Brokeback Mountain

“Ennis, reared by his older brother and sister after their parents drove off the only curve on Dead Horse Road, leaving them twenty-four dollars in cash and a two-mortgage ranch, applied at age fourteen for a hardship license that let him make the hour-long trip from the ranch to the high school. The pickup was old, no heater, one windshield wiper, and bad tires; when the transmission went, there was no money to fix it. He had wanted to be a sophomore, felt the word carried a kind of distinction, but the truck broke down short of it, pitching him directly into ranch work.”

This passage describes Ennis’s childhood circumstances and is the first example of how the world seems to conspire against him (and Jack). He takes the necessary action to complete school by obtaining a hardship license, but then his only means of getting to school fails him, establishing The Inescapable Effects and Momentum of Poverty. This foreshadows the hard life that he faces and reflects Proulx’s use of naturalism.

“He didn’t ask if Ennis had a watch but took a cheap round ticker on a braided cord from a box on a high shelf, wound and set it, tossed it to him as if he weren’t worth the reach. ‘Tomorrow mornin we’ll truck you up the jump-off.’ Pair of deuces going nowhere.”

Joe Aguirre, the foreman of the operation Jack and Ennis work for on Brokeback Mountain, treats Ennis disrespectfully and assumes he’s impoverished. Aguirre’s character symbolizes how the world sees and treats Jack and Ennis, even before he learns of their relationship.

“They were respectful of each other’s opinions, each glad to have a companion where none had been expected. Ennis, riding against the wind back to the sheep in the treacherous, drunken light, thought he’d never had such a good time, felt he could paw the white out of the moon.”

After their first night talking but before the relationship becomes sexual, Ennis enjoys a feeling of companionship he isn’t familiar with. This indicates the depth of the men’s connection, which goes far beyond sexual gratification. It also reflects the environment of toxic masculinity that the men have grown up in, which makes forming close relationships of any kind difficult.

“Ennis woke in red dawn with his pants around his knees, a top-grade headache, and Jack butted against him; without saying anything about it, both knew how it would go for the rest of the summer, sheep be damned.”

After their first sexual encounter, both Ennis and Jack recognize the value of what they’ve found, even as they find themselves hungover and in disarray. Disregarding the sheep in their care illustrates that they will knowingly reject the limitations that society places on them. The beginning of the men’s physical relationship introduces the theme of Masculine Sexuality and the Forbidden Love of Queer Romance.

“The mountain boiled with demonic energy, glazed with flickering broken-cloud light; the wind combed the grass and drew from the damaged krummholz and slit rock a bestial drone. As they descended the slope Ennis felt he was in a slow-motion, but headlong, irreversible fall.”

As Ennis and Jack leave the mountain at the end of the summer, Ennis recognizes that they have reached a point of no return. The diction and description Proulx uses foreshadow that the lives the men are headed toward will be difficult.

“‘Right,’ said Jack, and they shook hands, hit each other on the shoulder; then there was forty feet of distance between them and nothing to do but drive away in opposite directions. Within a mile Ennis felt like someone was pulling his guts out hand over hand a yard at a time. He stopped at the side of the road and, in the whirling new snow, tried to puke but nothing came up. He felt about as bad as he ever had and it took a long time for the feeling to wear off.”

This passage shows the pain of Jack and Ennis’s parting after they’ve spent the summer on the mountain. Proulx uses vivid imagery and the simile of Ennis having his guts pulled out to punctuate the pain Ennis feels. The intensity of this feeling contrasts with the brevity of the parting, underscoring how much remains unsaid because the men can’t or won’t articulate it.

“‘Ennis, please, no more damn lonesome ranches for us,’ she said, sitting on his lap, wrapping her thin, freckled arms around him. ‘Let’s get a place here in town.’

‘I guess,’ said Ennis, slipping his hand up her blouse sleeve and stirring the silky armpit hair, fingers moving down her ribs to the jelly breast, the round belly and knee and up into the wet gap all the way to the north pole or the equator depending which way you thought you were sailing, working at it until she shuddered and bucked against his hand and he rolled her over, did quickly what she hated. They stayed in the little apartment, which he favored because it could be left at any time.”

Alma wants Ennis to make a real home for her, including a more permanent place for them to live. He answers by satisfying her sexually and then, in an act Alma hates, satisfying himself the best he can. The passage reveals Ennis’s ambivalence about the relationship; he prefers the apartment precisely because it requires no long-term commitment.

“Ennis pulled Jack’s hand to his mouth, took a hit from the cigarette, exhaled. ‘Sure as hell seem in one piece to me. You know, I was sittin up here all that time tryin to figure out if I was—? I know I ain’t. I mean, here we both got wives and kids, right? I like doin it with women, yeah, but Jesus H., ain’t nothin like this. I never had no thoughts a doin it with another guy except I sure wrang it out a hunderd times thinkin about you. You do it with other guys, Jack?’

‘Shit no,’ said Jack, who had been riding more than bulls, not rolling his own. ‘You know that. Old Brokeback got us good and it sure ain’t over. We got to work out what the fuck we’re goin a do now.’”

Reuniting four years after Brokeback, Jack and Ennis talk about their relationship and whether they have had other male partners. While Jack answers no, the narrator’s remark that he “had been riding more than bulls” reveals Jack has been with other men; presumably, he feels Ennis would think less of him if he told the truth, either out of a sense of betrayal or contempt. Both men are confused about what to do with their passion and love for each other.

“‘I doubt there’s nothin now we can do,’ said Ennis. ‘What I’m sayin, Jack, I built a life up in them years. Love my little girls. Alma? It ain’t her fault. You got your baby and wife, that place in Texas. You and me can’t hardly be decent together if what happened back there’—he jerked his head in the direction of the apartment—‘grabs on us like that. We do that in the wrong place we’ll be dead. There’s no reins on this one. It scares the piss out a me.’”

Ennis is torn between the traditional life he’s established with Alma and his relationship with Jack. He fears what would happen to them if others found out about their relationship—a reminder of the heteronormative culture they live in. However, he also acknowledges that he has little control not only over how they feel, but also over their ability to control their actions.

“‘How much is once in a while?’ said Jack. ‘Once in a while ever four fuckin years?’

‘No,’ said Ennis, forbearing to ask whose fault that was. ‘I goddam hate it that you’re goin a drive away in the mornin and I’m goin back to work. But if you can’t fix it you got a stand it,’ he said.”

While Jack is accusatory, Ennis shows restraint. This is a central difference in their characters and in their behavior toward both each other and life in general. The passage indicates the powerlessness they feel to change the situation, which reflects Proulx’s naturalistic portrayal of their lives.

“Ennis went back to ranch work, hired on here and there, not getting much ahead but glad enough to be around stock again, free to drop things, quit if he had to, and go into the mountains at short notice. He had no serious hard feelings, just a vague sense of getting short-changed, and showed it was all right by taking Thanksgiving dinner with Alma and her grocer and the kids, sitting between his girls and talking horses to them, telling jokes, trying not to be a sad daddy.”

After Ennis is divorced, he returns to a life that allows him to meet Jack whenever the opportunity arises—a life without Alma’s (and society’s) silent judgment. Nevertheless, he knows he’s unfulfilled and feels vaguely cheated by life. This speaks to his attempts to fit in to heteronormative culture; he tries to appear as he thinks others want him to be, but the performance wears on him.

“Jack slid his cold hand between Ennis’s legs, said he was worried about his boy who was, no doubt about it, dyslexic or something, couldn’t get anything right, fifteen years old and couldn’t hardly read, he could see it though goddam Lureen wouldn’t admit to it and pretended the kid was O.K., refused to get any bitchin kind a help about it. He didn’t know what the fuck the answer was. Lureen had the money and called the shots.”

Jack’s lack of power at home is juxtaposed with the comfort he feels with Ennis. This passage illustrates Proulx’s style and syntax, mixing long, run-on sentences that convey Jack’s anxieties with short ones emphasizing his inability to address them.

“‘Try this one,’ said Jack, ‘and I’ll say it just one time. Tell you what, we could a had a good life together, a fuckin real good life. You wouldn’t do it, Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain. Everything built on that. It’s all we got, boy, fuckin all, so I hope you know that if you don’t never know the rest. Count the damn few times we been together in twenty years. Measure the fuckin short leash you keep me on, then ask me about Mexico and then tell me you’ll kill me for needin it and not hardly never gettin it. You got no fuckin idea how bad it gets. I’m not you. I can’t make it on a couple a high-altitude fucks once or twice a year. You’re too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you.’”

Jack’s speech captures the frustration he feels at their situation and how much harder it is for him to accept the infrequency of their meetings than it seems to be for Ennis. He doesn’t often complain, but here the floodgates have opened, and he bares his soul to Ennis. He criticizes Ennis for being content with the informal nature of their relationship, illustrating the conflict between the two characters.

“[T]hey torqued things almost to where they had been, for what they’d said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved.”

The men reach an uncomfortable truce in what becomes their last time together. Proulx frames the futility of their lives and their love for each other as inescapable truths of their existence, illustrating the theme of powerlessness and loss of hope.

“Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see or feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they’d never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.”

Jack remembers their time on Brokeback Mountain and realizes they have not progressed any farther. Ennis’s inability to fully accept their love for each other coupled with the societal impossibility of their relationship have held them back. Rather than continue fighting this, Jack lets it go and accepts the good of the relationship for what it was.

“‘He had some half-baked idea the two a you was goin a move up here, build a log cabin, and help me run this ranch and bring it up. Then this spring he’s got another one’s goin a come up here with him and build a place and help run the ranch, some ranch neighbor a his from down in Texas. He’s goin a split up with his wife and come back here. So he says. But like most a Jack’s ideas it never come to pass.’ So now he knew it had been the tire iron.”

Jack’s father reveals to Ennis that Jack had moved on to another relationship just before he was killed. He names the dream life Jack always offered Ennis and that Ennis refused out of fear. Ennis’s belief that Jack’s death was a hate crime validates this fear retrospectively, bringing to fruition the foreshadowing that noncompliance with heteronormative standards can have violent consequences.

“The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack’s sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he’d thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack’s own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack, but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.”

When Ennis finds the shirts nested together in a hidden cubby of Jack’s closet, he understands the magnitude of Jack’s love for him, his love for Jack, and the ways their lives are inextricably joined. The shirts symbolize their love—rough, damaged, intertwined, and unkempt—but the memory of what they had is pure and powerful.

“Below [the postcard] he drove a nail and on the nail he hung the wire hanger and the two old shirts suspended from it. He stepped back and looked at the ensemble through a few stinging tears.

‘Jack, I swear—’ he said, though Jack had never asked him to swear anything and was himself not the swearing kind.”

After creating the memorial to his relationship with Jack, Ennis begins to say something but stops short. The statement—whether an apology, a promise, a declaration of love, or an expression of fond exasperation—remains unfinished, highlighting the abortive nature of the relationship itself. The remark that “Jack had never asked him to swear anything” amplifies the sense of loss, as Jack was mostly patient with Ennis’s reluctance to commit to the relationship, setting his own wishes aside.