, and
In May of 1983 they spent a few cold days at a series of little icebound, no-name high lakes, then worked across into the Hail Strew River drainage.
Each time there are turning points in the story, Ennis's first feelings of discomfort about what is happening, after his previous joyous indulgence in the sex, the reunion when what starts out so promisingly (in Jack's eyes) is shown to be a hopeless case, and the last trip when it all goes tits up (to use one of AP's story titles). Mind you, in such a tight story, virtually every part is a turning point of one sort or another.
However, for me the major point for the hail in the motel scene is the connection with The Aeneid. In The Aeneid, Aeneas (Ennis) meets Dido and their first night of sex, that Dido considers her wedding night, is in a cave accompanied by thunder, lightning and hail. That night is described as the beginning of the tragedy and the destruction which follows. True enough. For Jack, the motel room is where he essentially proposes to Ennis, and Ennis's wishy-washy response keeps Jack hanging on for a further sixteen years. In The Aeneid, Aeneas deserts Dido (he's married, he has other duties, you know how it goes) and Dido, distraught, kills herself. Too much of BBM follows The Aeneid for it to be coincidental.
Second however - I think AP is able to layer the story many times over, so although Ennis sounds suspiciously like Aeneas, the names (as far as I can tell) have entirely different meanings (Aeneas = praise, Ennis = island, and for sure AP twines watery references throughout the story and has her Ennis as a lonely man in the middle of a sea - del Mar, his father's surname). And so on. So the hail in the motel scene is both a reference to the cave, the wedding night as Dido perceived it, but it also has those other exclusively BBM meanings.
That's how I see it anyway.
