Brokeback Mountain Forum @ ennisjack.com
The Movie & Story => Characters, Quotes & Scenes => Topic started by: manhattangirl on Apr 09, 2007, 05:37 PM
-
Jack and Ennis were partners, friends, and lovers. They proved to work well together, enjoy drinking and talking with each, and they loved each other deeply.
The question I have that's always lingering in the back of mind, was there ever a question of dominance between the two?
Before the FNIT you could call them "buddies", not a threat to one another, no power plays made. But from the FNIT to the Final Confrontation the dynamic of their relationship changed. Ennis exerted his will on Jack on how thing were going to go sexually and emotionally, the when, and the where, but Jack in turn exerted his will initiating these moments to happen, sexually, emotionally. In every relationship there is, whether we admitted or not, a power game is going on. The struggle between Jack and Ennis was a constant battle.
Does this question dominance applies to them? Was dominance between Jack and Ennis interchangeable? If one was a dominate force who was it?
-
Hello manhattangirl !
Excellent topic, as I have harbored thoughts about this for some time. I shall tantalize you by saying that I will try to collect my ideas about this and post them tomorrow morning. I think this topic promises to be most interesting...
-
This is a good thread, manhattagirl. I have thought about it many times, especially since the thread about how they saw each other. At this point in time, I think they both were dominant at different times. Jack the FNIT and SNIT; Ennis at the reunion; Ennis at the post-divorce scene; Jack at the final scene together. It will be interesting to see how others see this. Personally, I think the reason they got on so well for so long was because they were able to let the other guy be dominant from time to time. Neither of them had to be boss all the time. Sort of a nutual respect thing going on here.
-
Hello again, manhattagirl.
The question has been raised before on whether the relationship was in some sense abusive -- at least in the phychological or emotional sense. Although I personally don't think so, I do think that a struggle for control over the relationship was always at play.
At the heart of it is, IMO, Jack's desire to move on to the next level. As you had noted, it is the primary behicle by which Jack sought to express his will on how the relationship is to go forward. His deference to Ennis would make it seem that in spite of this desire, he submitted himself and his dream to Ennis's will. But it is really not as simple as that. no?
From his own standpoint, Ennis was constantly feeling the pressure from Jack to live with him -- something that Ennis felt was not only unwise but detremental to the survival of the relationship. Although he constantly rebuffed Jack's overtures, he must have felt the pressure over the years, even though Jack probably never mentioned his desires explicitly after the reunion. MY suspicion is that this feeling of being pressured is part of the reason why Ennis tried to see less of Jack over the years.
So, IMO, the struggle for control between Ennis and Jack always lurked below the surface of things -- never really disappearing, and in fact becoming more and more acute after each passing year. It was probably a source of great dissatisfaction for both of them, and each saw it as if the other had more control over it.
It is easier to appreciate the point of view that Jack was largely on the receiving end of things, and that Ennis had him on a short leash. To a great extent, this is true. But we should also appreciate things from the point of view of a reluctant Ennis, who probably felt himself under constant pressure to acquiese. I think it is their not fully understanding the point of view of the other that gradually led to the painful confrontation in their last meeting. Although things were torqued back in the end, perhaps each had gained some unique insight into why theis struggle was meant to go unresolved. In the DOzy Embrace recollection, it seemed that Jack did in fact finally resign himself to the realization that rare moments of equilibrium in that constant struggle were perhaps the moments when he was most happy and contented.
-
Hi tpe,
I read your post over and over, it's great, thanks for responding.
Let me start by saying I had no great sympathy Ennis, I thought him weak. The only two things I've seen him do for Jack was call Lureen after the his postcard was returned, and go to Jack's parents ranch. I said to myself, "Oh, now you're doing something for your lover of so many years." It took me a long while to really look at his motives for his actions.
He loved Jack, I don't doubt that. His fear of their relationship being found out to me had to be more than that, whether he realized or not.
It's been written how this character was a laconic western figure, in the tradition of a "Gary Cooper" type, to me a "Gary Cooper" type in need of mood altering drugs. (sorry that was a cheap shot.).
Ennis's very nature was developed years before he met Jack. Losing his parents, being shuffled from one sibling to another, than abandoned totally, this alone could make a person unable to grow close to anyone.
His father showing the body of Earl, to me sealed his fate. To see something like could impact any child. But for Ennis it may have just shut down that ability to even acknowledge himself, whether he was gay or not is to me is question that couldn't be answer because his true sexual self never really emerges. I mean "this could happen to boys like you. ", So Ennis became a very careful child, careful young man, and now a careful adult.
Because of his caution, he leads a solitary life, his need for Jack runs directly against that. Here is where I think the tension lay, and the fight for control begins.
-
Hello manhattangirl. :)
Hi tpe,
I read your post over and over, it's great, thanks for responding.
Let me start by saying I had no great sympathy Ennis, I thought him weak. The only two things I've seen him do for Jack was call Lureen after the his postcard was returned, and go to Jack's parents ranch. I said to myself, "Oh, now you're doing something for your lover of so many years." It took me a long while to really look at his motives for his actions.
He loved Jack, I don't doubt that. His fear of their relationship being found out to me had to be more than that, whether he realized or not.
It's been written how this character was a laconic western figure, in the tradition of a "Gary Cooper" type, to me a "Gary Cooper" type in need of mood altering drugs. (sorry that was a cheap shot.).
Ennis's very nature was developed years before he met Jack. Losing his parents, being shuffled from one sibling to another, than abandoned totally, this alone could make a person unable to grow close to anyone.
His father showing the body of Earl, to me sealed his fate. To see something like could impact any child. But for Ennis it may have just shut down that ability to even acknowledge himself, whether he was gay or not is to me is question that couldn't be answer because his true sexual self never really emerges. I mean "this could happen to boys like you. ", So Ennis became a very careful child, careful young man, and now a careful adult.
Because of his caution, he leads a solitary life, his need for Jack runs directly against that. Here is where I think the tension lay, and the fight for control begins.
Ennis is certainly a more tragic figure than a sympathetic one. I find Jack a much more sympathetic figure. But I must admit that it is hard not to sympathize with Ennis in the end.
I have always thought of Ennis as a wonderful anti-hero: a man who dominates the lives of others (Jack, Alma, Cassie) and yet refuses to make his move and bring things to fruition. It is this weakness in the face of the power to dominate and decide things that captivates and repels us at the same time.
In some sense, Ennis's fate in the end is self-inflicted, self-determined. But as in anti-heroes, the weakness at the root of tragedy becomes something that makes him appear so totally human.
To see Ennis as both a dominant but passive element in the story is what gives it that ambiguous, unresolved feeling. It makes us appreciate the conflicting elements that reside in each one of us.
Jack is of course, the much more sympathetic figure, and certainly the more active. He was totally subject to his love for Ennis. One cannot appreciate the dymanic of the relationship without first appreciating the ironies inherent in it: dominance and passivity, acquiescence and activity. It is the stuff of great tragedy.
-
This is what we see and we know in the story. Ennis used his ability of dominating, he used it on Alma, but with Jack, the dominance took almost an enslavement of Jack. Alma was a loss that Ennis accepted, but the loss of Jack was unthinkable.
To hold him, and continue the facade of "straight man" was a process that was held together so precariously that a slight shift in appearance or word could bring it down. Ennis never thought of being without Jack. Jack was his.
To hold Jack is to dominate him, to ensure this he loosen or tighten his grip on him. Ennis always knew he'd come back to him.
-
This is what we see and we know in the story. Ennis used his ability of dominating, he used it on Alma, but with Jack, the dominance took almost an enslavement of Jack. Alma was a loss that Ennis accepted, but the loss of Jack was unthinkable.
To hold him, and continue the facade of "straight man" was a process that was held together so precariously that a slight shift in appearance or word could bring it down. Ennis never thought of being without Jack. Jack was his.
To hold Jack is to dominate him, to ensure this he loosen or tighten his grip on him. Ennis always knew he'd come back to him.
I think Ennis also thought of this as something totally outside of himself. He, like Jack, also felt enslaved, because Ennis probably thought that he had to suppress his own feelings. As Jackster had said elsewhere, Ennis probably saw no other way around this.
This is also what I meant in the last post: the tragedy of Ennis is not recognizing that the power to change was within him. He dominated Jack, albeit unknowingly, perhaps... Unwittingly, perhaps...
-
Indeed Ennis is the anti hero. We see his vulnerability beneath his hard shell. Underneath is a very scared man A man with feelings of fear and abandonment, yet we can see his sacrifices for the one he loved. He is someone who expresses himself more through his actions. His love is so deep that he gives up his family, jobs and a *normal life for Jack. I see him as someone who does'nt respond favorlibly to being pressure though. The more he is forced, the more he pulls back Yes, he dominated the direction of the affair, but I am of a strong beleif that Jack could be dominated as much as he allowed himself to be. Of course Ennis is going to steer this thing in that direction that best suits him. why? because jack allowed it. It must have warmed Jack's heart to hear Ennis say " aint no reins on this one" This says that He has gotten through to Ennis concerning Ennis's uncontrollible feelings for him. It told Jack that he could no longer deny what he felt for him. "this one" was important as opposed to Alma. IMO jack never took advantage of this confession from Ennis as he could have. He could brought Ennis closer to his way of thinking by communicating verbally with him in a firmer way. I think Ennis is someone who respects that. A firm yet gentle approach to Ennis fear I feel was the key.Meeting Ennis a couple times a year was Ennis's way of keeping a distance between them, exerting his dominance over Jack, but Jack went along and allowed Ennis to establish a pattern of dictating the pace of the relationship making it harder for him to accomplish what he wanted. Thus the constant battle for the upper hand. IMO it is a delicate balancing act , as Ennis is easily spooked but Jack had something to work with here. Ennis's undisputed feelings of deep love for him, but Jack's approach must be reassuring , gentle ....and firm.
-
Indeed Ennis is the anti hero. We see his vulnerability beneath his hard shell. Underneath is a very scared man A man with feelings of fear and abandonment, yet we can see his sacrifices for the one he loved. He is someone who expresses himself more through his actions. His love is so deep that he gives up his family, jobs and a *normal life for Jack. I see him as someone who does'nt respond favorlibly to being pressure though. The more he is forced, the more he pulls back Yes, he dominated the direction of the affair, but I am of a strong beleif that Jack could be dominated as much as he allowed himself to be. Of course Ennis is going to steer this thing in that direction that best suits him. why? because jack allowed it. It must have warmed Jack's heart to hear Ennis say " aint no reins on this one" This says that He has gotten through to Ennis concerning Ennis's uncontrollible feelings for him. It told Jack that he could no longer deny what he felt for him. "this one" was important as opposed to Alma. IMO jack never took advantage of this confession from Ennis as he could have. He could brought Ennis closer to his way of thinking by communicating verbally with him in a firmer way. I think Ennis is someone who respects that. A firm yet gentle approach to Ennis fear I feel was the key.Meeting Ennis a couple times a year was Ennis's way of keeping a distance between them, exerting his dominance over Jack, but Jack went along and allowed Ennis to establish a pattern of dictating the pace of the relationship making it harder for him to accomplish what he wanted. Thus the constant battle for the upper hand. IMO it is a delicate balancing act , as Ennis is easily spooked but Jack had something to work with here. Ennis's undisputed feelings of deep love for him, but Jack's approach must be reassuring , gentle ....and firm.
I love the analogy you make about his vulnerability underneath the hard shell. And yes, I think Jack understood that he had to go easy on Ennis. It's not that Ennis was a scared rabbit. But the slightest thing out provoke him -- sometimes to violence.
So in some sense, Jack did "dominate" in the sense that he knew exactly how to "control" Ennis -- to get the right responses, to draw him out of his shell. It is interesting no? I begin to think that both of them played both roles in different capacilties. They were well matched.
-
Aintfoolin,
What you said reminded me of the scene in the beginning of the film, when Ennis warned Jack that the horse he was riding had a low startle point. Ennis too had a low startle point, and yes Jack should have notice this about Ennis. I think he tried to approach him gentler SNIT, reassuring Ennis, apologizes at the suddenness of the kiss, to let him know it was alright, and then gentle telling to lie back. Jack did have these qualities in him.
But Ennis could so quickly bring the curtain down, and Jack again left to wait for the next act. Ennis had the power of putting himself on hold when it came to loving Jack. When their week was over Ennis could live for the next 6 months more or less without his lover, Jack didn't have that capacity, he filled his times in other ways, but Jack would send that postcard faithfully to Ennis, and Ennis granted Jack permission to come to him.
Like the divorce and Ennis lets Jack know this. Poor Jack, innocent, silly Jack goes to him, but Ennis doesn't want him there. The girls there for weekend, he could have told Jack "look get a room, and I'll be there Sunday night, Monday morning" no he just cuts him down. Telling him more or less I'll let you see me next month, and Jack's with tears in eyes leaves.
What kind of power do you think this is, what kind of mental and physical dominance Ennis had over Jack. I'm I wrong in this, I can't help this feeling creeping in me that it was more than fear for Ennis.
Was it dominance? And was Jack the object of it, and was it only Jack?
It just wasn't only fear as the years went on it was something else that went on between them. I just can't figure what it is?
-
This is an interesting thread. I'm kind of in agreement that they both dominated the relationship in different ways. Perhaps I will elaborate later.
-
This is an interesting thread. I'm kind of in agreement that they both dominated the relationship in different ways. Perhaps I will elaborate later.
CSC, I agree. Do elaborate on this when you have the time...
-
This subject fascinates me, and thanks, manhattangirl, for bringing it up. And most interesting, what everyone else has also posted. Just a few thoughts from me, just because I love talking about Ennis and Jack...
This "delicate balancing act," as aintfoolin said, sure is at the heart of what kept these two together during all these years. I do have sympathy for Ennis, but if I were in Jack's situation, I wouldn't have put up with it. I say that, but I guess I would have put up with it if I were like Jack, because Jack's love was such that it was worth it for him, and he was a dreamer after all, always believing that one day Ennis would come around.
They were adrift with this relationship, because they had no real models to go by. They weren't doing the usual thing of the man and woman in those times (which were changing, but not that fast, and not so much in their part of the country) -- where the man would basically run the show, at least on the surface, where it mattered to society (yet women know that they really have the power...and that power is withholding sex – but that's another huge subject).
So Ennis and Jack had to muddle through, and as it happens, their personalities tended to make one more dominant than the other. We do see Ennis's dominance – his defining how it was going to be – as mostly based on his fears, but as others have said, it's intrinsic in his personality for it to be this way, whoever he was with. And then it happens that Jack is willing to go along with it, for his own reasons.
What I just said has to do with their not having a life together, as Jack wanted, and with the terms on which they got together every so often, which were mostly up to Ennis. But I think on the basis of the time they spent together, it was a more equal partnership. I like to think that one reason why Ennis loved being with Jack so much was that he could give up the control that held him to tightly wound in the rest of his life, give up the dominance. Not that he was really aware of being "dominant" – it was just his way. Though if he had been able to have the sweet life with Jack, he would have realized he didn't have to be that way, that he was free to become a person free from the definitions of his youth.
And what tpe said is interesting, that each thought the other had more control. It just really is not so clear-cut, and that's what makes us continue to want to try to understand.
And this leads me to why I have special feelings for same-sex relationships, because they do have to make up their own rules, instead of doing the proscribed thing. (Not that many M/F couples do the proscribed thing so much any more these days.) The dynamics between Ennis and Jack would be different in our current times, but there still would be some power struggles in some sense, as there always are between people. But they would feel more free to figure out how to work them out.
I don't know if all this sounds like it has to do with the subject of "dominance," but it does to me. And I love everyone else's thoughts.
kathy
-
I totally agree with this wonerful post! Ennis was a dominant, very masculine man by his very nature. This quality/virtue can be very attractive even sexy to some but it can turn ugly and dangerous real fast, as Jack himself found out. Ennis was very stoic in his pesonality. Some things about Ennis for Jack was clearly defined, His shy old fashioned sense of order, His quiet charm, and even his childhood wounds. His dominance eventually clashed with Jack's hopes for sweet settled life with Ennis. This dominance came in to play in the form of a wall of fear against this particular cow and calf operation Jack has proposed. He appeared controlling and stubborn and paranoia ruled the day. as the years went on even though his reasons / excuses may have been legit. His " I gotta work Jack" was his offering for not spending more time with Jack , but in the divorce scene I cannot see any redeeming value for his behavior. In this scenario he had options. Sending Jack away like he did and Jack's passive response spoke to Ennis dominance over Jack and the relationship. So this is why I question wether this sweet life could really work in my other thread The Sweet Life? when all this is factored in. Would Jack still sneaking off to find comfort and understanding with some one else because of Ennis's overwhelming control and dominance over him? Kathy, Jack should 'nt have to withold sex from Ennis, although this particualr stunt has been known to work very well but that in itself is a deeper form of control. ;) ;) ;) ;) >:D ;D IMHO
-
If Jack withheld sex from Ennis, Ennis would have just taken him.
Aintfoolin you posed a good question: Could have Jack survive Ennis's dominance, which could have turned to an unbearable obsession.
We saw signs of this in the final confrontation, I may get a lot of heat for this, but wasn't the "short leash" exactly that, "you want me, call for me, but what do you give me?"
Sexually, Ennis's greatest, most satisfying experience was that with Jack. With Alma, and Cassie it was going through the motions, it didn't stay with him in the way it had when he made love to Jack. Even after the four years of separation what did Ennis do when Jack again was in arms. How powerful does this make one feel, it should have made Jack feel the power, but Ennis felt the power, and used it. Jack had the control but Ennis took it, and used it.
Jack was complicit in this game, giving in to Ennis in every way to hold on to what he needed and that was Ennis, the only one he loved, and knew loved him.
Ennis unwillingness to change, sexually need, his unrelenting grip on Jack was taking it's toll. If they did lived "that sweet life" how long would it take for it to sour, or do think they could have lived if not a sweet life but a life?
-
I threw that in about withholding sex just in relation to M/F power dynamics, not anything to do with Ennis and Jack really.
It is indeed a question whether they would have had a sweet life if they had lived together beginning somewhere along the way during the years we saw them. So much fanfic does try to envision that. I think they would have made it -- sweet for a while, settled after that. I would like to think. I think they had enough together that working out their power dynamics would have kept their relationship interesting, at the least.
kathy
-
All kinds ‘a great stuff here. Probably been said here already, but IMHO what I see is:
Ennis: Behaviorally dominate, Emotionally weak.
Jack: Emotionally strong, Behaviorally submissive.
Almost a yin-yang pairing of opposing but complementary traits. To me one of the tragedies of the story is that because of the social milieu they were in neither man had the tools to figure out a way to make this work and adequately demonstrate this to the other. I think what makes our hearts break is that now we see It Could Have Worked! but are unable to do anything about it. Just MHO. It would have been a sweet life.
jackster
-
Of the four scenes in the movie of intimate moments between Ennis and Jack, three are totally Ennis dominance, FNIT, which I guess could be argued as totally Jack, but Ennis sure showed Jack how it was going to be that night. Another point would be the dozy embrace, Ennis walks up behind Jack, wraps his arms around him, sings to him, gently rocks him to almost twilight sleep, "I gotta go, see you in the morning", Like telling him "be here". The reunion, and Ennis again takes control, he makes the rules for Jack, and the expectations he should have in going into this "Thing".
But the only time Ennis honored Jack, as if to say, "please accept me, I want you", was SNIT, and Jack accepted Ennis, gave him his body, which Ennis lost himself in. That brief moment of courtship.
Ennis control points was set. I really do think Ennis felt he owned Jack, mentally, physically, emotionally. He proved this with his various actions through the years, when he needed Jack, when it was ok for him to come, all he had to was to answer Jack's postcard. And he did this without a change in his own life, that's control, that's dominance, and that's power.
I would concede that this was all in his mind, in reality he really had no control. But the important thing is that he felt he had control, to prevent what ever bad thing from happening. Not really understanding what it was actually doing to the both of them.
Please tell me if I'm off base on this.
-
I really do think Ennis felt he owned Jack, mentally, physically, emotionally. He proved this with his various actions through the years,
No doubt MG, maybe I wouldn't call it "owned" from Ennis's perspective, I think he thought it was part of the deal for him to be in this relationship. I may get a lot of flack for this, but I think Jack liked it. That was part of the complexity of this relationship - and many male-male relationships. I think what you say is true, and yet Jack still says after 20 years "Sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it". Why?
A small point that doesn't come across in the film, at the reunion in the motel it's Jack who tells/begs Ennis to take off an' go "fishin" to which Ennis complies. I guess this can be argued either way (I'm no Psychologist), when someone makes a request and someone acquiesces who's expressing the power here?
-
Good question, jackster. There's always two edges to dominance -- one who wields it and one who acquiesces. Some days I think Ennis was dominant most of the time; then on other days, I am sure it is Jack who is dominant. So many things can be seen two or more ways, it is difficult to be too definite.
As far as "ownership" goes -- I don't think Ennis owned Jack ( or vice-versa). I do think he took Jack for granted -- just expected hiim to be there when arranged. But "ownershp", to me, implies the right to use and MISUSE the one owned. It's sort of like the word "slave". I can't deal with that in any relationship. Love flies out the window when a relationship slips over the line into ownership, in MHO.
I think both men meant a lot to each other. Jack owned up to that with his "I miss you...."line and Ennis never did verbally own up to it. Two people, two personalities. When Ennis wrote Jack the final postcard, he was showing his feelings. He was missing Jack bad and wanted to be sure Jack was still planning on November. Again, Ennis never says the words, but he walks the walk.
-
No doubt MG, maybe I wouldn't call it "owned" from Ennis's perspective, I think he thought it was part of the deal for him to be in this relationship. I may get a lot of flack for this, but I think Jack liked it. That was part of the complexity of this relationship - and many male-male relationships. I think what you say is true, and yet Jack still says after 20 years "Sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it". Why?
A small point that doesn't come across in the film, at the reunion in the motel it's Jack who tells/begs Ennis to take off an' go "fishin" to which Ennis complies. I guess this can be argued either way (I'm no Psychologist), when someone makes a request and someone acquiesces who's expressing the power here?
Oh yes Ennis concedes on a few times at Jack request, but at cost to him? not much. But Jack did a lot of conceding in this relationship, and was hurt in the process. How much is one's ability to take hurt, and still love the person that hurts them? Its better than not being with them. And that is what Jack was guilty of, if anything was take the pain, punishment of Ennis's fears, which Jack was more of victim of than anyone else. It was still better than not being with him.
But nearly twenty years later, it was all to much for Jack, that's why the final confrontation, I like to think of it as Jack's rebellion. He couldn't handle it any more, no more pain, no more disappointments, it had to stop, Ennis had to understand this. Ennis had to release him, Jack didn't know how "I wish I knew how to quit you".
My only point is that years of this had have to buildt-up in Jack, Ennis had to release the grip, set him free. Call it taking one for granted, slavery, domination whatever, Jack was straining on something, and Ennis held tightly on to whatever Jack was straining against.
To Rebel you have perceive some power greater than you is treating you unfairly and keeping you down. Jack felt Ennis's power was greater than his. Even though both was complicit in this relationship.
Does this make sense?
-
To go off in a slightly different direction, I also think a lot of Ennis's energies went into dominating or controlling "this thing" which he thought had grabbed hold of him and on which there were no reins. Ennis dislikes things he can't control and isn't about to give in to something he feels is stronger than he is.
Jack, on the other hand, just accepts the strength of his feelings and acts on them to the extent that Ennis allows him to. He doesn;t see emotion as a threat or something he needs to control.
-
Does this make sense?
Yes it does, but IMHO it's a somewhat grim view of what I see as a fully consensual relationship. I guess victimizing Jack in the relationship seems too easy and ultimately unfair to Ennis. Some people relish boundaries and limitations (and pain) applied to them especially by others who they are attracted to and love. There is an entire subculture in the gay community devoted to this. I think there had to be some of this in Jack and it provided him with satisfaction. Taking hurt and pain is not always considered a bad thing when accepted freely. Otherwise why put up with it for 20 years? They weren't married, they lived far apart, Jack was good looking (at least in the film), outgoing, had some financial flexibility, - get out.
I believe Ennis felt controlled as well by things and people he had no control over, some of it Jack, "It's because of you I'm like this" and some of it beyond Jack (his job, social fears, etc.). In many respects it was much more critical for Ennis to keep the relationship going. His options seem much more limited, but maybe the life of a loner was easier for him to accept than it was for Jack.
We may be saying the same thing here, in different ways. As you say Jack had his foibles too, "Sometimes I miss you so much . . ." and then shortly thereafter "I wish I knew how to quit you" display inner confusion on his part as to what he really wanted. I believe Ennis could have uttered they same words, he did in some respects "I can't stand this anymore Jack". It's the great tragedy, they were both caught in a Force of Nature they couldn't escape.
jackster
-
At this point we're talking *roles* here. I think Ennis thought of himself as a "man's man" the essence of masculinity while Jack displayed ...I won't say *feminine* traits but a nurturing , passive personality. Not *weak* buy any means but .. submissive to Ennis bordering on a S/M type role. Now please don't get me wrong I'm not saying this spilled over exclusively to thrir sex life , but I think Jack to a certain extent liked being * taken care of * by Ennis. A " this is my cowboy, my man *attitude. Appreciated the protective/posessive side to Ennis. This plays into my feeling that Ennis liked taking care of Jack , a man in his own right, up on Brokeback, liked pleaseing him, This give and take is seen clearly when in the scene where Jack returns from tending the sheep and is bitchin about Aguirre's working conditions , Ennis is listening, Offers to switch with him. This again provides him with another opportunity to please Jack and *take care of him*. this is the "dominant " yet, condsderate , caring side of Ennis on display with Jack's permission. In a way this is part of Jack's dominance/power over Ennis . He appeals to and contributes to Ennis 's male need to provide for him. Jack never took advantage of this power, but he definitly had it, My 2 cents.
-
He appeals to and contributes to Ennis 's male need to provide for him. Jack never took advantage of this power, but he definitly had it, My 2 cents.
Well said, aintfoolin'. I like your whole post here. O0
-
I see your point ainfoolin', I can't help but think of the scene on the hillside, both look down at the sheep, Ennis standing there with the gun in his hand, Jack strength out, At first it looked as if Ennis might shoot Jack, but now I think of it as the role Ennis tried to play all along. The protector of his beloved.
I always wondered why that scene alone touch me, I have it as a wallpaper on my computer. (now you guys really must think I'm weird.).
But like all protectors, the protection starts to smother the protected. Jack may have given in to it beginning, but when it was becoming so oppressive it began to wear at him. But I'm beginning to understand what kind of toll it was taking on Ennis, his life was mainly centered around Jack, even when he wasn't with him, and he given more up and lost more, then I think Jack realized. The power of love, huh?
-
MG, If your weird, I'm weird too. LOL I had it for my desktop wallpaper too! The scenery here is exquisite and it spoke to me. But anyway, yes,Ennis felt very protective but I don't think Jack minded it at all, even later but I do think he minded not having all the other stuff that went along with it such as their own place to protect together. IMO Jack loved any attention Ennis gave him though he he came to loath the half-stepping committment Ennis offered concerning this.
Certainly Ennis gave up alot to be with Jack , but so did Jack. Ennis gave up peices of time , ( never enough)jobs, marriage etc. Jack gave his life. Where was the protection while Jack was being killed? Had Ennis listened to Jack they'd be living a sweet life ranched up together. albeit aware and ever watchful of the tire irons but not a lonely regretful exixtence in a trailor. Ennis gained nothing by his insistence on standing it instead of at least trying to fix it. Again, I hate placing blame, but sometimes Ennis tasks me ... One must start somewhere, take that first step, make it happen. then allow fate or nature to take it's course in the direction intended That's life. Time waits for no one. This makes sense to me .
-
Carpe diem, as the Romans said. Seize the day - that's what Ennis never does - he always has an excuse - getting married, having to work, being there for the girls - until after Jack's death, then he ditched the round-up in favor of Alma Jr's wedding. So he's learnt too late that opportunities don't keep coming, if you don't take them when they appear you may never have another chance.The only person he doesn't protect ( except Alma, and she removes herself) is ironically himself, and of course Jack at that one crucial time.
-
These posts are so excellent. I don't know that I have anything to add, but I find every word fascinating. I love this trying to figure out exactly what this love between Ennis and Jack was to them. The more I look at them, the more rich they are, with much to tell us. I see myself in both of them.
kathy
-
This subject fascinates me, and thanks, manhattangirl, for bringing it up. And most interesting, what everyone else has also posted. Just a few thoughts from me, just because I love talking about Ennis and Jack...
This "delicate balancing act," as aintfoolin said, sure is at the heart of what kept these two together during all these years. I do have sympathy for Ennis, but if I were in Jack's situation, I wouldn't have put up with it. I say that, but I guess I would have put up with it if I were like Jack, because Jack's love was such that it was worth it for him, and he was a dreamer after all, always believing that one day Ennis would come around.
They were adrift with this relationship, because they had no real models to go by. They weren't doing the usual thing of the man and woman in those times (which were changing, but not that fast, and not so much in their part of the country) -- where the man would basically run the show, at least on the surface, where it mattered to society (yet women know that they really have the power...and that power is withholding sex – but that's another huge subject).
So Ennis and Jack had to muddle through, and as it happens, their personalities tended to make one more dominant than the other. We do see Ennis's dominance – his defining how it was going to be – as mostly based on his fears, but as others have said, it's intrinsic in his personality for it to be this way, whoever he was with. And then it happens that Jack is willing to go along with it, for his own reasons.
What I just said has to do with their not having a life together, as Jack wanted, and with the terms on which they got together every so often, which were mostly up to Ennis. But I think on the basis of the time they spent together, it was a more equal partnership. I like to think that one reason why Ennis loved being with Jack so much was that he could give up the control that held him to tightly wound in the rest of his life, give up the dominance. Not that he was really aware of being "dominant" – it was just his way. Though if he had been able to have the sweet life with Jack, he would have realized he didn't have to be that way, that he was free to become a person free from the definitions of his youth.
And what tpe said is interesting, that each thought the other had more control. It just really is not so clear-cut, and that's what makes us continue to want to try to understand.
And this leads me to why I have special feelings for same-sex relationships, because they do have to make up their own rules, instead of doing the proscribed thing. (Not that many M/F couples do the proscribed thing so much any more these days.) The dynamics between Ennis and Jack would be different in our current times, but there still would be some power struggles in some sense, as there always are between people. But they would feel more free to figure out how to work them out.
I don't know if all this sounds like it has to do with the subject of "dominance," but it does to me. And I love everyone else's thoughts.
kathy
Wonderful post, kathy. You touch on a lot of subtle things here, not only about Ennis and Jack, but about "unconventional" relationships in general.
Perhaps it was more of a true partnership in most of the time they spent with each other. It is true that both sought each other because they felt comfortable with each other, and not because they were coerced in any manner physical or psychological. For all their frustrations with each other, I think everything else melted away whenever they were in each other's company. Both appreciated that they needed the other to be whole, and it made them acknowledge that there was an intrinsic dependence on the other where happiness was concerned.
-
Thank you Kathy and tpe:
As always the both of you, and others in this site give your thoughts and feelings so freely and openly, I really beginning to fall in love with all of you.
Kathy what you offered goes to straight to the question, I just really was getting the feeling as I watch the movie for the upteenth time, that Ennis was dominant in the sense of how the relationship was going to be, "we could meet every once in a while", where it was going to be, "way out in the middle of no where".
I may get a flak for this, but Jack had no problems in using sex, and sexually he dominated Ennis, Ennis could not resist Jack, he needed him, wanted him, and gave into him
Jack would never withhold sex from Ennis, but let it be known he was not his only lover, Ennis must have felt this through the years, He knew Jack had lovers, he just didn't want to deal with it, couldn't deal with it. It came to surface in final confrontation, Ennis wasn't surprise just hurt and angry.
Is it wrong for me to even have the idea that these two men used the only power they had against each other, Ennis's availability, and Jack's body?
-
Thank you Kathy and tpe:
As always the both of you, and others in this site give your thoughts and feelings so freely and openly, I really beginning to fall in love with all of you.
Kathy what you offered goes to straight to the question, I just really was getting the feeling as I watch the movie for the upteenth time, that Ennis was dominant in the sense of how the relationship was going to be, "we could meet every once in a while", where it was going to be, "way out in the middle of no where".
I may get a flak for this, but Jack had no problems in using sex, and sexually he dominated Ennis, Ennis could not resist Jack, he needed him, wanted him, and gave into him
Jack would never withhold sex from Ennis, but let it be known he was not his only lover, Ennis must have felt this through the years, He knew Jack had lovers, he just didn't want to deal with it, couldn't deal with it. It came to surface in final confrontation, Ennis wasn't surprise just hurt and angry.
Is it wrong for me to even have the idea that these two men used the only power they had against each other, Ennis's availability, and Jack's body?
I had wondered many times how the sexual dynamics played out, in relation to dominance.
I may be in the minority here, but I even think it plausible that Ennis may have taken the passive role in some instances...
Nonetheless, you bring up an interesting point as to whether jack used sex as a means of control.
There are times where I am not so sure about this. I think the reason is because in the later years, Jack had to find gratification elsewhere because Ennis was playing so hard to get. THe whole speech begining with "I'm not like you.." in the last scene seems to indicate that Jack felt deprived of the intimacy and sex that he needed and that only Ennis could provide. It seemed to me that it was a cry from someone who felt helpless in the face of Ennis witholding such gratification, and this explains why Jack took to finding alernatives, imperfect they may be.
But there is also a truth in what you imply. I think it was Jack who opened Ennis up to his sexual desires, and that Ennis certainly felt that he could not go on without it.
-
To me Ennis has a much lower sex drive than Jack, which means that as he doesn't need Jack physically as much as Jack needs him, he can dominate because he's less needy, though I don't think he'd be able to verbalise that, or even maybe work it out. Jack is much more pragmatic; when he finds he sees Ennsi too infrequently ( and Lureen clearly doesn't figure here) he simply goes elsewhere, for what I assume is physical sex with no emotional dimension. So you might say that Jack is to some extent dominated by his physical needs as Ennis is dominated by his fears.
-
WW,
The only thing I may take issue with is that Ennis had a low sex drive. His sex drive with Jack was a consuming one. After that first summer with Jack, going back to Alma, experiencing sex with her, his wife, a woman, left him wanting, she wasn't Jack. Cassie wasn't Jack.
What do you think someone would do to keep what gave him life from getting away from him, to try control that very thing he thinks, he believes he needs. Ennis tried to do it with Jack. His domination over him worked for nearly the twenty years they were together.
Jack tried to slip that leash whenever he could, and did.
-
To me Ennis has a much lower sex drive than Jack, which means that as he doesn't need Jack physically as much as Jack needs him, he can dominate because he's less needy, though I don't think he'd be able to verbalise that, or even maybe work it out. Jack is much more pragmatic; when he finds he sees Ennsi too infrequently ( and Lureen clearly doesn't figure here) he simply goes elsewhere, for what I assume is physical sex with no emotional dimension. So you might say that Jack is to some extent dominated by his physical needs as Ennis is dominated by his fears.
Id did seem to me that Ennis did have a lower drive, but sort of built up the need inside of him. The reunion scene seems to show this, no?
-
WW,
The only thing I may take issue with is that Ennis had a low sex drive. His sex drive with Jack was a consuming one. After that first summer with Jack, going back to Alma, experiencing sex with her, his wife, a woman, left him wanting, she wasn't Jack. Cassie wasn't Jack.
What do you think someone would do to keep what gave him life from getting away from him, to try control that very thing he thinks, he believes he needs. Ennis tried to do it with Jack. His domination over him worked for nearly the twenty years they were together.
Jack tried to slip that leash whenever he could, and did.
I think there is a grain of truth in both your points of view. As I said in the last post, Ennis probably did have a lower drive, but a lot of it got stored inside of him, awaiting an explosive release. This seems consistent with Ennis being used to deprivation, but he also didn't stint on things like this when he got the chance...
-
Personal knowledge of someone with a high sex drive but able to sublimate and deny it for long periods of time, then indulge it to the full when the occasion presented itself was what lay behind my comment about Ennis. I think it was just one of those things he felt he had to stand when Jack was absent; on the other hand, Jack never subscribed to that point of view, or at least thought that there was more than one way of fixing it.
-
Some insight into Ennis’s sexual needs is spelled out in the SS when he tells Jack in the Motel Siesta in 1967 - “I never had no thoughts a doin’ it with another guy, except I sure wrang it out a hunderd times thinkin’ about you.”
It seems he had the drive, but also a way of release, one that that may not have been as satisfactory to Jack. And this was when he was married to Alma. Another means by which he utilizes his “if you can’t fix it, you gotta stand it” methodology. Not necessarily less drive but other means of release IMHO.
-
It seems to typify the difference between them that Jack would go looking for other men while Ennis took care of himself.
-
But it goes to root of this heartbreaking story, these two men veiws of their individual sexuality was at looked differently, Ennis loved Jack deeply, and wanted him sexually, but this "thing" had to be kept in check. And in turn the relationship between them had to be kept in check.
Jack was more open with his sexuality, even married to Lureen, he sought out male comfort, which too was a trap he found himself, did it occur to anyone that Jack need for Ennis is to get him out living this way. I'm sure Jack didn't want to live a life of giving it up across Texas and Mexico.
And for nearly twenty years, he waited for Ennis, to take him out this life. Ennis dominance, fear, denial kept him from even understanding what Jack was going through. IMO
-
It seemed to me that Ennis found some release with Alma while they were yet married. It was probably not satisfactory, but Ennis used it as a "tide-over" the way Jack sought sexual release elsewhere. I am not sure if this is totally accurate..
So, although Ennis seemed to have dominated the sexual issue by having a greater threshold or greater self control, we should perhaps note that even he needed some release. He was perhaps not as stoic as he would want other people to believe. And his real need for Jack (at least sexually) should not be obscured by his finding surrogates, but in the form of relations with women. After all, his attachments to women appeared to be more sexual than emotional.
-
Or dictated by his need to behave conventionally and to keep Alma in ignorance of his relationship with Jack.
-
It seemed to me that Ennis found some release with Alma while they were yet married. It was probably not satisfactory, but Ennis used it as a "tide-over" the way Jack sought sexual release elsewhere. I am not sure if this is totally accurate..
So, although Ennis seemed to have dominated the sexual issue by having a greater threshold or greater self control, we should perhaps note that even he needed some release. He was perhaps not as stoic as he would want other people to believe. And his real need for Jack (at least sexually) should not be obscured by his finding surrogates, but in the form of relations with women. After all, his attachments to women appeared to be more sexual than emotional.
You are so right tpe,
This was how his mind work. Ennis's need for release were with women, but remember how he reacted to Jack's need for release with men. Jack couldn't cross that line. That was definitely asking for trouble.
Ennis knew how Jack was, Jack wouldn't go to a woman, no way, and this was identifying him more closer to Jack, than he wanted to be. And what Jack gave him sexually was almost too much for him take, he love it, he craved Jack, sex between them was passionite and lasting, but he had to control it. And control Jack, if that was even possible, by keeping the one person he wanted most in the world at a very short distance.
-
Yeah but women were allowed. Tpe is right. As long as there is no emotional ties to equal their own it was "understood" that women were not a threat. There was Lureen, Alma, Cassie and possibly LaShawn ( though I doubt this one personally) Jack and Ennis did not loathe the company of women. Other men? ...now it's a different story. Other men are more dominant and possessive in this case and in this context,over someone they want, particularly a love interest. Ennis himself can become frighteny possessive when it comes to Jack, so yes he was very jealous when he found out Jack had been cheating. Another man would be more in the realm of this private world, therefore risking expsoure in the 60's in rural WY. Jack and Ennis both got whatever they needed to as you stated " tied them over" until they 'd meet again.MO
-
What I'm only trying to say that there seem like an unspoken rule, (in Ennis mind) women are allowed just like you and tpe said, Jack married true, but he his release was not Lureen in the long run, but other men, hence his trips to Mexico. I really think Jack was Randall 's lover moment Randall opened that door. LaShawn, no way in heck I wouldn't even buy into that one.
After saying all that, Ennis somewhere in the back of his mind, knew if Jack was to put the "blocks" on someone it wouldn't be a women. And Jack knew if ever told Ennis the truth about what he did when he wasn't with him, that would set Ennis off, hence, the "boys like you" remark. Jack straight up lied about seeing LaShawn to Ennis, if he told him about Randall Ennis would go ballistic.
Now you tell me what kind of control is that? Jack lied,the question is did he lie for Ennis's sake or to keep Ennis from killing him?
-
Later on Jack did go exclusively with men and yes Ennis would have kicked out of the harness if he found out about the other men. Namely Randall. This is why Jack lied about Randall in my opinion. Jack knew what the consecquences would be if he told the truth. Ennis depended on Jack for alot of important aspects in his life, sex among them, Jack was besides being his lover, his best and seemingly only freind. Ennis was dominant and clear on what his expectations of Jack were. He appeared controlling at times, in Jack's face talkin about killing him if he found out about anybody else, pulling the reins tighter on Jack. Jealousy was rearing it's ugly head, but Randall was a reality in Jack's life and Jack was'nt gonna be a fool and blurt anything out about at that time. Had Randall tucked away for future reference . He was already well into making private decisions on his own behind Ennis's back. In this way he maintained some power and control over his own life.
-
Later on Jack did go exclusively with men and yes Ennis would have kicked out of the harness if he found out about the other men. Namely Randall. Randall (was) tucked away for future reference .
Hadn't this deceit pattern been somewhat established almost from the begining - mixing the SS and film a bit, but the lines "You do it with other guys, Jack?" "Shit no," said Jack, who had been riding more than bulls, not rolling his own." I've always felt this implied he was seeing other men, if only for one night stands. This and the rodeo clown bar scene from the movie make me think this was just part of Jack's lifestyle. What was Jack's fear here during the '67 reunion? I don't think it was violence, I think it was fear of losing Ennis, and some embarrassment on Jack's part - he didn't want this to look like Ennis was just another guy he sacked up with? So the little lie he started with kinda grew because this is what Ennis was lead to expect, after 15 years to let the cat out of the bag and say "Oh yeah Ennis, I been makin' it with other guys all these years". No doubt there would be some fear of the reaction at this point for two reasons - the unfaithfulness aspect and the deceit aspect.
I think you're right that Ennis didn't regard Jack's female relationships (or Ennis' for that matter) to be in the same league as the male relationships and therefore not competitive.
-
It seems to me that sex between the two of them belonged in some way to the world they shared up on the mountain and was a one-shot thing to Ennis, though not to Jack. While they were apart, convention demanded that they appear outwardly normal, hence the wives, and that's why they weren't considered by either to be a threat. Ennis never saw Lureen, so she remained a distant figure and one to whom Jack's attitude was pretty cynical. Jack met Alma once, briefly; presumably he concluded that she was no threat to him. Cassie he knew nothing about until Ennis mentioned her, rather casually, towards the end. And until Ennis's divorce, a long way into their relationship, each knew that the other was prepared to betray his wife for him.
Jack evidently realises that given his fears Ennis would not become involved with another man - he's too frightened of giving himself away. In the ss he admits, in the motel scene, how he coped with his desire for Jack when Jack isn't there. Jack, on the other hand, wants more than just - er - jacking off (sorry!), but I don't know whether that would ever occurred to Ennis if Jack hadn't talked about Mexico and started off a train of associations.
And because Ennis is more in control of his desires than Jack, he is able to dominate him.
-
Great posts guys:
I have one question:
Wasn't it Ennis who brought up the WHY, Jack went to Mexico, Jack only brought up Mexico as a place where they could go one day. Ennis alway, I believed knew why Jack went there, without Jack letting anything out of the bag. That's why the "boy like you " remark, Ennis figured it out long before Jack said anything. No deceit, just no admissions.
Ennis had no misconceptions about his lover, that Jack was like him, he wasn't. Jack was someone Ennis was really in fear of, so the control. Unlike anyone else in his life, Jack was the person that wasn't going get away, no matter what. Ennis was possessive of Jack, and obsessive with fears of losing him and of discovery. Jack wasn't playing by the rules, which made that short leash tighter.
But as long as Jack kept going back to Ennis, Ennis wasn't going give an inch, and he knew Jack would be back. Ennis rein in Jack as much as he could, and Jack let him.
-
I think Ennis had strong suspicions, but it did'nt exactly hit him until Jack, frustrated at Ennis's change of plans just sort of blurted out about being someplace warm, "we otta go to Mexico" I think a light came on in Ennis's head * he's been there* and simply put 2+2 together thus questioning Jack if his suspicions were right and also knowing what they have down there for boys like him. I feel Ennis just thought he had Jack figured out as his and only his alone but Jack had secrets he was'nt about to reveal. Not with Ennis still steaming from the Mexican hustler admission. Jack's decision not to reveal anymore daliances made good sense after seeing Ennis's reaction to Mexico. Why would he risk the wrath of Ennis even more? %(Jack was exposed to more of society than Ennis therefore making his chances of meeting someone else more likely. Temptation was more available to him. I think Jack let Ennis beleive whatever he chose to beleive after a certain point in the affair, but behind the scenes he found what he needed to get through the times of seperations' vulnerabilties.To Jack, "standing it" came to involve infidelities. It was his way of rationalizing his needs after this cycle of rejection + waiting for Ennis to commit to him I suppose. He was'nt going without, so technically he did'nt verbally lie about "the rest" that Ennis did'nt know, but simply said *I'm gonna get mine* and remain silent about it. What Ennis don't know, won't hurt him perhaps?
-
But wouldn't leave Jack in a vulnerable position with Ennis, now Ennis has the idea Jack would go else where, he was now non exclusive, would Ennis's instinct from then on would clamp down harder on Jack?
-
If you're right, aintfoolin', and I think you are, then that may also explain the enigma of his (non-) reaction to Randall's proposition. Maybe Mexico was far enough to be out of sight, so to speak, and the encounters there were anonymous and, if he went more than once, which presumably he did, with different men. No way Ennis was going to find out about them.
But Randall was a different thing. Involvement with him would be hard to conceal, might lead to local scandal, even his leaving Lureen. Ennis might not get to hear about that either, but if Jack were to become seriously involved with Randall, in the end that would surely make him break with Ennis? So maybe in that shot where he looks so blank, he's just been struck by the implications and likely repercussions of accepting the "fishing" suggestion.
-
Your right WW. They were both taking a huge risk meeting in this small town and actually living so close in proximity. But Ennis is a good 14 hour drive away. If there was a town scandal, it is unlikely to reach Ennis although Newsome's farm equipment was dealing in big business so taking the two big ranching states like Texas and Wyoming into consideration , word of mouth gossip (truck-drivers, travleling salesmen ,etc may be likely to reach Riverton .. But , I mean Randall lived in the neighborhood for goodness sake. Lureen and LaShawn were more likely to have stronger suspicions about all of this.
Thank you WW for clarifying the distinction . Jack could have had endless affairs in Mexico or elsewhere if he chose. His silence to spare Ennis. He was just smart enough not to get with someone ( other than Randall) who would cause trouble later or wanted ties. and Ennis would be still traveling the coffee pot tryin to find the handle. Without a clue, unless he happens to drop in one day, out of the blue in Chidress and happen to catch Jack. The likelyhood of that happening is almost nil. He simply trusted Jack to be there for the arranged meetings. What went on in between? Randall., maybe others.. It's just speculation but who knows but Jack himself. He was riding "more than bulls" with someone. Not rolling his own. And it was'nt with Ennis.
-
Your right WW. They were both taking a huge risk meeting in this small town and actually living so close in proximity. . . . . What went on in between? Randall, maybe others . . It's just speculation but who knows but Jack himself. He was riding "more than bulls" with someone. Not rolling his own. And it wasn't with Ennis.
Kinda OT, but the way you've outlined it here Aintfoolin' is more the way I've envisaged the "Randall" thing all along. I can't see Randall as the "other" local Ennis, I've seen him as the film portrayal of one of many encounters both local and distant. Just part of Jack's lifestyle choice of ridin' more than bulls. Having grown up in a small town myself, it's doesn't seem that just foolin' around with one guy (Randall) would necessarily get you killed (not that it wouldn't), but what seems much more likely is that Jack got a local "reputation" because he was messin' around with more than one guy. This seems much more likely to be seen as a threat and engender hatred and hostility in the community, enough to get a small lynch mob goin'. All this could be going on without Ennis ever learning of it. JMHO.
-
Wonderful exchanges over the weekend. Thanks friends!
It seems to me that the question about relationships with women as opposed to relationships with men figures in an important way when we discuss the issue of dominance.
Although Ennis never insisted that Jack disavow the latter entirely, I think it was clear (especially during the last meeting), that Ennis would not stand by idly if Jack did this too openly.
It certainly looked like Ennis assumed that he was faithful to Jack so long as he refrained from having relationships with another man, and he expected Jack to do the same. In a way, this was a unilateral expectation, but I suspect that both of them understood the unwritten rule that Ennis seemed to have followed and insisted upon.
The fight over this issue in the last meeting can therefore be interpretated as a form of power play, no? Ennis wanted to make clear to Jack that he expected -- if not insisted -- that Jack remain faithful, in accordance with this unwritten rule. But it was also clear that Ennis was aware of Jack's toying with other men. And Jack certainly had not qualms doing this, because in his mind, it was Ennis who withheld himself.
For Jack, so long as Ennis did not agree to share a life with him, then he would be able to do as he please and Ennis should not insist too strongly on faithfulness.
Hence, toying with other men perhaps became a tool for Jack to "get back" at Ennis's refusal to consider a sweet life. Ennis, perhaps knowing this, refrained to confront Jack openly about this, because he knew that it was a kind of reproach.
All this came to a head in the last meeting -- and I think that at the point, both knew exactly where the other one stood and was not willing to back down.
-
I think you're right, tpe - in fact that last scene between them is a sort of Mexican stand-off. Ennis knows Jack is made miserable by his refusal to meet more often, and also by th e way she's prevented their even trying to set up together somewhere; equally Jack knows that Ennis hates the idea of him with another man - and since he's kept quiet about Mexico and never mentions Randall presumably he realises what the effect of either would be on Ennis. So each has a weapon - "You're the one who stopped us sharing a life together, not me."/"You're the one who was unfaithful, not me."
So what could they do? Suppose Jack said, "If I had you I wouldn't need anyone else. I'd give up Mexico in a heartbeat if we were together," and Ennis said, " Once the girls are off my hands, there'd be nothing stopping me from doing as you want. I can't be happy without you."
-
I think that at this point, both knew exactly where the other one stood and was not willing to back down.
Exactly tpe. This is the way I've understood the words:
" . . . for what they'd said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved."
There wasn't anything in this exchange that they didn't know about each other already, they'd known each other 20 years. The only thing new here IMO was the fact that Ennis FINALLY admits he can't stand this any longer. However, what he plans on doin' about it is still unclear (i.e unresolved).
-
Exactly guys, IMO: Ennis created the rules to ride it out for as long as they could stand it, Jack made no rules, but felt if this how Ennis wanted so be it. But it got too much for Jack, he had to push. At this point it wasn't Ennis decision , the ball was in Jack's court now, the shift in power changed.
-
So what could they do? Suppose Jack said, "If I had you I wouldn't need anyone else. I'd give up Mexico in a heartbeat if we were together," and Ennis said, " Once the girls are off my hands, there'd be nothing stopping me from doing as you want. I can't be happy without you."
Interesting "what-if", WW.
I am biased, perhaps. But I would believe Jack, but I would not believe Ennis.
For me, it is clearer that Jack would drop everything to be with Ennis -- money, family, and (I think) all other emotional or physical attachments.
With Ennis, I can't help but feel that he brings up one excuse after another. I am not saying that his excuses were not valid. They were. But I can't help feel that he was hiding behind the validity of these excuses and he was not upfront on the real thing that kept him from taking the leap: his own fears.
-
Exactly tpe. This is the way I've understood the words:
" . . . for what they'd said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved."
There wasn't anything in this exchange that they didn't know about each other already, they'd known each other 20 years. The only thing new here IMO was the fact that Ennis FINALLY admits he can't stand this any longer. However, what he plans on doin' about it is still unclear (i.e unresolved).
This is so true: the one thing that we finally see Ennis admit. As much as we think that he dominated Jack, he himself was subject to his love for Jack. So who dominated? It becomes less clear, no?
-
Exactly guys, IMO: Ennis created the rules to ride it out for as long as they could stand it, Jack made no rules, but felt if this how Ennis wanted so be it. But it got too much for Jack, he had to push. At this point it wasn't Ennis decision , the ball was in Jack's court now, the shift in power changed.
Yes, this is part of what I meant when I said that Ennis was subject to the power of his love for Jack. The person who seemingly dominated was himself unable to dominate his own feelings after all. IT became Jack's most powerful weapon -- but it also probably killed Jack deep inside, knowing that he had the power to bring Ennis to his knees.
-
Oh, this is a beautiful discussion -- away a couple days and all this was going on. Fantastic stuff, and so deep-down and true. It's making me feel really sad at the moment, though, that this power-play never got to be worked out, as we can see it would have been if Jack hadn't died.
What everyone said, so true, the powerful dynamics going on between these two. I can't say more, but I am filled with Ennis and Jack thoughts and feelings right now, thinking about them and the frustrations...when they really did love each other. They weren't given the chance to figure out how they could love each other in the world...
And as to dominance, it is so not clear-cut. I would just repeat everything that everyone just said.
Who has the power is usually the one who loves less than the other does -- but their situation was more complicated than that.
Sorry. I'd love to respond to each post, but just wanted to say this discussion has been so good, all of you.
kathy
-
Kathy I would love to hear what thoughts you have.
Yes, this is part of what I meant when I said that Ennis was subject to the power of his love for Jack. The person who seemingly dominated was himself unable to dominate his own feelings after all. IT became Jack's most powerful weapon -- but it also probably killed Jack deep inside, knowing that he had the power to bring Ennis to his knees.
tpe,
When Ennis brokedown in Jack's arms, Didn't Jack knew then how much he mattered to Ennis? Jack was under this impression he really didn't matter that much to Ennis, that's why the lashing out towards Ennis. Jack realized his impression about how Ennis felt about him was wrong. Isn't that a good thing?
-
Oh, this is a beautiful discussion -- away a couple days and all this was going on. Fantastic stuff, and so deep-down and true. It's making me feel really sad at the moment, though, that this power-play never got to be worked out, as we can see it would have been if Jack hadn't died.
What everyone said, so true, the powerful dynamics going on between these two. I can't say more, but I am filled with Ennis and Jack thoughts and feelings right now, thinking about them and the frustrations...when they really did love each other. They weren't given the chance to figure out how they could love each other in the world...
And as to dominance, it is so not clear-cut. I would just repeat everything that everyone just said.
Who has the power is usually the one who loves less than the other does -- but their situation was more complicated than that.
Sorry. I'd love to respond to each post, but just wanted to say this discussion has been so good, all of you.
kathy
Wonderful insight, kathy. It is true that the one who loves less usually has the greater power. And it is also true that the case of Ennis and Jack is more complicated. I think what complicates things is Ennis's separation of how he feels versus how he thinks he should feel. His reluctance to openly express his love for Jack made it appear that he loved Jack less. This touches on a post I just made in another thread, where I said that Ennis is a person who thinks that he can "do without". In this, he was not just fooling Jack: he was fooling only himself. His conviction not to openly give in to his true feelings inevitably allowed despair to take mastery over him. That is his greatest tragedy.
-
Kathy I would love to hear what thoughts you have.
tpe,
When Ennis brokedown in Jack's arms, Didn't Jack knew then how much he mattered to Ennis? Jack was under this impression he really didn't matter that much to Ennis, that's why the lashing out towards Ennis. Jack realized his impression about how Ennis felt about him was wrong. Isn't that a good thing?
Perfectly said. Both of them must have been taken aback at how Ennis "collapsed" under the weight of trying to keep all the pain and frustration inside of him. At that moment, Jack realized that he could have demolished Ennis emotionally there and then -- but he didn't. Jack also broke down, because it was never his intention to hurt Ennis. The victim realized that he had become an aggressor, and Jack wanted no part of this.
-
This was always, I believe, was Jack's problem. Ennis's feelings always came before his own. I don't think if was so much as knowing Ennis's volatile personality, but his refusal to break Ennis's fragility. Some would say this put Jack in position of power.
At the final confrontation, with Ennis on his knees, Jack could have easily said, "You're coming with me, or let's forget this now".
It amazes me, how two men, with so little to go back to, after that one week of love, go back to their desolate lives. Why? How could they leave each other to go back to what? Ennis's insisting on returning back to his solitary life, Jack staying in an unhappy marriage?
Jack could have easily taken control of the situation, and pushed harder, but he didn't. Ennis, if the situation were reversed could have pushed Jack to that edge. Jack's unwillingness to push Ennis over the edge to make him realize what he had and could lose was not in Jack, he did what just he did, held Ennis and reassured him it was alright.
It wasn't a physical dominance Ennis had over Jack, but an emotional one.
-
Excellent discussion. Thanks so much for sharing your views on the complex relationship between Jack and Ennis.
Dominance exists in any type of relationship. I agree that each dominates at different time. A relationship with one-side dominance will not last long.
I am afraid that I don't have anything to add but just would like to thank you for such wonderful insights.
-
This was always, I believe, was Jack's problem. Ennis's feelings always came before his own. I don't think if was so much as knowing Ennis's volatile personality, but his refusal to break Ennis's fragility. Some would say this put Jack in position of power.
At the final confrontation, with Ennis on his knees, Jack could have easily said, "You're coming with me, or let's forget this now".
It amazes me, how two men, with so little to go back to, after that one week of love, go back to their desolate lives. Why? How could they leave each other to go back to what? Ennis's insisting on returning back to his solitary life, Jack staying in an unhappy marriage?
Jack could have easily taken control of the situation, and pushed harder, but he didn't. Ennis, if the situation were reversed could have pushed Jack to that edge. Jack's unwillingness to push Ennis over the edge to make him realize what he had and could lose was not in Jack, he did what just he did, held Ennis and reassured him it was alright.
It wasn't a physical dominance Ennis had over Jack, but an emotional one.
I do think Jack always put Ennis's wishes/feelings before his own. I don't think he could have done otherwise, given how much he loved him. I think this is not incomprehensible, given how much we ourselves accomodate the feelings and desires of those we deeply love.
-
Excellent discussion. Thanks so much for sharing your views on the complex relationship between Jack and Ennis.
Dominance exists in any type of relationship. I agree that each dominates at different time. A relationship with one-side dominance will not last long.
I am afraid that I don't have anything to add but just would like to thank you for such wonderful insights.
It's usually the dynamic of give and take that makes or breaks a relationship, no? Without this dymanic, a relationship is dead, IMO.
-
Well, Ennis didn't give as much as Jack - he was in many ways as unyielding as the rocks of the mountain, whereas Jack was more the grass rippling and moving in the wind. And in the end Ennis was still there, and Jack, like the grass, had been cut down.
-
I just can't help feeling that Jack was partly to blame for letting Ennis be so dominant in the relationship. He enabled Ennis to control too much of what was going on between the two. Following his lead, going along.
But wasn't Jack always that way? Lureen called the shots in their marriage, she controlled the money, and probably the bedroom. Then there's Randall, who approached Jack, and did Jack give in to him too?
Jack was finding acceptance where he could. Ennis was the one he loved the most, but when Ennis didn't want him enough, he went to someone who did.
-
Well, Ennis didn't give as much as Jack - he was in many ways as unyielding as the rocks of the mountain, whereas Jack was more the grass rippling and moving in the wind. And in the end Ennis was still there, and Jack, like the grass, had been cut down.
The rock and the grass bending before the wind. Very apt images, WW. Thank you.
-
I just can't help feeling that Jack was partly to blame for letting Ennis be so dominant in the relationship. He enabled Ennis to control too much of what was going on between the two. Following his lead, going along.
But wasn't Jack always that way? Lureen called the shots in their marriage, she controlled the money, and probably the bedroom. Then there's Randall, who approached Jack, and did Jack give in to him too?
Jack was finding acceptance where he could. Ennis was the one he loved the most, but when Ennis didn't want him enough, he went to someone who did.
But did Jack really have a choice? Clearly he was a disadvantage dealing with Lureen and her family. AS for Randall, I think he was sincerely torn between a desire to explore this relatuionship with Randall, and staying true to his love for Ennis -- this explains the hesitancy.
And as for Ennis himself, we know that love has to act in both directions. There was very little that Jack could do, barring threatening a break-up with Ennis, which was probably unthinkable for him for the greater part of his life. I think this is the paradox of love -- one has to surrender in order to win. In this sense, he had very little choice but to yield and wait -- hoping that Ennis would come around. But what astonishes is the length of his wait -- it is commensurate to the magnitude of his love.
-
Jack was dominated by his father, his wife and her family, even Ennis - and of course by his love too, which caused him to complicate his whole life and twist it in ways he would probably not have done had he nver met Ennis.
Ennis, on the other hand, was never dominated by Alma or later Cassie, not I ythink by his llove for Jack. He spent his whole life trying to dominate his own emotions and in the process nearly destroyed his capacity to feel.
-
But did Jack really have a choice? Clearly he was a disadvantage dealing with Lureen and her family. AS for Randall, I think he was sincerely torn between a desire to explore this relatuionship with Randall, and staying true to his love for Ennis -- this explains the hesitancy.
And as for Ennis himself, we know that love has to act in both directions. There was very little that Jack could do, barring threatening a break-up with Ennis, which was probably unthinkable for him for the greater part of his life. I think this is the paradox of love -- one has to surrender in order to win. In this sense, he had very little choice but to yield and wait -- hoping that Ennis would come around. But what astonishes is the length of his wait -- it is commensurate to the magnitude of his love.
Jack had many choices, his love for Ennis anchored his heart and mind. The choices were known to him, to leave Lureen or not, to give himself to Randall or not. To leave Texas go to LF, or parts unknown, but any choices was view as it related to Ennis. And Ennis anchored Jack without words, but with a return of a postcard. The most free really wasn't. You can say Ennis was in the prison of his fears, Jack was in prison for his love for him.
-
What Did Ennis Jack See in Each Other?
Obviously physical attraction is necessary for any sexual interest. But, for a long-term relationship, more is necessary. There must also be an emotional bond.
What was the attraction of Ennis's Jack's personalities to each other?
I think Jack was attracted to many of the same things in Ennis's character that were also what kept Ennis apart from Jack (preventing Ennis from becoming his ranch partner on Jack's parents' ranch in Lightning Flat, WY or seeking a more gay-friendly urban life in Denver, as Jack suggested in the Short Story).
Ennis tells Jack, in the Siesta Motel in 1967, that he learned that he was in love with Jack by the time Jack drove away in his pickup truck (after Ennis Jack came down from Brokeback Mt.). But at the time he thought he was just suffering dry heaves from a hangover - with Annie Proulx adding that Ennis felt as if his intestines were being pulled out yard-by-yard and that he didn't feel better for a long time afterward.
It took Ennis about a year to figure out "what it is was" and by that time, he was already married to Alma. He tells Jack that if knew then what he knew now (that he had fallen in love with Jack), he would have never left Jack out of his sight.
But now it was too late to change that. Both of them were married and had children. They had to remain "decent."
Ennis was also afraid that if the "thing" (in other words, he and Jack being swept up in the euphoria of their kiss outside of Ennis's and Alma's apartment over the laundromat in Riverton, WY - the first time they had seen each other since Brokeback Mt., four summers ago) ever happened to them again, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, he and Jack would be dead.
Ennis then tells Jack how his father took him and his older brother to see the old gay rancher Earl's body lying mutilated in the ditch with Earl's penis pulled off and his face covered in welts from a tire iron. Ennis was 9 years old. Ennis's father laughed while showing them this.
Ennis believed his father would have killed both him and Jack, if he had been alive to find them together in their motel room. A ll that life could offer him and Jack was an opportunity to meet each other a couple of times a year. It had to be done in way that no one would suspect their homosexuality. They would "ride it as far as they could." Ennis sums it all up and tells Jack, "If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it."
Ennis is probably right about how violent, unyielding, and zealously unreasoning anti-homosexual bigotry can be. His view is intellectually sound. It's appropriately prudent given the attitudes of the often violent, conservative rural Wyoming society he and Jack lived in. He sought to do what he thought would protect both him and Jack.
But this also was the source of their great emotional frustration. Ennis thought these unsatisfactory choices were necessary if they were to be able to survive.
I, myself, am torn between an admiration for Ennis's stoic philosophy of, "If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it," and a revulsion of the ruinous consequences such a philosophy can lead to (because of the many missed opportunities in life). I also admire Ennis's protectiveness of Jack. I also admire Ennis for his willingness to do what he thought was the "right thing to do," despite his emotions to the contrary. I love Ennis for his vulnerability.
As Welschwitch said, Ennis could be unyielding is his decisions. Obviously, simply being obstinate does not show a "strength" of character, however. Obstinacy is often misinterpreted as such, especially by those who find an authoritarian character appealing.
But in Ennis, it's something more than that.
I agree with tpe that Ennis uses his marriage, his alimony payments, preserving his visitation rights to his daughters, holding onto a job, etc. as an excuse to not live with Jack. I also agree with tpe that Ennis keeps Jack further and further at arm's length (seeing him less frequently over the years) because he doesn't like the pressure he feels from Jack to live together. (Jack, of course, resents being kept on such a "short leash" by Ennis.)
But there is something noble about Ennis's refusal to abandon his wife and children, too. Ennis saw both his Jack's marriages as an important commitment they made - even if they were homosexual and could never have emotional and sexual fulfillment from these heterosexual marriages. Their wives and children were a commitment they could not abandon lightly.
Ennis may have been influenced in his opinion about this because of his own childhood: becoming an orphan when his parents died in a strange accident when they missed the only curve in 40 miles in the otherwise straight Deadhorse Road.
(I wonder if there could be some sexual metaphor here about Ennis's parents and a "curve" in what is mostly a "straight" road? The times Ennis's parents lived in were even more homophobic than his own, of course. The life stories of those who were homosexual in his parents' day was an even more closely kept secret than it was in Ennis's Jack's day, of course. The history of homosexuality - or anything else - is often easily forgotten when it is never told.)
Ennis is protective of Jack. He trades places with Jack on Brokeback Mt. in 1963. He takes on the job of going to the herd camp, himself, after Jack complains how the tent there smells like "cat piss" and how he has to get up in the middle of the night to protect the sheep from being eaten by predators. There is also the long two-hour ride between the cook camp and the herd camp. Jack is also cold because he can't build a campfire at night in the herd camp. If he lights a fire there, the Forest Service might find out. His being in the herd camp breaks the Forest Service's rules. But Joe Aguirre, the ranch manager, has ordered them to set themselves up in two separate camps: a cook camp and a herd camp.
Ennis doesn't complain. He tells Jack he wouldn't mind trading places with Jack.
Ennis's generosity takes Jack by surprise. He admires Ennis for this.
Remember Jack's favorite memory of Ennis: a 19 year old Ennis holding Jack from behind, rocking him into a trance, humming him a song from Ennis's "long ago" childhood, telling him it's time for cowboys to go to bed. Jack's favorite memory of Ennis shows a concern for Jack's well-being and a pleasure in his company.
Ennis, was attracted to Jack's vulnerability rather than any "protection" Jack might offer him. Ennis's happiest moments with Jack often seem to be when he teases him.
When Jack shows Ennis his rodeo trophy belt buckle, Ennis tells Jack how Ennis's father thought rodeo riders were "f*** ups" (if I heard that right). Jack then begins leaping wildly up and down. (Perhaps Jack startles Ennis, at first, when he does this. This is another instance of a scene in the movie where my opinion of it seems to change each time I watch it.)
Ennis quickly realizes Jack is joking around. Jack finally loses his balance, collapsing into a pile on the ground, while leaping. Ennis laughs, telling Jack, "I think maybe my dad was right."
It's the young Jack, 19 years old, with wavy hair and buck teeth, whom Ennis pictures in his dreams of Jack in his trailer at the end of the Short Story. It's not the mature Jack that Ennis dreams about, with straight teeth and a mustache, who has filled out "through the shoulders and hams." (This is an ambiguous description of Jack by Annie Proulx. Jack is potentially more muscular as the years pass: thus, more masculine; thus, more "dominant." But, as another possibility, he is perhaps simply fatter and overweight.)
In fact, when Jack attempts to become protective of Ennis, he is frequently met with Ennis's resistance, in one way or another.
Jack, of course, assumes the dominant position when he takes the risk of initiating sex with Ennis in the cook camp tent on Brokeback Mt. But then Ennis quickly turns Jack around and performs anal sex on Jack.
When Jack attempts to staunch Ennis's nosebleed (caused accidentally by Jack's vigorous, "aggressive" actions), Ennis lays him flat with a surprise punch. It is the last day they are on Brokeback Mt.
(In fact, Ennis tells Jack, in the Siesta Motel in Riverton, WY in 1967, that he believes that Jack might not have contacted him for four years after Brokeback Mt. because he thought Jack might still be angry with him for hitting Jack on the last day they were on Brokeback Mt. Jack laughs, though, in response. He tells Ennis that he'll watch out for him the next time.)
Perhaps, over time, we become more like what we admire in others, however slowly this occurs.
As Jack becomes more like what he finds most attractive in Ennis's personality, Jack may, in fact, have become less attractive to Ennis. (Thus, Ennis becomes less willing to see Jack: only a couple of times of year, for what Jack calls a "few high altitude fucks," far away, in the wilderness, during a cold time of year.)
Ultimately, during their last argument on the barren shore of the mountain lake, in May 1983, Ennis tells Jack, "It's because of you that I'm like this...I'm nothing."
He tells Jack he gave up all those jobs so he could be together with him more often during the earlier years. Now he needs to keep his job to pay his alimony payments.
(However, Ennis neglects to mention that his daughters are also quickly approaching their "age of majority," eighteen years of age, when they will graduate from high school, and his alimony payments will no longer be a necessary legal burden.)
Jack believes him. (It's possible that Ennis was only telling Jack this - that he needed to keep "this" job - to mollify Jack. If Jack accepted this explanation Ennis was offering him, Ennis may have expected that they would continue seeing each other - as Ennis wanted - only a few times of year.)
Jack, in an act of great generosity toward his lover, decides to give Ennis what Jack thinks (perhaps mistakenly) he wants. At this moment, Jack decides he must leave Ennis in order to accomplish this. There is a great sadness in Jack's eyes, after the movie returns to the present time from a flashback to Jack's favorite memory of Ennis (holding him from behind, rocking him into a trance, humming to him).
Annie Proulx explains in her Short Story that Jack was never fully conscious of the sexless hunger this (Ennis holding Jack from behind, rocking him, humming to him) satisfied in Jack.
My opinion of this scene seems to have changed each time I watched the movie. As well as a great sadness, I have also seen a great determination in Jack's eyes (to leave Ennis), after the memory flashback ends, when I've watched it before. Perhaps Jack realizes he needs to leave Ennis because its too heart-wrenching for him to continue with Ennis.
In the end, Ennis is not angry with Jack's decision to become ranch partners with his Texas ranch neighbor.
Jack's father tells him that Jack was no longer going to have Ennis del Mar as his ranch partner. Jack's father has a general contempt for his son's ideas. Ennis finds Jack's father to be a man with a "hard need" to be the "stud duck of the pond," a not uncommon type.
Perhaps Jack's father is angry with Ennis because he is disappointed that nobody will continue the family ranch. I suspect Jack's father would have accepted a gay son living with his male lover if that's what it took to keep the Trick family ranch going in Lightning Flat, WY.
Ennis, at that moment, upon hearing that Jack's last plans were to have a Texas ranch neighbor to be his ranch parter "knew" (intuitively) that it was the "tire iron" that killed Jack. (Ennis "knew" Jack was murdered for his being a homosexual.)
When Ennis's goes to Jack's boyhood bedroom, he finds the nook in the closet where Jack has hung the bloody shirts that Jack saved from their last day on Brokeback Mt. (when Jack accidentally caused Ennis's nose bleed). Jack kept them as a memory of Brokeback Mt.
Jack's shirt holds Ennis's shirt inside of it. (Jack's shirt holds Ennis's shirt in its "protective" embrace.)
Ennis no longer fights Jack's "protection." He takes the shirts home with him, back to his trailer. With a 30 cent postcard of Brokeback Mt. attached, he builds his memorial to Jack.
-
Ennis continue thought the years after the reunion to have a hold on Jack, from then on that "short leash" was around Jack's neck. Ennis, no matter what changes never let Jack go. And Jack continued to love him, no matter what changes Ennis was going through.
A lot has been mentioned about Ennis's unwillingness to abandoned his kids, and Alma. Alma remarried, the kids living in house, not over the laundry, they were moving on with their lives, but Ennis held fast to the idea of his commitments he brandish it to Jack every chance he got to hold him at bay, we admire this, "how wonderful, you see he's a heck of a guy" but what would we would have said if Cassie was the love interest and not Jack? We wouldn't have this conversation because, well she a woman, and that's ok, the guy needs a life, a woman, and sex.
But we're talking of Jack, and the reasons, and the whys are different now. We admire Ennis Stoic nature, we give him credit for sticking with the idea of family. We say Jack needed to be patient, he had to understand, Jack was as not family oriented as Ennis, Ennis was after all an orphan. Jack then is seen as a force trying to get Ennis from his noble mission, something that has to be put up with. How convoluted this sounds. Jack was just more true to himself then Ennis ever was.
We give Heterosexuals a lot of leeway when it comes to commitment or non commitment, but for us, well the rules come into focus more, and our motives are questioned.
Ennis held fast to the rules he made, and couldn't in the end live with it. He wanted Jack, couldn't get pass the idea what was taught to him was wrong, that loving another man can cause his death, and should be hidden. If Ennis couldn't get pass this idea then their was just the way they lived it.
Jack wanted what we all want, to live in peace with the one we love, his unyeilding love for all those years are a testament to that love, like Ennis's grief.
-
Jack was dominated by his father, his wife and her family, even Ennis - and of course by his love too, which caused him to complicate his whole life and twist it in ways he would probably not have done had he nver met Ennis.
Ennis, on the other hand, was never dominated by Alma or later Cassie, not I ythink by his llove for Jack. He spent his whole life trying to dominate his own emotions and in the process nearly destroyed his capacity to feel.
Interesting. I think I agree. Especially in the part of Ennis struggling to dominate his inner self/feelings.
-
Jack had many choices, his love for Ennis anchored his heart and mind. The choices were known to him, to leave Lureen or not, to give himself to Randall or not. To leave Texas go to LF, or parts unknown, but any choices was view as it related to Ennis. And Ennis anchored Jack without words, but with a return of a postcard. The most free really wasn't. You can say Ennis was in the prison of his fears, Jack was in prison for his love for him.
So it would appear that the anchor was both a blessing and a curse. ALthough Ennis brought some stability into Jack's heart, it also tied him to the same place, with no hope of moving on. This is what I meant by whether Jack had a choice or not. Granted, he had all the choices you had mentioned, but did he really have the freedom to chose, given that that Ennis both anchored him and weighed him down?
-
What Did Ennis Jack See in Each Other?
Obviously physical attraction is necessary for any sexual interest. But, for a long-term relationship, more is necessary. There must also be an emotional bond.
What was the attraction of Ennis's Jack's personalities to each other?
I think Jack was attracted to many of the same things in Ennis's character that were also what kept Ennis apart from Jack (preventing Ennis from becoming his ranch partner on Jack's parents' ranch in Lightning Flat, WY or seeking a more gay-friendly urban life in Denver, as Jack suggested in the Short Story).
Ennis tells Jack, in the Siesta Motel in 1967, that he learned that he was in love with Jack by the time Jack drove away in his pickup truck (after Ennis Jack came down from Brokeback Mt.). But at the time he thought he was just suffering dry heaves from a hangover - with Annie Proulx adding that Ennis felt as if his intestines were being pulled out yard-by-yard and that he didn't feel better for a long time afterward.
It took Ennis about a year to figure out "what it is was" and by that time, he was already married to Alma. He tells Jack that if knew then what he knew now (that he had fallen in love with Jack), he would have never left Jack out of his sight.
But now it was too late to change that. Both of them were married and had children. They had to remain "decent."
Ennis was also afraid that if the "thing" (in other words, he and Jack being swept up in the euphoria of their kiss outside of Ennis's and Alma's apartment over the laundromat in Riverton, WY - the first time they had seen each other since Brokeback Mt., four summers ago) ever happened to them again, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, he and Jack would be dead.
Ennis then tells Jack how his father took him and his older brother to see the old gay rancher Earl's body lying mutilated in the ditch with Earl's penis pulled off and his face covered in welts from a tire iron. Ennis was 9 years old. Ennis's father laughed while showing them this.
Ennis believed his father would have killed both him and Jack, if he had been alive to find them together in their motel room. A ll that life could offer him and Jack was an opportunity to meet each other a couple of times a year. It had to be done in way that no one would suspect their homosexuality. They would "ride it as far as they could." Ennis sums it all up and tells Jack, "If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it."
Ennis is probably right about how violent, unyielding, and zealously unreasoning anti-homosexual bigotry can be. His view is intellectually sound. It's appropriately prudent given the attitudes of the often violent, conservative rural Wyoming society he and Jack lived in. He sought to do what he thought would protect both him and Jack.
But this also was the source of their great emotional frustration. Ennis thought these unsatisfactory choices were necessary if they were to be able to survive.
I, myself, am torn between an admiration for Ennis's stoic philosophy of, "If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it," and a revulsion of the ruinous consequences such a philosophy can lead to (because of the many missed opportunities in life). I also admire Ennis's protectiveness of Jack. I also admire Ennis for his willingness to do what he thought was the "right thing to do," despite his emotions to the contrary. I love Ennis for his vulnerability.
As Welschwitch said, Ennis could be unyielding is his decisions. Obviously, simply being obstinate does not show a "strength" of character, however. Obstinacy is often misinterpreted as such, especially by those who find an authoritarian character appealing.
But in Ennis, it's something more than that.
I agree with tpe that Ennis uses his marriage, his alimony payments, preserving his visitation rights to his daughters, holding onto a job, etc. as an excuse to not live with Jack. I also agree with tpe that Ennis keeps Jack further and further at arm's length (seeing him less frequently over the years) because he doesn't like the pressure he feels from Jack to live together. (Jack, of course, resents being kept on such a "short leash" by Ennis.)
But there is something noble about Ennis's refusal to abandon his wife and children, too. Ennis saw both his Jack's marriages as an important commitment they made - even if they were homosexual and could never have emotional and sexual fulfillment from these heterosexual marriages. Their wives and children were a commitment they could not abandon lightly.
Ennis may have been influenced in his opinion about this because of his own childhood: becoming an orphan when his parents died in a strange accident when they missed the only curve in 40 miles in the otherwise straight Deadhorse Road.
(I wonder if there could be some sexual metaphor here about Ennis's parents and a "curve" in what is mostly a "straight" road? The times Ennis's parents lived in were even more homophobic than his own, of course. The life stories of those who were homosexual in his parents' day was an even more closely kept secret than it was in Ennis's Jack's day, of course. The history of homosexuality - or anything else - is often easily forgotten when it is never told.)
Ennis is protective of Jack. He trades places with Jack on Brokeback Mt. in 1963. He takes on the job of going to the herd camp, himself, after Jack complains how the tent there smells like "cat piss" and how he has to get up in the middle of the night to protect the sheep from being eaten by predators. There is also the long two-hour ride between the cook camp and the herd camp. Jack is also cold because he can't build a campfire at night in the herd camp. If he lights a fire there, the Forest Service might find out. His being in the herd camp breaks the Forest Service's rules. But Joe Aguirre, the ranch manager, has ordered them to set themselves up in two separate camps: a cook camp and a herd camp.
Ennis doesn't complain. He tells Jack he wouldn't mind trading places with Jack.
Ennis's generosity takes Jack by surprise. He admires Ennis for this.
Remember Jack's favorite memory of Ennis: a 19 year old Ennis holding Jack from behind, rocking him into a trance, humming him a song from Ennis's "long ago" childhood, telling him it's time for cowboys to go to bed. Jack's favorite memory of Ennis shows a concern for Jack's well-being and a pleasure in his company.
Ennis, was attracted to Jack's vulnerability rather than any "protection" Jack might offer him. Ennis's happiest moments with Jack often seem to be when he teases him.
When Jack shows Ennis his rodeo trophy belt buckle, Ennis tells Jack how Ennis's father thought rodeo riders were "f*** ups" (if I heard that right). Jack then begins leaping wildly up and down. (Perhaps Jack startles Ennis, at first, when he does this. This is another instance of a scene in the movie where my opinion of it seems to change each time I watch it.)
Ennis quickly realizes Jack is joking around. Jack finally loses his balance, collapsing into a pile on the ground, while leaping. Ennis laughs, telling Jack, "I think maybe my dad was right."
It's the young Jack, 19 years old, with wavy hair and buck teeth, whom Ennis pictures in his dreams of Jack in his trailer at the end of the Short Story. It's not the mature Jack that Ennis dreams about, with straight teeth and a mustache, who has filled out "through the shoulders and hams." (This is an ambiguous description of Jack by Annie Proulx. Jack is potentially more muscular as the years pass: thus, more masculine; thus, more "dominant." But, as another possibility, he is perhaps simply fatter and overweight.)
In fact, when Jack attempts to become protective of Ennis, he is frequently met with Ennis's resistance, in one way or another.
Jack, of course, assumes the dominant position when he takes the risk of initiating sex with Ennis in the cook camp tent on Brokeback Mt. But then Ennis quickly turns Jack around and performs anal sex on Jack.
When Jack attempts to staunch Ennis's nosebleed (caused accidentally by Jack's vigorous, "aggressive" actions), Ennis lays him flat with a surprise punch. It is the last day they are on Brokeback Mt.
(In fact, Ennis tells Jack, in the Siesta Motel in Riverton, WY in 1967, that he believes that Jack might not have contacted him for four years after Brokeback Mt. because he thought Jack might still be angry with him for hitting Jack on the last day they were on Brokeback Mt. Jack laughs, though, in response. He tells Ennis that he'll watch out for him the next time.)
Perhaps, over time, we become more like what we admire in others, however slowly this occurs.
As Jack becomes more like what he finds most attractive in Ennis's personality, Jack may, in fact, have become less attractive to Ennis. (Thus, Ennis becomes less willing to see Jack: only a couple of times of year, for what Jack calls a "few high altitude f***s," far away, in the wilderness, during a cold time of year.)
Ultimately, during their last argument on the barren shore of the mountain lake, in May 1983, Ennis tells Jack, "It's because of you that I'm like this...I'm nothing."
He tells Jack he gave up all those jobs so he could be together with him more often during the earlier years. Now he needs to keep his job to pay his alimony payments.
(However, Ennis neglects to mention that his daughters are also quickly approaching their "age of majority," eighteen years of age, when they will graduate from high school, and his alimony payments will no longer be a necessary legal burden.)
Jack believes him. (It's possible that Ennis was only telling Jack this - that he needed to keep "this" job - to mollify Jack. If Jack accepted this explanation Ennis was offering him, Ennis may have expected that they would continue seeing each other - as Ennis wanted - only a few times of year.)
Jack, in an act of great generosity toward his lover, decides to give Ennis what Jack thinks (perhaps mistakenly) he wants. At this moment, Jack decides he must leave Ennis in order to accomplish this. There is a great sadness in Jack's eyes, after the movie returns to the present time from a flashback to Jack's favorite memory of Ennis (holding him from behind, rocking him into a trance, humming to him).
Annie Proulx explains in her Short Story that Jack was never fully conscious of the sexless hunger this (Ennis holding Jack from behind, rocking him, humming to him) satisfied in Jack.
My opinion of this scene seems to have changed each time I watched the movie. As well as a great sadness, I have also seen a great determination in Jack's eyes (to leave Ennis), after the memory flashback ends, when I've watched it before. Perhaps Jack realizes he needs to leave Ennis because its too heart-wrenching for him to continue with Ennis.
In the end, Ennis is not angry with Jack's decision to become ranch partners with his Texas ranch neighbor.
Jack's father tells him that Jack was no longer going to have Ennis del Mar as his ranch partner. Jack's father has a general contempt for his son's ideas. Ennis finds Jack's father to be a man with a "hard need" to be the "stud duck of the pond," a not uncommon type.
Perhaps Jack's father is angry with Ennis because he is disappointed that nobody will continue the family ranch. I suspect Jack's father would have accepted a gay son living with his male lover if that's what it took to keep the Trick family ranch going in Lightning Flat, WY.
Ennis, at that moment, upon hearing that Jack's last plans were to have a Texas ranch neighbor to be his ranch parter "knew" (intuitively) that it was the "tire iron" that killed Jack. (Ennis "knew" Jack was murdered for his being a homosexual.)
When Ennis's goes to Jack's boyhood bedroom, he finds the nook in the closet where Jack has hung the bloody shirts that Jack saved from their last day on Brokeback Mt. (when Jack accidentally caused Ennis's nose bleed). Jack kept them as a memory of Brokeback Mt.
Jack's shirt holds Ennis's shirt inside of it. (Jack's shirt holds Ennis's shirt in its "protective" embrace.)
Ennis no longer fights Jack's "protection." He takes the shirts home with him, back to his trailer. With a 30 cent postcard of Brokeback Mt. attached, he builds his memorial to Jack.
Thanks jetzenpolis, you bring up so many pointe here. I would only start by mentioning two.
It is true that Ennis resists Jack's protective overtures to him throughout Jack's life. But as you outlined here in some detail, this refusal is not a simple question of dominance between the two of them. At the core is the complexity of Ennis's own struggle to seek dominance over himself, as WW had mentioned earlier.
The second is the point about Jack's father being angry at Ennis. Patriot1 had also mentioned this long ago, and I must admit that perhaps part of the issue on dominance (as far as Ennis was concerned) was the sense of being weighed down by expectations, both imagined and real. Perhaps Ennis was reluctant because he was not up to realizing these expectations, or perhaps he felt inadequate.
It all boils down to a matter of confidence, which is a pendant to the will and desire to dominate.
-
Ennis continue thought the years after the reunion to have a hold on Jack, from then on that "short leash" was around Jack's neck. Ennis, no matter what changes never let Jack go. And Jack continued to love him, no matter what changes Ennis was going through.
A lot has been mentioned about Ennis's unwillingness to abandoned his kids, and Alma. Alma remarried, the kids living in house, not over the laundry, they were moving on with their lives, but Ennis held fast to the idea of his commitments he brandish it to Jack every chance he got to hold him at bay, we admire this, "how wonderful, you see he's a heck of a guy" but what would we would have said if Cassie was the love interest and not Jack? We wouldn't have this conversation because, well she a woman, and that's ok, the guy needs a life, a woman, and sex.
But we're talking of Jack, and the reasons, and the whys are different now. We admire Ennis Stoic nature, we give him credit for sticking with the idea of family. We say Jack needed to be patient, he had to understand, Jack was as not family oriented as Ennis, Ennis was after all an orphan. Jack then is seen as a force trying to get Ennis from his noble mission, something that has to be put up with. How convoluted this sounds. Jack was just more true to himself then Ennis ever was.
We give Heterosexuals a lot of leeway when it comes to commitment or non commitment, but for us, well the rules come into focus more, and our motives are questioned.
Ennis held fast to the rules he made, and couldn't in the end live with it. He wanted Jack, couldn't get pass the idea what was taught to him was wrong, that loving another man can cause his death, and should be hidden. If Ennis couldn't get pass this idea then their was just the way they lived it.
Jack wanted what we all want, to live in peace with the one we love, his unyeilding love for all those years are a testament to that love, like Ennis's grief.
Very good and insightful post, manhattangirl. I think this is also what I meant when I said that at issue here was the struggle of Ennis within himself. He tried to stand by his rules, but at the same time probably realized that all this was untenable.
And yes, I think what you say is a big part of the reason why we empathize with Jack on this issue. For us today, his desires were not unreasonable. What he wanted was what most human beings desire in their heart of hearts. It was not a question of dominance -- it was a question of being able to live one's dream.
-
In the end they come to a deadlock; in fact they more or less become what Aguirre first describes them as " a pair of deuces going nowhere".
-
In the end they come to a deadlock; in fact they more or less become what Aguirre first describes them as " a pair of deuces going nowhere".
A very apt forshadowing of what was to come.
It was clearly a test of wills, and Jack probably was at the short end of it all.
Ennis certainly had Jack at his beck and call, and Jack probably did not mind this so long as there was hope of turning Ennis around. It was this hope that became the instrument by which Ennis came to dominate Jack, so to speak. And yet, Ennis himself was dominated by a love that he could not express and live openly; and thus, this love for Jack became the instrument upon which Ennis indecision and inner torment were built upon.
In this sense, it truly is an impasse.
-
I think this love dominated them both, I don't reaaly think Ennis dominated Jack or vice-verse.in any physical way , but emotionally, it's adifferent story.I think it was the inability of both of them to comphrehend this love which pulled them in every direction but loose.Ennis referred to it as "this thing". A love like this can make a fool out of anyone, and yet you can't control the way you feel. It can command you to patiently wait, as Jack surely did, or cause denial , confusion and hurt as Ennis did. With Ennis , it is the openess of this thing that Jack wanted. In this sense society dominated them too. They both grappled with the uncontrollable effects of it. Jack looked at it for what good could result and Ennis saw the bad. It did indeed become an impasse. But what could break it? The threat of breaking up? Another serious lover? It's the same question coming back. What would it take for Ennis to give into this love and allow it to florish in it's natual order and stop fighting it? How long could Jack's patience be tested? Apparently, Jack blinked first and when he did, Ennis had to come clean concerning his own philosophy " I can't stand this anymore Jack" . Maybe this meant he had to stop fighting it , and standing it and start fixing himself and the love they had for each other.I SO wish that Jack had survived to meet at Pine Creek . I'd have paid to hear THIS conversation.MO
-
I think this love dominated them both, I don't reaaly think Ennis dominated Jack or vice-verse.in any physical way , but emotionally, it's adifferent story.I think it was the inability of both of them to comphrehend this love which pulled them in every direction but loose.Ennis referred to it as "this thing". A love like this can make a fool out of anyone, and yet you can't control the way you feel. It can command you to patiently wait, as Jack surely did, or cause denial , confusion and hurt as Ennis did. With Ennis , it is the openess of this thing that Jack wanted. In this sense society dominated them too. They both grappled with the uncontrollable effects of it. Jack looked at it for what good could result and Ennis saw the bad. It did indeed become an impasse. But what could break it? The threat of breaking up? Another serious lover? It's the same question coming back. What would it take for Ennis to give into this love and allow it to florish in it's natual order and stop fighting it? How long could Jack's patience be tested? Apparently, Jack blinked first and when he did, Ennis had to come clean concerning his own philosophy " I can't stand this anymore Jack" . Maybe this meant he had to stop fighting it , and standing it and start fixing himself and the love they had for each other.I SO wish that Jack had survived to meet at Pine Creek . I'd have paid to hear THIS conversation.MO
Well said, aintfoolin.
this love dominated them both -- perfect.
-
Ennis: Jack (Who Ennis Loves) vs. Alma (Who Ennis iss Willing to Live Together with Permanently)
If you want to know what it would take for Ennis to live with somebody, look at who he was willing to continue living with - despite the ups & downs of their relationship, despite its ongoing deterioration (from growing ever farther apart): Alma.
Obviously, Ennis is in love with Jack. Ennis is sexually excited by Jack in a way in which Alma, nor any other woman, can (because Ennis is homosexual, of course - nothing more needed to say, there).
But it is Alma whom Ennis would be willing to go on living together with, not Jack. Is it because he's so afraid of public exposure of his homosexuality (in the violently anti-homophobic rural Wyoming of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s...and perhaps still much the same today) that he is willing to put up with a sham marriage in order to provide himself with "plausible deniability" if anyone accuses him of homosexuality? (Ennis could then respond with "but I'm married"! to any such accusations.)
I believe there is something more to his affections toward Alma than this. In fact, perhaps because he is homosexual, there is less of a distraction of physical appearance (sexual arousal, in other words) upon Ennis's feelings for Alma.
If Ennis is attracted to Alma's personality - enough that he is willing to continue to live together until Alma (not Ennis) decides to get a divorce, then what is it about Alma's personality that he finds attractive?
I believe there is something cool-headed, rational, and practical about Alma that appeals to Ennis. Alma is certainly more interested in financial stabiliity (and prosperity) then Ennis, for example. It's Alma who suggests jobs that might give Ennis more pay than his ranch hand job.
I'm not saying that Alma is right and Ennis is wrong. Obviously, I think it's important for Ennis to do the work he enjoys, what he thinks he does best. In the movie, Ennis says work is the one thing life has left for him since the homophobic Wyoming culture he lives is not about to leave him alone to pursue the romantic life he might otherwise choose for himself.
Alma also seems to realize this, too - at least at some level. She finally stops making suggestions to Ennis about new better-paying jobs he could take and decides to get her own job (at the grocery store) to supplement her family's finances. (I believe Ennis admires her for her independence, too - not just financially but also for having an independent mind.)
There's something about Alma that may complete some part of his life, though, despite his being homosexual. (Ennis, again looking at money, is less wise about it than Alma seems to be.)
Alma may also need Ennis to complete some part of herself, too. Look at Alma's face at the start of their Thanksgiving meal. She is living in the house she & Ennis bought after they moved out of their apartment over the laundromat but now married to her second husband, Monroe, the grocer. Monroe is slicing the Thanksgiving turkey with a noisy electric carving knife (that was popular in the 1970s). Alma looks both irritated and bored. She seems utterly bored with Monroe. (Boredom is always experienced as a restlessness I think. Such restlessness is always irritable in some way.) Alma may have been upset and dissapointed by Ennis many times but she was never bored with him (because she loved him and still does).
-
Ennis: Jack (Who Ennis Loves) vs. Alma (Who Ennis iss Willing to Live Together with Permanently)
If you want to know what it would take for Ennis to live with somebody, look at who he was willing to continue living with - despite the ups & downs of their relationship, despite its ongoing deterioration (from growing ever farther apart): Alma.
Obviously, Ennis is in love with Jack. Ennis is sexually excited by Jack in a way in which Alma, nor any other woman, can (because Ennis is homosexual, of course - nothing more needed to say, there).
But it is Alma whom Ennis would be willing to go on living together with, not Jack. Is it because he's so afraid of public exposure of his homosexuality (in the violently anti-homophobic rural Wyoming of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s...and perhaps still much the same today) that he is willing to put up with a sham marriage in order to provide himself with "plausible deniability" if anyone accuses him of homosexuality? (Ennis could then respond with "but I'm married"! to any such accusations.)
I believe there is something more to his affections toward Alma than this. In fact, perhaps because he is homosexual, there is less of a distraction of physical appearance (sexual arousal, in other words) upon Ennis's feelings for Alma.
If Ennis is attracted to Alma's personality - enough that he is willing to continue to live together until Alma (not Ennis) decides to get a divorce, then what is it about Alma's personality that he finds attractive?
I believe there is something cool-headed, rational, and practical about Alma that appeals to Ennis. Alma is certainly more interested in financial stabiliity (and prosperity) then Ennis, for example. It's Alma who suggests jobs that might give Ennis more pay than his ranch hand job.
I'm not saying that Alma is right and Ennis is wrong. Obviously, I think it's important for Ennis to do the work he enjoys, what he thinks he does best. In the movie, Ennis says work is the one thing life has left for him since the homophobic Wyoming culture he lives is not about to leave him alone to pursue the romantic life he might otherwise choose for himself.
Alma also seems to realize this, too - at least at some level. She finally stops making suggestions to Ennis about new better-paying jobs he could take and decides to get her own job (at the grocery store) to supplement her family's finances. (I believe Ennis admires her for her independence, too - not just financially but also for having an independent mind.)
There's something about Alma that may complete some part of his life, though, despite his being homosexual. (Ennis, again looking at money, is less wise about it than Alma seems to be.)
Alma may also need Ennis to complete some part of herself, too. Look at Alma's face at the start of their Thanksgiving meal. She is living in the house she & Ennis bought after they moved out of their apartment over the laundromat but now married to her second husband, Monroe, the grocer. Monroe is slicing the Thanksgiving turkey with a noisy electric carving knife (that was popular in the 1970s). Alma looks both irritated and bored. She seems utterly bored with Monroe. (Boredom is always experienced as a restlessness I think. Such restlessness is always irritable in some way.) Alma may have been upset and dissapointed by Ennis many times but she was never bored with him (because she loved him and still does).
Interesting comments here, jetzenpolis. Your interpretation of the thanksgiving scene is new to me, and I would think it plausible.
So if I understand you correctly, it was not really an issue of dominance between Ennis and Jack. Rather, what some of us think is a manifestation of Ennis trying to fend off Jack is simply Ennis expressing his innate love of pragmatism/practicality and independence. One can indeed say that this is manifested clearly in his choice of Alma as a life partner.
-
In the end they come to a deadlock; in fact they more or less become what Aguirre first describes them as " a pair of deuces going nowhere".
I love your comment welshwitch, "a pair of deuces going nowhere." Well said. It expresses perfectly the frustration you feel with Ennis & Jack (while at the same time wishing the best for them). It's a frustration they often seemed to feel themselves.
-
So if I understand you correctly, it was not really an issue of dominance between Ennis and Jack. Rather, what some of us think is a manifestation of Ennis trying to fend off Jack is simply Ennis expressing his innate love of pragmatism/practicality and independence. One can indeed say that this is manifested clearly in his choice of Alma as a life partner.
Yes, tpe, I think that Ennis's efforts of trying to "fend off" Jack is not primarily a question of Ennis's fear of a public exposure of his homosexuality. Instead, I think he tries to keep Jack at a distance because of the (growing) differences in their personalities. I think it is possible to be in love with someone and also realize (intuitively) you can't live together.
Ennis falls deeply in love with Jack. He feels emotions for Jack he never knew could exist. But these emotions can not overcome the suspicion that it is not possible for him to live together with Jack under any circumstances - not even if all of Wyoming became more gay-friendly than San Francisco or Amsterdam, not even if he had never married Alma or had children, not even if Ennis had no more fears of being found out as gay.
There is a distance between them that can't be bridged. In fact, it is the distance between what Ennis "knows" and what he "tries to believe" - As Annie Proulx puts it in the second to last line of her Short Story.
I'm not certain what it is that Ennis sees as separating him from Jack. Whatever it is, it makes it impossible for Ennis to feel it would be "right" to live with Jack.
One way of attempting to resolve this question is to ask another question. If Ennis isn't willing to live with Jack (whom he's in love with), who is Ennis willing to live with? Alma is the obvious answer. (Ennis also lived with his brother, K.E., before K.E. got married.) Alma is, as you say, his "life partner." Ennis chose her, out of all women, to get married to. He lived with her for twelve years (from their marriage in November 1963 until there divorce in November 1975). In the Short Story, Annie Proulx, says it is Alma, not Ennis, who "had enough" and got a divorce. (Alma may have been having an affair with Monroe, the grocer. Annie Proulx says that Ennis felt "vaguely cheated" by the divorce.)
Certainly Ennis is afraid of an exposure of his homosexuality because he knows all too well what can happen "to fellas like us" and "boy like you" (as he refers obliquely to his and Jack's homosexuality). Ennis fears being beaten, mutilated, and murdered - just as the old rancher Earl was, with Ennis even suspecting that his own father might have committed the murder (and then, laughing, showed his sons, Ennis, age 9, and K.E., age 11, Earl's dead body laying in the irrigation ditch). That certainly left an impression on Ennis. How could it be otherwise?
I think Ennis was also afraid of the psychological consequences of his public exposure as a homosexual. What sort of change might result in his perception of himself (his own image of himself) as a result of his being publically identified homosexual, in other words?
Domination is an issue between Ennis & Jack, but it's not the main one. (Again, the main issue, in my opinion, is the difference in their personalities that prevents Ennis from living with Jack.) Ennis does psychologically dominate the relationship. First, he decides how frequently he & Jack will see each other. (Since such meetings are necessarily consensual, agreeable to both, Jack must follow Ennis's lead here.) Second, Ennis takes advantage of Jack's own self-doubts in order to silence Jack when ever Jack becomes critical of the status quo between Ennis & Jack. When Jack suggests that they might live together as ranch parents on Jack's parents' ranch or even that Ennis might get out of Wyoming (after Ennis wonders aloud if Jack has ever thought people might "know" if someone is homosexual just passing by as strangers) and move to Texas, Ennis typically begins to accuse Jack of being a "dreamer" who lacks "realism."
But if Ennis uses dominance, it's largely as a self-defense measure. I don't think he actively seeks to dominates others for the sake of his putting himself in a position of dominance over them. For example, when he grabs Alma by the arm and twists it during their argument in the kitchen after Thanksgiving dinner, he does so because he's afraid Alma's about to put into words what she's thinking (what they both know she's thinking): Ennis & Jack had sex together on their "fishing trip."
After Ennis breaks down and begins to cry during their May 1983 argument, saying to Jack "Because of you I'm this way...nothing), Jack rushes to hold Ennis in his arms. Ennis, at first, breaks free. But then Ennis relents. He lets Jack hold him in his arms. He allows Jack to take the obviously dominant, protective postion.
Perhaps, when Ennis says "I can't take this anymore," he's not talking about ending his "ride" with Jack. (After all, Ennis sends Jack a postcard saying they can meet in November. Ennis is still very interested in seeing Jack again.) Rather, Ennis could be thinking about the way he's behaved toward Jack (accusing Jack of a lack of "realism," eroding Jack's self-confidence). Ennis could also think of the way he's behaved toward himself (seeking to pretend he's not homosexual).
There seems to be some change in Ennis after their May 1983 argument. The mask (of a false "hardbitten," "cynical" public appearance covering up the emotions they feel underneath) that Ennis begins wearing after his divorce from Alma falls away. Ennis again becomes "vulnerable" (just as he was when he was nineteen years old with Jack on Brokeback Mt.).
-
Yes, tpe, I think that Ennis's efforts of trying to "fend off" Jack is not primarily a question of Ennis's fear of a public exposure of his homosexuality. Instead, I think he tries to keep Jack at a distance because of the (growing) differences in their personalities. I think it is possible to be in love with someone and also realize (intuitively) you can't live together.
Ennis falls deeply in love with Jack. He feels emotions for Jack he never knew could exist. But these emotions can not overcome the suspicion that it is not possible for him to live together with Jack under any circumstances - not even if all of Wyoming became more gay-friendly than San Francisco or Amsterdam, not even if he had never married Alma or had children, not even if Ennis had no more fears of being found out as gay.
There is a distance between them that can't be bridged. In fact, it is the distance between what Ennis "knows" and what he "tries to believe" - As Annie Proulx puts it in the second to last line of her Short Story.
I'm not certain what it is that Ennis sees as separating him from Jack. Whatever it is, it makes it impossible for Ennis to feel it would be "right" to live with Jack.
One way of attempting to resolve this question is to ask another question. If Ennis isn't willing to live with Jack (whom he's in love with), who is Ennis willing to live with? Alma is the obvious answer. (Ennis also lived with his brother, K.E., before K.E. got married.) Alma is, as you say, his "life partner." Ennis chose her, out of all women, to get married to. He lived with her for twelve years (from their marriage in November 1963 until there divorce in November 1975). In the Short Story, Annie Proulx, says it is Alma, not Ennis, who "had enough" and got a divorce. (Alma may have been having an affair with Monroe, the grocer. Annie Proulx says that Ennis felt "vaguely cheated" by the divorce.)
Certainly Ennis is afraid of an exposure of his homosexuality because he knows all too well what can happen "to fellas like us" and "boy like you" (as he refers obliquely to his and Jack's homosexuality). Ennis fears being beaten, mutilated, and murdered - just as the old rancher Earl was, with Ennis even suspecting that his own father might have committed the murder (and then, laughing, showed his sons, Ennis, age 9, and K.E., age 11, Earl's dead body laying in the irrigation ditch). That certainly left an impression on Ennis. How could it be otherwise?
I think Ennis was also afraid of the psychological consequences of his public exposure as a homosexual. What sort of change might result in his perception of himself (his own image of himself) as a result of his being publically identified homosexual, in other words?
Domination is an issue between Ennis & Jack, but it's not the main one. (Again, the main issue, in my opinion, is the difference in their personalities that prevents Ennis from living with Jack.) Ennis does psychologically dominate the relationship. First, he decides how frequently he & Jack will see each other. (Since such meetings are necessarily consensual, agreeable to both, Jack must follow Ennis's lead here.) Second, Ennis takes advantage of Jack's own self-doubts in order to silence Jack when ever Jack becomes critical of the status quo between Ennis & Jack. When Jack suggests that they might live together as ranch parents on Jack's parents' ranch or even that Ennis might get out of Wyoming (after Ennis wonders aloud if Jack has ever thought people might "know" if someone is homosexual just passing by as strangers) and move to Texas, Ennis typically begins to accuse Jack of being a "dreamer" who lacks "realism."
But if Ennis uses dominance, it's largely as a self-defense measure. I don't think he actively seeks to dominates others for the sake of his putting himself in a position of dominance over them. For example, when he grabs Alma by the arm and twists it during their argument in the kitchen after Thanksgiving dinner, he does so because he's afraid Alma's about to put into words what she's thinking (what they both know she's thinking): Ennis & Jack had sex together on their "fishing trip."
After Ennis breaks down and begins to cry during their May 1983 argument, saying to Jack "Because of you I'm this way...nothing), Jack rushes to hold Ennis in his arms. Ennis, at first, breaks free. But then Ennis relents. He lets Jack hold him in his arms. He allows Jack to take the obviously dominant, protective postion.
Perhaps, when Ennis says "I can't take this anymore," he's not talking about ending his "ride" with Jack. (After all, Ennis sends Jack a postcard saying they can meet in November. Ennis is still very interested in seeing Jack again.) Rather, Ennis could be thinking about the way he's behaved toward Jack (accusing Jack of a lack of "realism," eroding Jack's self-confidence). Ennis could also think of the way he's behaved toward himself (seeking to pretend he's not homosexual).
There seems to be some change in Ennis after their May 1983 argument. The mask (of a false "hardbitten," "cynical" public appearance covering up the emotions they feel underneath) that Ennis begins wearing after his divorce from Alma falls away. Ennis again becomes "vulnerable" (just as he was when he was nineteen years old with Jack on Brokeback Mt.).
How interesting! I don't know whether I subscribe to it as you see it, but it is certainly a valid point of view.
MY difficulty here is that it would seem to imply an innate incompatibility between the two of them. And there is certainly no reason to think that such incompatibilities did not exist. The growing differences over the years may have also been helped along by changing circumstances, but I suspect that this is not the only thing you are implying,am I right?
I do have to agree that in many/most instances, Ennis did seem to use dominance as a defensive mechanism against Jack's demands. And yet, it is interesting to note that Jack himself never really made an all-out assault on Ennis, perferring to bide his time patiently, hoping that Ennis would inevitably see things his way. In other words, the defensive mechanism was largely set up against someone who perhaps was more passive in his approach, and one can argue that Ennis knowingly or unknowingly used this to his advantage. THis held up until the last meeting, when Jack was at an end to his patience, I guess.
As for Alma, she was initially largely passive in her approach to Ennis. But in a sense, she did succeed in that area where Jack didn't: manifest her independence from Ennis and finally insisting that they go on their separate ways.
-
I feel Ennis is by nature , a dominate personality when it comes to certain situations, but I still agree that had Jack tested Ennis's resolve more earlier on he may have suceeded more. Ennis is not a robot without emotion . He is more vulnersble than Jack gives him credit for imo. I am not one who subscribes to a fact that Ennis's "softer side" could not be stroked. We saw Alma do it when she talked Ennis into moving from the rural ranch atmosphere to living above the laundry without a horse in sight. She appealed to his sense of lonliness and used the children ( so they would'nt grow up isolated as he did) to get the job done. An insistent yet gentle approch worked. This struck a chord in Ennis, that his girls would have friends unlike his own childhood. Maybe Jack coud've been a little more insistent in this area. He did'nt have two children to appeal to Ennis with but he needed to plead his case somehow. Certainly his options were more limited than Alma, but he had an ace in the hole as far as Ennis heart is concerned. He owned it. All it would have taken is a little more communication about what is going to happen in the future. For his own sake he must demand answers. If Ennis continues to hem-haw around this thing , then more drastic measures would have to be taken such as an ultimatum. Jack needed a catylist, something to play, and what is it that Ennis cannot do without? Jack's love and just Jack period. Jack needed to play this hand up. This is Jack's dominant card to play. Once Ennis takes this first step, the rest is esaier to take. Ennis is not a big thinker on his own. He needs that engaging factor to get him to open up more. Left to the status quo, Ennis will never step over that line which is comfortable to him. Jack tried this in the divorce scene, but Ennis does'nt like surprises, and once again Jack gives in to easily. Had Jack said :" I'm here right now, and you let me leave, I'm never coming back, because I can't stand the rejection of our love," Maybe Ennis would'nt have been so quick to let Jack just leave the way he did. He sold himself to Ennis and Ennis bought in hook, line and sinker. The thought of loosing Jack forever had already been tried in the 4 years apart. It failed. Asking Ennis to at least meet him halfway was not to much to ask imo. Jack should have put Ennis's vulnerabilities to the test. At least he would know where he stood in the scheme of things. In this regard also Jack would'nt feel so helpless and could explore more, his other options such as Randall, or starting his own ranch. Perhaps this would give his life more direction. With or without Ennis he needed to get on with his life. My opinion.
-
I agree, aintfoolin'. Jack gave way to Ennis for so long when he should have challenged him if only for the sake of his own welfare. In the end it did him no good to go along with Ennis and turn up every time he was asked, go away every time he was told and make no counter-demands of his own. Ennis became locked into this pattern and assumed it would go on for good - Jack never shook him out of his complacency but had he tried what would he have lost ? And what did he have to gain? Either more commitment from Ennis or the chance of breaking free and finding someone else.The trouble was that he clung to what little Ennis gave him because he was afraid of losing him but never seemed to value himself enough to think that he deserved better.
-
MY difficulty here is that it would seem to imply an innate incompatibility between the two of them. And there is certainly no reason to think that such incompatibilities did not exist. The growing differences over the years may have also been helped along by changing circumstances, but I suspect that this is not the only thing you are implying,am I right?
Ennis's & Jack's Innate Incompatibility
I admit that my view of Ennis & Jack having an innate incompatibility is certainly a "worst case scenario" for them (at least, for Jack, anyway). I think there are many times, especially in cases where one lover in a romantic pair is more "in love" than the other, that there is a feeling of insecurity that surrounds their love. What is the source of this insecurity? Obviously, the lover who feels insecure would prefer not to feel this way. But if this feeling of insecurity exists, it won't go away by refusing to look at it.
Obviously, as Annie Proulx points out in her January 19, 2006 KCRW "Bookworm" interview with Michael Silverblatt, she designed the writing of her Short Story (SS) so that its readers would have to fill in its missing details with their own personal history, intuitions, and observations of others using the "hints" (suggestions) provided in her narrative. Thus, there are many ways to interpret Brokeback Mountain. The author intended that.
Among her most intriguing comments in the "Bookworm" interview is that Annie Proulx said she felt guided in her writing of Brokeback Mt. (It didn't all come from within her.) When she saw the movie, she said she felt as if Heath Ledger had reached into her mind and pulled out Ennis del Mar. (Heath Ledger's Ennis is exactly who she pictured Ennis to be.)
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw060119annie_proulx
I would like to believe that Ennis & Jack could have found someway to live together. (Please convince me! I would love to change my mind on this point!) But in my gut, I feel that Ennis would never agreed to live with Jack under any circumstances. The question then, for me, becomes what prevents Ennis from agreeing to live with Jack? Again, I feel it has something to do with a difference in their personalities or their values or their perspective on life.
But Ennis also loves Jack (and Ennis chooses to live with Alma as his life partner, not Jack). There is some internal conflict with Ennis. In other words, part of Ennis loves Jack - especially the nineteen year old young Jack on Brokeback Mt. with buck teeth and wavy hair; not the mature Jack with straightened teeth and a mustache "filled out through the hams and shoulders." Another part of him chooses to live (and continue to live) with Alma, presumably because he finds some degree of compatibility (completion) in living together with her. Just as Ennis will never voluntarily agree to live with Jack, he'll never initiate a break with Alma. It's Alma who decides to get a divorce from Ennis (even though both grow more distant from each other over the years).
Ennis, although an introvert (perhaps because he is an introvert) doesn't respond well to any sort of pressure. Any sort of ultimatum Jack might have issued would have probably backfired. Skittish already, Ennis makes up his mind and refuses to change it (until the internal pressure building up within him causes to change it: on his own terms, in his own time).
Remember what happens when Alma brings up the topic of Jack while they do the kitchen dishes (in her & Monroe's house) after Thanksgiving. Ennis tries to bring Alma's discussion of his "needing" a woman in his life to a close by saying, "Once burned..." (with Alma saying that she and their daughters are worried about his being alone).
Of course, Alma seems to be seething beneath her cool surface. There's an anger (a bitterness?) that appears behind her attempt to smile at Ennis's self-deprecating description of his own short rodeo "career" to his daughters at the Thanksgiving dinner table. It seems to continue in the kitchen.
When Ennis says "Once burned...," it's too much for Alma to hold back, anymore. She describes the note she attached to Ennis's fishing pole in his tackle box that he never opened (Alma knowing it had never been opened because it was still there 5 years later). She "knows" what Ennis & Jack were doing on their "fishing" trips, just as much as she knew what she saw when Ennis & Jack kissed each other in their embrace at the bottom of the steps up to their apartment over the laundromat in 1967. Alma has a "cool head" but she also still has very strong feelings where Ennis is concerned.
The strength of her feelings frighten Ennis. He is also afraid of his homosexuality being exposed. Obviously, Alma has opened a Pandora's Box of Ennis's fears about having his homosexuality exposed. He can never close the lid on that box, again, as far as Alma is concerned.
He tells Alma she knows "nuthin about it." (Ennis might also be upset that she says, "Jack Twist?...Jack Nasty!" She doesn't know his history with Jack. He's in love with Jack. Ennis doesn't think his love for Jack is "dirty." He sent up a prayer to heaven in thanks for his being with Jack, again.)
Alma says, "don't try to fool me, Ennis!"
After she says, "Jack Twist?...Jack Nasty!" and is about to put into so many words that Ennis & Jack were having sex, Ennis twists her arm to stop her from saying anything more.
Alma yells at him to get out of her house. Ennis bolts. He leaves as quickly as he possible can.
Much the same sort of response comes from Ennis in his May 1983 argument with Jack. Ennis has a standard set of responses to Jack about his refusal to go along with any of Jack's plans for them to live together. He's afraid that if the "thing" (their kiss at the bottom of the steps leading up to his & Alma's apartment over the laundromat in 1967) ever happens to them again in the wrong place, at the wrong time, they'll be dead; he & Jack have commitments to their wives and children; he can't risk his visitation rights to his daughters; he has to keep his job to pay alimony payments for support of his daughters, etc.
What happens when the argument heats up (when Ennis decides to "cut fence" and trespass across a boundary he can never cross back from, again, according to Annie Proulx in her Short Story)? Ennis breaks down and tells Jack "Because of you I'm like this...nothing!" Then he goes on to say - more of less - that he's "nothing" because he had to give up "all those jobs" to be with Jack. (I believe he feels he's "nothing" for a different reason. He doesn't have anyone in his life fulltime. He's a workaholic: using work as a sedative for his emotional pain just as much as Jack uses alcohol to fend off the loneliness he feels when he's away from Ennis.)
I believe their May 1983 argument does change Ennis for the better. Ennis, of course, does not come out of his closet by any means. But he's far less willing to keep up the pretense that he is a heterosexual. He drops Cassie. (Of course, he drops her in a way that hurts her. He refuses to answer any of her letters.) He also shows vulnerability, again, dropping the frozen mask of falsehood his face seems to have become in his more mature years after his divorce from Alma (except the time when he brings up the topic of people being able to tell that he's homosexual with Jack on a "fishing" trip).
But what difference would it have made anyway for Jack if he tried to press Ennis on the topic? (Jack always withdraws rather than continues the disagreement.) In the end, he had nothing to lose. Of course, Jack didn't know that at the time. He was afraid of losing Ennis. But even he lost Ennis, he would have had more time to find somebody else.
I think Ennis loved Jack for Jack's gentle, loving side. There is a part of Ennis that is the same as that gentle side of Jack. But he chose Alma as a life partner because he saw her as having particular qualities that he saw either as lacking or doubtful in himself: cool-headedness, shrewdness (particularly about financial matters), independent-mindedness, a willingness to change course (Alma wasn't afraid of change when she perceived it as an improvement), etc.
To put it in terms of New West vs. Old West, Jack represented the "New West" and Alma represented the "Old West" for Ennis.
I don't think Ennis was particularly interested in the New West's love of natural beauty, greater acceptance of the need for government regulation, etc. (at least not to the degree that he would ever think of himself, or any side of himself, as being "New West.") Rather, Ennis was torn being two differing aspects of Old West culture: 1.) the friendly side of it where families and neighbors live together, watching out for each other 2.) the more masculine side of Old West culture in which rugged individuals compete against each other for the acquisition of quick riches or even survival in a no-holds bar laissez-faire capitalist society. Jack appealed more to this first side of Old West culture; Alma appealed more to the second side, in many (but not all) ways. Ironically, in many ways, Alma provided a more "masculine" counterpart to Ennis's character in their marriage.
Jack has his complexities of character, too. While the gentle side of the young Jack most appeals to Ennis as his male lover, there is side of Jack that seeks to step back from an attachment to his own gentle side. Perhaps this is a result of Jack's own observations of his parents: a gentle, kind mother and a cruel, harsh, negligent father (who may have abused his wife).
Jack is simultaneously pulled toward Ennis (enough so that he makes plans to live with him) but there is a part of him that is separate from Ennis's own gentle, kind, tender side.
In the end, Ennis can't live with Jack because he's pulled apart too much by the own contradictions of his own values and perspectives on life. Ironically, when Jack decides he can no longer continue his "ride" with Ennis, he has found Randall, a man whom Jack realizes in his blank stare that is willing to pursue Jack, someone whom Jack will no longer have to pursue with futility. All Jack has to do is say, "yes" to Randall. Jack couldn't believe that something like this could happen to him after all the frustration and disappointment with Ennis.
-
Ennis was a totally "by the rules" guy, I think this something he got from his father, until the dope found that curve in the road, that wasn't suppose to be there.
Anyway, Ennis always played by the rules, which leads him to Alma after his brother and sister leaves him on his own. Ennis was content in living his life just like everyone else.
Then enters Jack, and everything he thought was supposed to be the "right thing" turn into that "thing", the rules changed. What are the rules? He wants the rules back, and can't have them back. Fighting it from then on and all in his head.
After marrying Alma he knew somewhere deep inside him he was lacking something and that was Jack. Not in the rules but not willing to let Jack go, but not willing to give in to Jack. He battles with him, and tries to control him.
Alma was a safe haven, a retreat from his true passions, his true need, leaving nothing for her but the knowledge she wasn't what he wanted.
-
Alma Argues for Moving to Town (Girls won't have Childhood as Lonely as Ennis's)
I feel Ennis is by nature , a dominate personality when it comes to certain situations...Ennis is not a robot without emotion . He is more vulnerable than Jack gives him credit for IMO. I am not one who subscribes to a fact that Ennis's "softer side" could not be stroked. We saw Alma do it when she talked Ennis into moving from the rural ranch atmosphere to living above the laundry without a horse in sight. She appealed to his sense of loneliness and used the children ( so they wouldn't grow up isolated as he did) to get the job done. An insistent yet gentle approach worked. This struck a chord in Ennis, that his girls would have friends unlike his own childhood.
I agree aintfoolin that this small scene between Ennis & Alma is important. It says a lot about what approach is best if you're going to get Ennis to change his mind. Alma meets Ennis's objections with a practical answer. Ennis argues that it's too expensive to live in town when Alma says she'd like to meet there. Alma responds that she's found an inexpensive apartment over the laundromat. However, Ennis is still reluctant. He's told Alma she could fix up this place (the house on the ranch) "real nice" if she wanted to. Alma telling Ennis that their daughters wouldn't have as lonely a childhood as he did (presumably because they could meet more children their age if they lived in town) is what finally moves Ennis to change his mind.
Ennis had a brother (brothers?) and a sister (sisters?), who tried to stay together on the ranch after their parents died, yet his childhood could be described as "lonely." Did Ennis feel lonely because he felt somehow "different"? This is a description many gay and lesbian adults often use when they talk about how even in childhood they knew there was "something" that set them apart from their peers that made them feel "different."
There's a point, early in the movie, where Jack tells Ennis on Brokeback Mountain that was more words than Ennis had spoken to him (with Ennis using several complete sentences in a row) than the whole time they had been there. Ennis replies (laughing, as if its the first time he's laughed in a long, long time), "Hell, that's more words than I've spoken in a year."
I believe Ennis when he says he hasn't said much the past year. What happened to Ennis in the past year? He had to leave the place he was staying in with his brother: his brother (K.E.?, another brother?) was getting married and there was "no room" for Ennis. (Ennis seems to suggest, perhaps, in that situation, he felt forced to leave. Even though he was introvert he sought the company of his family.) He also becomes engaged to Alma, his fiancé.
A lot has happened. Yet, even though he's engaged to get married, he hasn't said much in the past year, not even to his fiancé. He is in introvert. But it is odd that he's been so silent.
Perhaps he's disturbed about the situation he finds himself in life. Perhaps he already knows (or suspects) he is homosexual. He doesn't know what to do about it. He decides to do what he thinks what everyone else does. In other words, he follows what he thinks is the "normal" course of life's events. (Obviously, as a teenage high school dropout living in rural Wyoming, he probably doesn't have a lot of information readily available to him about homosexuality - especially since he's far-sighted and "reads" only horse supply catalogues according to Annie Proulx in the Short Story.)
He finds a girl (Alma) and becomes engaged to her. (That's not to say he doesn't have feelings of some sort for Alma. He may love her for her personality, even if his sexual interest in her is lacking.)
I think Annie Proulx also says at some point in the Short Story that Ennis liked to live light because it allows him to move easily. Ennis might have felt the need to be able to move on quick notice because he feared (perhaps subconsciously) that there might be a time when - if his homosexuality became pubically exposed - he would have to get out of town quickly before some homophobic posse came after him to hunt him down.
-
Jack's Never Answers Ennis's Objections to Their Living Together (with a Convincing Counter-Proposal)
...Maybe Jack could've been a little more insistent in this area. He didn't have two children to appeal to Ennis with but he needed to plead his case somehow. Certainly his options were more limited than Alma, but he had an ace in the hole as far as Ennis heart is concerned. He owned it. All it would have taken is a little more communication about what is going to happen in the future. For his own sake he must demand answers...
When Alma convinces Ennis to move to town (into the inexpensive apartment over the laundromat), she is able to meet all of Ennis's objections with a counterproposal (that Ennis would view as "practical"). Jack fails to do this.
Jack's idea for them to ranch together on his parents's ranch in Lightning Flat was a practical proposal (especially if Jack's father was more interested in seeing the ranch continue in operation than whether his son was living with his ranch partner in a homosexual relationship).
But Jack never succeeds in meeting Ennis's objections about what will happen to his children. In fact, he doesn't even try.
They never seem to be a part of Jack's future plans. Jack seems willing to leave his own wife and son at a moment's notice, perhaps without a word of explanation, as soon as Ennis agrees to live with him.
In turn, this might raise some doubts in Ennis's minds about what sort of person Jack is.
Ennis loves Jack. In fact, he's deeply in love with him. Jack makes him feel the way nobody else ever has before - man or woman. In the Siesta Motel in 1967, Ennis tells Jack that since he last saw him he has "wrung it out a huntert times" thinking about him. He's never thought about another man.
But can he live with Jack?
Sometimes he is tempted. On one of their camping trips, Ennis asks Jack if he thinks, too, that people can tell who "fellas like us" are - just by looking at him, on the street, knowing nothing else about him.
Jack responds that Ennis needs a change. Ennis might need a change. Ennis could move. Perhaps he could move to Texas. For a moment, as Ennis takes in Jack's suggestion, he wavers.
Suddenly, Ennis realizes what Jack is up to. Jack is trying to get him to move to Texas!
In response (upset that Jack might have taken "advantage" of him in a moment of vulnerability), Ennis irritatedly berates Jack for his "impractical" schemes. Ennis sarcastically adds that (in Jack's perfect world), Alma and Lureen would give them custody of his daughters and Jack's son (or something similar).
Ennis gets so caught up in his own emotions while berating Jack (irritated because he let Jack's dreams start to get to him) he forgets what he's doing. His blue plastic bucket floats downstream. Ennis chases it, still telling Jack how ridiculous his scheme for their living together is, never letting up.
Jack, with resignation and a weary irritation of his own, replies "It was just an idea."
I think the two of them have a different style of thinking. Ennis probably has a greater need for setting things in "order" and remaining in "control." He likes to have new ideas laid out completely, in all their details, before he will even consider acting upon them.
Jack, more creative, likes to throw ideas out, first. Then picking the ones he likes best, he works out the details later (after he's already decided to act upon them).
Jack would have been open to a discussion with Ennis about how they could put together a plan to live together. They could then go over this plan and change it to meet Ennis's worries about a loss of custody for his daughters.
Ennis might not have understood this about Jack. Perhaps Ennis - who is a keen judge of other people's character - didn't want to understand this about Jack, either. (It would have forced him to either start planning to live with Jack or admit to Jack that he didn't want to live with him.)
We often assume that because two people have fallen "madly," "head-over-heels" in love, they can live together. In this romantic view of love, we - all of us! - can find somewhere, someplace, sometime, our "one true love," our "perfect" partner who will meet all of dreams and expectations.
But sex, romantic love, and living together are three separate issues.
In other words, the other person who most sexually arouses us may not happen to be the same person who we are going to fall most deeply in love with. In addition, whom we fall "head-over-heels" in love with may not be the same person whom we would most enjoy sharing our lives together with (by living together).
We may never be fortunate to ever meet somebody who could meet all three of these goals simultaneously (sexual excitement, romantic love, livability). In fact, how likely a prospect is that when you start looking at the odds. Instead, we have to choose which one of these three goals is most important to us.
Jack found that Ennis met the requirements of two of these goals: romance and livability.
Ennis found that Jack met the requirements of two goals, too, but they were: sexual excitement and romance.
Jack lied to Ennis in the Siesta Motel when he said that he never had thoughts about other men, either (when Ennis told Jack that he never had thoughts - sexual fantasies - about another man). Jack was afraid of losing Ennis if he told him the truth: Jack had rode the bulls while he was in Texas in the rodeo rather than "roll his own."
Jack had lots of sexual liaisons. Lureen, talking long-distance to Ennis about Jack's death, told Ennis that she didn't know how to contact Ennis because Jack kept all the names and telephone numbers of his friends in his head.
Of course, Ennis knew this. "I know what boys like you do in Mexico!" Ennis tells Jack in their May 1983 argument. "If I ever find out what I don't know, it could get you killed!"
Ennis can't live with Jack because he doesn't trust his own feelings about Jack. Perhaps that's why (subconsciously, if nothing else), Ennis told Jack on Brokeback Mountain (the evening he came back from herding sheep - after the first night they had sex together in the main camp tent), "This is a one shot deal."
At the bottom of the steps leading up to the apartment over the laundromat, Ennis initiates the kiss he has with Jack in 1967 after not seeing for four summers after they came down from Brokeback Mt. Later, he tells Jack that if the emotions that lead him to initiate his kiss ever takes hold of them again, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, it could get them killed.
In fact, Ennis describes these emotions as this "thing" - almost as if it were an alien from Outer Space.
Ennis feels threatened by this "thing" not just because it could get them killed but because he doesn't like letting his emotions get so out of control. Perhaps he's right. Such loss of emotional control can lead people do things that they would never do otherwise. They might do good things. But they could also do very bad things.
Ennis is not reassured by Jack's schemes for them to live together. These schemes don't seem to take much account of the well-being of their wives and children.
As Jack said, Brokeback got them "good." But though Brokeback got him good, Ennis doesn't want to be "done
in" by Brokeback Mt., either. It's important to him to remain "decent." It's hard to become the best person you think might be able to be if you let your emotions run wild.
"There ain't no reins on this one," Ennis tells Jack. They'll "ride" as far as they can.
But even if Ennis is willing to "ride" with Jack as far as they can because he loves Jack (despite all his doubts about the wisdom of being overtaken by such powerful emotions), he will try to keep the "thing" under as much control as he can possibly muster. To do that, he can't live with Jack, ever.
-
Jetzenpolis: Enjoying reading your perceptions and reasonings about Ennis and Jack. There is so much going on in the story and movie for us to find meanings in... Thanks for your thoughts. I think you have the dynamics between them, and inside themselves, pretty much down.
kathy
-
Ennis did speak of *this thing grabbing ahold, In the wrong place, at the wrong time* I'm not sure I buy this. What is it ?, Is he saying that Jack's gonna attack Ennis sexually in the middle of K-mart at Christmastime? !!! I'm sure Jack could control himself whenever they're together in public. Ennis makes it sound as if they would somehow succomb to a sexual urge in the street. This *thing* was love, not a living uncontrollable entity unable to be restrained. Sure, he was out of control in the reunion scene, but he did peek to see if anyone was watching before he kissed Jack but it was Ennis who started it. It was his common sense that left that day much to Jack's surprise and Alma found out. It's ironic that Aguirre did'nt tell, neither did Alma and Alma Jr. had her suspicions and Jack was'nt out there shouting from the rooftops about what was going on. Guess what Ennis , the world did'nt come to an end just because people knew+ even after he knew Alma knew after Thankgiving ,he still did'nt stop seeing Jack. Jack could have been more agressive in convincing Ennis that they were NOT Earl and Ray and not let Ennis get away with using this excuse. Certainly they had real fears to deal with, but restraint and common sense should have ruled, not fear. Jack asked Ennis "for how long?" Ennis answers " for as long as we can ride it" In my opinion this was too vague an answer. %( %(Jack should've pinned Ennis down to a more definitive time frame before he let it go for his own sake but Jack had his own fear. Ennis was once again off the hook. He deserved better than this. ...Just something that bothered me.
-
Maybe "this thing" was less uncontrollable sexual desire and more the whole idea of living with another man, showing at least to some degree that you're gay, then drawing the attention of the wrong people, saying the wrong thing inadvertently to the wrong audience, behaving "wrongly" so as to arouse suspicion?
Every time and place were the worng ones to Ennis after the first reunion - he tried to make Brokeback their only meeting-place and even in the ss they were always in the back of beyond, well away from other people. He was nervous before kissing Jack outside his apartment, even more jumpy when Jack turned up after the divorce, afraid even of being seen with him in normal conversation from someone driving past in the distance.
-
Jetzenpolis: Enjoying reading your perceptions and reasonings about Ennis and Jack. There is so much going on in the story and movie for us to find meanings in... Thanks for your thoughts. I think you have the dynamics between them, and inside themselves, pretty much down.
kathy
Thanks for your interest Kathy (and everyone else's) in what I have to say!
People who aren't "brokies" are sometimes at a loss about what I find so compelling about the movie. I'll talk with anyone who wants to talk with me about Brokeback Mountain - story or movie - even if they say they don't know what all the fuss is about. But a lot of people would rather not talk about it very much. It's nice to have a forum where you find people who share as much interest in Brokeback Mountain as you do.
For people who don't "get" Brokeback Mountain, I would say that Brokeback Mountain is just one venue (or portal) in which something larger than ourselves reaches into us.
There are many such venues (portals). The mind is a room. In this room, a window can suddenly appear before your eyes in its walls. Different windows in the walls of the room will appear to different people, at different times. The view through this window can also be different for each person. Brokeback Mountain is just one window that can open our minds and illuminate it with new thoughts and emotions, if we let it.
In fact, if it happens to you, I don't think you can even avoid this illumination. I couldn't.
The first time I saw scenes of Ennis & Jack from the movie, in early December 2005 (on a documentary about the making of the movie, on the LOGO cable television channel), something hit me very hard. I was taken completely by surprise. I thought the feelings it stirred would go away if I kept my mind on something else. With my emotions spinning frequently into delirium; often moved to tears by my memory's images of Ennis & Jack; getting by on an average of four hours of sleep per night, I sometimes thought I was at the point where I was "getting over it." Then, instantly, I was pulled back in. After about the first month, I just gave in. Rather than fighting it, I'd ride it out.
I'd just sit back and watch. I'd let it take me wherever it was going to go. (I don't think people should make life-altering decisions at such times, though. Their emotions are not only very strong, but are often changing quickly, often suddenly, in completely different, unexpected directions. It's a time to observe and learn, not a time to act.)
I think that Brokeback Mountain has such a strong effect on some people because it may touch some part of themselves they weren't fully aware of but yet is very important to them. Brokeback Mountain may raise questions in them about their own lives that they've never thought of before (or have been afraid to answer).
In many ways, our interpretations of Brokeback Mountain are autobiography. We see Ennis & Jack (and the story's other characters) through the lens of our own problems, questions, aspirations, etc.: interpreting them, of course, through the perspective of our own values and personal history.
Many of these interpretations come from intuition (a "knowing" without "knowing how you know"). In other words, intuition, here, is the opposite of intellectual thought (in which ideas can be laid out in a specific logical order). But intuition is not necessarily "emotion," either.
-
Can Ennis & Jack Control Themselves in Public?
Ennis did speak of *this thing grabbing ahold, In the wrong place, at the wrong time* I'm not sure I buy this. What is it ?, Is he saying that Jack's gonna attack Ennis sexually in the middle of K-mart at Christmastime? !!! I'm sure Jack could control himself whenever they're together in public. Ennis makes it sound as if they would somehow succumb to a sexual urge in the street. This *thing* was love, not a living uncontrollable entity unable to be restrained. Sure, he was out of control in the reunion scene, but he did peek to see if anyone was watching before he kissed Jack but it was Ennis who started it. It was his common sense that left that day much to Jack's surprise and Alma found out...
Ennis did make it sound as if he was worried about just that: this "thing" grabbing ahold of them both in the middle of K-mart at Christmastime! ;)
Of course, you're right. Jack could control himself in public! (In fact, it took years of provocation for Jack to stand up to his father-in-law and let his feelings be known when his father-in-law went to turn the television back on, so Jack's son could watch football and be a "man" according to Jack's father-in-law.)
Jack jumped at the opportunity to let know Ennis he was with him: when Ennis plunged into his emotions and let himself follow his impulse to kiss Jack. (Ennis hadn't seen Jack in four years. He was probably wondering if he'd ever see him again.)
Futhermore, if Ennis had enough "sense" left in him to "take a peek" to see if anyone was watching (before he kissed Jack), Ennis had some control over his emotions, too.
It certainly was love. (It wasn't just physical pleasure.)
But Ennis was afraid that the emotions he had unleashed were so strong that they had become a force of their own. He was troubled about what might happen if he abandoned himself to them.
-
Alma; Aguirre; Alma Jr. Knew (about Ennis & Jack) but Didn't Do Anything
...and Alma found out. It's ironic that Aguirre didn't tell, neither did Alma and Alma Jr. had her suspicions and Jack wasn't out there shouting from the rooftops about what was going on...
Alma:
Alma never told Ennis that she saw him & Jack kiss each other in 1967, at the bottom of the steps leading up to their apartment over the laundromat, in Riverton, WY. "She knew what she saw": from the very first day Ennis & Jack saw each other again, the first time "in four summers after Brokeback Mountain."
I wonder if this somehow affected Ennis, adding to his paranoia (or even being the start of it): about how other people might be able to tell that "fellas like us" are homosexual just by looking at him, even if they pass him by on the street and no nothing else about him.
Joe Aguirre:
Look at Joe Aguirre's eyes when he raises his binoculars to them and sees Ennis & Jack "stemming the rose." They aren't hard. They aren't cynical. They aren't angry. They are "soft," "doe-eyed." (The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines doe-eyed as: "having large innocent-looking eyes.")
Is it possible that Joe Aguirre might be gay, too?
The final look on his face in the scene with the binoculars seems to be one of "disappointment" not anger. It's not the sort of reaction you'd expect from a crusty, hard-bitten ranch manager accustomed to telling people off.
I don't think that look in his eyes is the sort of disappointment you'd expect from sheep herd loss or other things that might cut into his profit margin, either. I don't think it's the sort of disappointment a manager might have in his employees not living up to his expectations. I think it's something else. :-\\
Alma Jr.:
Alma Jr. may have been able to figure things out on Thanksgiving. Her mother (Alma) and father (Ennis) had their argument in the kitchen. She was probably old enough (and perhaps well-educated, enough, in a time, the 1970s, when gay rights were being discussed in the news) to know what was being said in the kitchen.
How could she, her sister, or Monroe (Alma's second husband, the grocer) help but overhear Alma & Ennis argue? How could they have not heard Alma loudly say "Jack Twist?...Jack Nasty!"
-
Ennis Avoids Being Seen in Public with Jack
...showing at least to some degree that you're gay, then drawing the attention of the wrong people, saying the wrong thing inadvertently to the wrong audience, behaving "wrongly" so as to arouse suspicion?
Every time and place were the wrong ones to Ennis after the first reunion...even more jumpy when Jack turned up after the divorce, afraid even of being seen with him in normal conversation from someone driving past in the distance.
I suspect that Ennis doesn't even want to meet Jack anyplace where they can be seen by others in public after their first reunion in Riverton, WY in 1967. I agree. He was afraid of being seen in what could only have been viewed as a normal conversation between himself with Jack by a driver going past on the road in the distance (as if the driver was even likely to notice them at all, much less what they were doing).
I noticed that they don't meet at any of the places Ennis lives in before they go on "fishing" trips. Instead they meet at some prearranged jumping off point in the wilderness where they can park their trucks (and nobody is likely to see them).
-
Ennis's Father: Stud Duck?, Murderer (of Earl)?, Benefactor (Teaches Ennis to Fight Back against K.E.)? Other?
Ennis was a totally "by the rules" guy, I think this something he got from his father, until the dope found that curve in the road, that wasn't suppose to be there.
Anyway, Ennis always played by the rules, which leads him to Alma after his brother and sister leaves him on his own. Ennis was content in living his life just like everyone else...
I find Ennis's attitude toward his father interesting. Ennis suspects that his father, who laughed while he showed the old dead rancher Earl's body in the ditch to Ennis, when he was 9 years old, and to his older brother, K.E. (11 years old), may have killed Earl, himself. At least, Ennis says he wouldn't have been surprised if his father had done it.
He also believes that if his father had walked in on Ennis & Jack in their room at the Siesta Motel, he would have killed them, right then and there. There seems little room for doubt in Ennis's mind about his father's attitude toward homosexuality.
Yet, Ennis doesn't seem angry with him about this. He doesn't resent his father's homophobia. At least, he shows no signs of resenting it. He seems very matter-of-fact when he describes his father to Jack.
He also seems to show some fondness for his father when he tells Jack that his father taught him how to fight - in order to defend himself against his older brother K.E.'s bullying. His father said he was tired of hearing Ennis ball his head off and didn't want to have to intervene between them, anymore. But he also told Ennis that if he didn't learn how to defend himself, he would still be having the same problems with K.E. when they were both in their nineties.
This leaves an uncertainty about how much Ennis's father was simply trying to keep Ennis from annoying him with problems and a genuine concern about Ennis. Apparently, Ennis must regard his father's attitude toward him as the latter. There seems to be little if any of the resentment in Ennis toward the elder del Mar that Jack feels for his father, the elder Twist.
Obviously, this combination of his father's homophobia and an interest in Ennis's welfare could only exacerbate Ennis's internal conflicts about homosexuality. It only makes harder for Ennis to look at his homosexuality when he knows that a father whom he loves might kill him because of it.
There are two times that I can think of that Ennis does show some resentment toward his parents. First, he seems to resent their having driven off the only curve in the 43 miles length of Dead Horse Rd. Second, he resents that his parents left only $24 (?) in a coffee can for their survivors to keep the family ranch running.
Ennis's father doe not appear to have "dominated" Ennis in the same way that Jack's father attempted to dominate Jack (with Jack's father urinating on his son for being too young to be able to aim properly when he peed in the toilet, for example). If Ennis's father is a domineering "stud duck," it's a milder version of one (at least until you get to the issue of homosexuality).
-
This is at his core, Ennis never questions his father's attitude, accepted that his father might have murdered a man. He carries it with him. Its a part of him, Knowingly or unknowingly, take your pick. The showing of a Earl's mutilated body, has to have affected him deeply enough, because he carried it with him, and that one memory emerged when he met, fell in love, and had sex with Jack. The battle within himself begins. Daddy said this is wrong.
Over all Ennis was a walking emotional zombie when Jack came into his life, and then he became emotionally and sexually alive. But it is exactly that awareness, that countered everything he was taught to believe. Ennis never at any time questioned whether his father was correct, he took what his father showed him, taught him used it as a reason for not loving himself or Jack enough to enjoy what they had, but hide on Brokeback.
Ennis blames Jack, it because of you, am like this way. The painful part is that he was already that way, but couldn't deal with it or accept it. He wasn't program that way, "queer" causes death. Daddy show me that.
Ennis lived his life after falling in love with Jack on the basis of what he was taught to believe. He never permitted himself to embrace what he had, but spent the remaining years fighting against it, never scumming to Jack, but Jack doing exactly that, giving himself to Ennis, on his terms, and Ennis letting him.
-
Thanks for your interest Kathy (and everyone else's) in what I have to say!
People who aren't "brokies" are sometimes at a loss about what I find so compelling about the movie. I'll talk with anyone who wants to talk with me about Brokeback Mountain - story or movie - even if they say they don't know what all the fuss is about. But a lot of people would rather not talk about it very much. It's nice to have a forum where you find people who share as much interest in Brokeback Mountain as you do.
For people who don't "get" Brokeback Mountain, I would say that Brokeback Mountain is just one venue (or portal) in which something larger than ourselves reaches into us.
There are many such venues (portals). The mind is a room. In this room, a window can suddenly appear before your eyes in its walls. Different windows in the walls of the room will appear to different people, at different times. The view through this window can also be different for each person. Brokeback Mountain is just one window that can open our minds and illuminate it with new thoughts and emotions, if we let it.
In fact, if it happens to you, I don't think you can even avoid this illumination. I couldn't.
The first time I saw scenes of Ennis & Jack from the movie, in early December 2005 (on a documentary about the making of the movie, on the LOGO cable television channel), something hit me very hard. I was taken completely by surprise. I thought the feelings it stirred would go away if I kept my mind on something else. With my emotions spinning frequently into delirium; often moved to tears by my memory's images of Ennis & Jack; getting by on an average of four hours of sleep per night, I sometimes thought I was at the point where I was "getting over it." Then, instantly, I was pulled back in. After about the first month, I just gave in. Rather than fighting it, I'd ride it out.
I'd just sit back and watch. I'd let it take me wherever it was going to go. (I don't think people should make life-altering decisions at such times, though. Their emotions are not only very strong, but are often changing quickly, often suddenly, in completely different, unexpected directions. It's a time to observe and learn, not a time to act.)I think that Brokeback Mountain has such a strong effect on some people because it may touch some part of themselves they weren't fully aware of but yet is very important to them. Brokeback Mountain may raise questions in them about their own lives that they've never thought of before (or have been afraid to answer).
In many ways, our interpretations of Brokeback Mountain are autobiography. We see Ennis & Jack (and the story's other characters) through the lens of our own problems, questions, aspirations, etc.: interpreting them, of course, through the perspective of our own values and personal history.
Many of these interpretations come from intuition (a "knowing" without "knowing how you know"). In other words, intuition, here, is the opposite of intellectual thought (in which ideas can be laid out in a specific logical order). But intuition is not necessarily "emotion," either.
Bolded above -- totally made me laugh. But it is so true. We were all a "mess" in some way or another last year, and actually, it's really a good thing we found this forum, or we might have made some messy decisions!
Of course it is so that all our various interpretations are from each of our own windows on life and the world and from our unique places in it.
kathy
-
Ennis did speak of *this thing grabbing ahold, In the wrong place, at the wrong time* I'm not sure I buy this. What is it ?, Is he saying that Jack's gonna attack Ennis sexually in the middle of K-mart at Christmastime? !!! I'm sure Jack could control himself whenever they're together in public. Ennis makes it sound as if they would somehow succomb to a sexual urge in the street. This *thing* was love, not a living uncontrollable entity unable to be restrained. Sure, he was out of control in the reunion scene, but he did peek to see if anyone was watching before he kissed Jack but it was Ennis who started it. It was his common sense that left that day much to Jack's surprise and Alma found out. It's ironic that Aguirre did'nt tell, neither did Alma and Alma Jr. had her suspicions and Jack was'nt out there shouting from the rooftops about what was going on. Guess what Ennis , the world did'nt come to an end just because people knew+ even after he knew Alma knew after Thankgiving ,he still did'nt stop seeing Jack. Jack could have been more agressive in convincing Ennis that they were NOT Earl and Ray and not let Ennis get away with using this excuse. Certainly they had real fears to deal with, but restraint and common sense should have ruled, not fear. Jack asked Ennis "for how long?" Ennis answers " for as long as we can ride it" In my opinion this was too vague an answer. %( %(Jack should've pinned Ennis down to a more definitive time frame before he let it go for his own sake but Jack had his own fear. Ennis was once again off the hook. He deserved better than this. ...Just something that bothered me.
Yeah, bothers me, too, all of us. But I feel more tolerant of Ennis, just knowing the cramped little world he inhabited. We all know that Jack is to "blame" also, for going along with how Ennis said it had to be. Which brings us back to the actual topic here, dominance.
But I just know that after that last confrontation scene, that things would have turned around, had Jack lived. By then, they were mature men, and Jack finally let it out how Ennis's holding back had really affected him all this time. I love to think Ennis was ready to change after that. Also, the times were a'changing, and even Ennis had to have become more aware of that, that it wouldn't be life-threatening to be in the company of his man...
kathy
-
Ennis's & Jack's Innate Incompatibility
I admit that my view of Ennis & Jack having an innate incompatibility is certainly a "worst case scenario" for them (at least, for Jack, anyway). I think there are many times, especially in cases where one lover in a romantic pair is more "in love" than the other, that there is a feeling of insecurity that surrounds their love. What is the source of this insecurity? Obviously, the lover who feels insecure would prefer not to feel this way. But if this feeling of insecurity exists, it won't go away by refusing to look at it.
Obviously, as Annie Proulx points out in her January 19, 2006 KCRW "Bookworm" interview with Michael Silverblatt, she designed the writing of her Short Story (SS) so that its readers would have to fill in its missing details with their own personal history, intuitions, and observations of others using the "hints" (suggestions) provided in her narrative. Thus, there are many ways to interpret Brokeback Mountain. The author intended that.
Among her most intriguing comments in the "Bookworm" interview is that Annie Proulx said she felt guided in her writing of Brokeback Mt. (It didn't all come from within her.) When she saw the movie, she said she felt as if Heath Ledger had reached into her mind and pulled out Ennis del Mar. (Heath Ledger's Ennis is exactly who she pictured Ennis to be.)
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw060119annie_proulx
I would like to believe that Ennis & Jack could have found someway to live together. (Please convince me! I would love to change my mind on this point!) But in my gut, I feel that Ennis would never agreed to live with Jack under any circumstances. The question then, for me, becomes what prevents Ennis from agreeing to live with Jack? Again, I feel it has something to do with a difference in their personalities or their values or their perspective on life.
But Ennis also loves Jack (and Ennis chooses to live with Alma as his life partner, not Jack). There is some internal conflict with Ennis. In other words, part of Ennis loves Jack - especially the nineteen year old young Jack on Brokeback Mt. with buck teeth and wavy hair; not the mature Jack with straightened teeth and a mustache "filled out through the hams and shoulders." Another part of him chooses to live (and continue to live) with Alma, presumably because he finds some degree of compatibility (completion) in living together with her. Just as Ennis will never voluntarily agree to live with Jack, he'll never initiate a break with Alma. It's Alma who decides to get a divorce from Ennis (even though both grow more distant from each other over the years).
Ennis, although an introvert (perhaps because he is an introvert) doesn't respond well to any sort of pressure. Any sort of ultimatum Jack might have issued would have probably backfired. Skittish already, Ennis makes up his mind and refuses to change it (until the internal pressure building up within him causes to change it: on his own terms, in his own time).
Remember what happens when Alma brings up the topic of Jack while they do the kitchen dishes (in her & Monroe's house) after Thanksgiving. Ennis tries to bring Alma's discussion of his "needing" a woman in his life to a close by saying, "Once burned..." (with Alma saying that she and their daughters are worried about his being alone).
Of course, Alma seems to be seething beneath her cool surface. There's an anger (a bitterness?) that appears behind her attempt to smile at Ennis's self-deprecating description of his own short rodeo "career" to his daughters at the Thanksgiving dinner table. It seems to continue in the kitchen.
When Ennis says "Once burned...," it's too much for Alma to hold back, anymore. She describes the note she attached to Ennis's fishing pole in his tackle box that he never opened (Alma knowing it had never been opened because it was still there 5 years later). She "knows" what Ennis & Jack were doing on their "fishing" trips, just as much as she knew what she saw when Ennis & Jack kissed each other in their embrace at the bottom of the steps up to their apartment over the laundromat in 1967. Alma has a "cool head" but she also still has very strong feelings where Ennis is concerned.
The strength of her feelings frighten Ennis. He is also afraid of his homosexuality being exposed. Obviously, Alma has opened a Pandora's Box of Ennis's fears about having his homosexuality exposed. He can never close the lid on that box, again, as far as Alma is concerned.
He tells Alma she knows "nuthin about it." (Ennis might also be upset that she says, "Jack Twist?...Jack Nasty!" She doesn't know his history with Jack. He's in love with Jack. Ennis doesn't think his love for Jack is "dirty." He sent up a prayer to heaven in thanks for his being with Jack, again.)
Alma says, "don't try to fool me, Ennis!"
After she says, "Jack Twist?...Jack Nasty!" and is about to put into so many words that Ennis & Jack were having sex, Ennis twists her arm to stop her from saying anything more.
Alma yells at him to get out of her house. Ennis bolts. He leaves as quickly as he possible can.
Much the same sort of response comes from Ennis in his May 1983 argument with Jack. Ennis has a standard set of responses to Jack about his refusal to go along with any of Jack's plans for them to live together. He's afraid that if the "thing" (their kiss at the bottom of the steps leading up to his & Alma's apartment over the laundromat in 1967) ever happens to them again in the wrong place, at the wrong time, they'll be dead; he & Jack have commitments to their wives and children; he can't risk his visitation rights to his daughters; he has to keep his job to pay alimony payments for support of his daughters, etc.
What happens when the argument heats up (when Ennis decides to "cut fence" and trespass across a boundary he can never cross back from, again, according to Annie Proulx in her Short Story)? Ennis breaks down and tells Jack "Because of you I'm like this...nothing!" Then he goes on to say - more of less - that he's "nothing" because he had to give up "all those jobs" to be with Jack. (I believe he feels he's "nothing" for a different reason. He doesn't have anyone in his life fulltime. He's a workaholic: using work as a sedative for his emotional pain just as much as Jack uses alcohol to fend off the loneliness he feels when he's away from Ennis.)
I believe their May 1983 argument does change Ennis for the better. Ennis, of course, does not come out of his closet by any means. But he's far less willing to keep up the pretense that he is a heterosexual. He drops Cassie. (Of course, he drops her in a way that hurts her. He refuses to answer any of her letters.) He also shows vulnerability, again, dropping the frozen mask of falsehood his face seems to have become in his more mature years after his divorce from Alma (except the time when he brings up the topic of people being able to tell that he's homosexual with Jack on a "fishing" trip).
But what difference would it have made anyway for Jack if he tried to press Ennis on the topic? (Jack always withdraws rather than continues the disagreement.) In the end, he had nothing to lose. Of course, Jack didn't know that at the time. He was afraid of losing Ennis. But even he lost Ennis, he would have had more time to find somebody else.
I think Ennis loved Jack for Jack's gentle, loving side. There is a part of Ennis that is the same as that gentle side of Jack. But he chose Alma as a life partner because he saw her as having particular qualities that he saw either as lacking or doubtful in himself: cool-headedness, shrewdness (particularly about financial matters), independent-mindedness, a willingness to change course (Alma wasn't afraid of change when she perceived it as an improvement), etc.
To put it in terms of New West vs. Old West, Jack represented the "New West" and Alma represented the "Old West" for Ennis.
I don't think Ennis was particularly interested in the New West's love of natural beauty, greater acceptance of the need for government regulation, etc. (at least not to the degree that he would ever think of himself, or any side of himself, as being "New West.") Rather, Ennis was torn being two differing aspects of Old West culture: 1.) the friendly side of it where families and neighbors live together, watching out for each other 2.) the more masculine side of Old West culture in which rugged individuals compete against each other for the acquisition of quick riches or even survival in a no-holds bar laissez-faire capitalist society. Jack appealed more to this first side of Old West culture; Alma appealed more to the second side, in many (but not all) ways. Ironically, in many ways, Alma provided a more "masculine" counterpart to Ennis's character in their marriage.
Jack has his complexities of character, too. While the gentle side of the young Jack most appeals to Ennis as his male lover, there is side of Jack that seeks to step back from an attachment to his own gentle side. Perhaps this is a result of Jack's own observations of his parents: a gentle, kind mother and a cruel, harsh, negligent father (who may have abused his wife).
Jack is simultaneously pulled toward Ennis (enough so that he makes plans to live with him) but there is a part of him that is separate from Ennis's own gentle, kind, tender side.
In the end, Ennis can't live with Jack because he's pulled apart too much by the own contradictions of his own values and perspectives on life. Ironically, when Jack decides he can no longer continue his "ride" with Ennis, he has found Randall, a man whom Jack realizes in his blank stare that is willing to pursue Jack, someone whom Jack will no longer have to pursue with futility. All Jack has to do is say, "yes" to Randall. Jack couldn't believe that something like this could happen to him after all the frustration and disappointment with Ennis.
Thanks jetzenpolis. You present and analyze the arguments well. Specifically, your analysis of the Thanksgiving scene and the final confrontation between Ennis and Jack do illi=ustarte your point of view.
I do think that what you say may very well be true, given that there is such a thing as an impossible love. I think the notion of an impossible love is closest to what you are saying here. And such as love is indeed the stuff of great tragedy.
So, from what I understand, you believe that they were fated never to be together, because of the inherent contradictions in Ennis's character, but that this did not stop Ennis for loving Jack and being loved in return.
If this is true, then there is nothing Jack can do to change the situation, and the end was inevitable.
Whether we agree with this or not, one must accept the plausibility of this scenario. I would say that perhaps such a scenario is closer to real life: there are many things we cannot reconcile within ourselves, but we continue to go against them. It is not a matter of choice. Sometimes, we are fated to love those that can destroy us.
Dominance is therefore not the issue; it was a manifestation of an innate incompatibility.
-
Jack's View of Ennis, Incompatibility of Jack's Wishes with Ennis's Character
I think the notion of an impossible love is closest to what you are saying here. And such as love is indeed the stuff of great tragedy.
So, from what I understand, you believe that they were fated never to be together, because of the inherent contradictions in Ennis's character, but that this did not stop Ennis for loving Jack and being loved in return.
If this is true, then there is nothing Jack can do to change the situation, and the end was inevitable.
Whether we agree with this or not, one must accept the plausibility of this scenario. I would say that perhaps such a scenario is closer to real life: there are many things we cannot reconcile within ourselves, but we continue to go against them. It is not a matter of choice. Sometimes, we are fated to love those that can destroy us.
Dominance is therefore not the issue; it was a manifestation of an innate incompatibility.
1.) "...they were fated never to be together...but this did not stop Ennis from loving Jack and being loved in return."
2.) "...there is nothing Jack can do to change the situation,...the end was inevitable."
3.) "...perhaps such a situation is closer to real life: there are many things we cannot reconcile within ourselves, but we continue to go against them."
4.) "...Sometimes, we are fated to love those that can destroy us."
Yes, I don't think that Ennis can ever agree to live with Jack because of their differences (their perspective on life, their values) not only because Ennis is afraid of having his homosexuality exposed for the world to see.
Ennis is afraid of becoming "known" as homosexual. This fear shows up in many scenes across the movie. "What the f*** are you looking at?" Ennis shouts at the man in the street looking in at Ennis stooped over, squatting banging against the wall (believing that he is suffering from dry heaves in a hangover, later to realize that the feeling of having his intestines pulled out yard-by-yard is because he should have never left Jack out of his sight when Jack drove off in his pickup truck when they came down from Brokeback Mt.). Ennis shouts angrily in order to chase the curious stranger away so he doesn't get a closer look at a bereaved Ennis (who doesn't yet consciously realize that he misses Jack). He looks to see if anyone is looking before he kisses Jack, four summers later, at the bottom of the steps leading up to his & Alma's apartment over the laundromat. He becomes incredibly afraid when Alma brings up his "fishing" trips with Jack while they do dishes after Thanksgiving. Ennis then grabs her arm and twists it in order to prevent her from saying what's on her find, in so many words, after she says, "Jack Twist?...Jack Nasty!." Then runs out of the house as quickly as he can, his daughters trailing behind saying "Good-bye Daddy!" As Welshwitch points out, Ennis nervously looks at the vehicle passing by on a highway as he stands outside with Jack and his daughters, Alma, Jr. and Jenny, after Jack drives up from Texas after Ennis's divorce from Alma. Ennis seems afraid that somehow somebody will figure out what's going on between him and Jack just by seeing them driving by. (Ennis may have become much more paranoid after arguing with Alma in the kitchen on Thanksgiving. How did Alma "know" about him & Jack? Alma always seemed to be able to see through Ennis. I think he liked that about her. It made her more of an equal partner in life. But it probably also frightened him, too. I think he never knew that Alma saw him kiss Jack in 1967 at the bottom of the apartment steps. He might have been less anxious about how Alma "knew" if he had known she had seen him and Jack kiss through the apartment screen door.) Ennis looks absolutely paralyzed in terror when Cassie confronts him while he is "picking at" his pie in the restaurant, with Greyhound bus logo behind them. (But Ennis, even in his fear at this point, also might be determined that he's never going to have a another fake heterosexual relationship with a woman, again. He was not going to pretend he was the "marrying kind," as his daughter Alma, Jr. put it - if that was what Alma, Jr. was thinking when she told that to Cassie earlier.) But Cassie never understood Alma, Jr.'s words that way - even though she told Alma, Jr., "You don't say much. But you get your point across." In fact, for Cassie, the thought that Ennis might be homosexual never seems to enter her mind: "I don't get you, Ennis del Mar!"
It is not a question of Ennis either being "afraid" (of having his homosexuality revealed) or a question of whether there are personal "incompatibles" between himself and Jack that will result in being impossible for him to agree with live with Jack. It is not an "either/or" question.
Instead, Ennis is both "afraid" (of having his homosexuality exposed) and finds himself "unwilling" (consciously or unconsciously) to live with Jack because of their differences in perspectives, values, etc.
Your words are so eloquently put, tpe! You sum up what I have to say very succinctly.
Yes, there are Ennis's contradictions in character: among these are the inevitable contradictions between 1.) sexual arousal; 2.) romantic passion; 3.) and living together: as three different goals in somebody's sexual life. Thus, because they are "different" in purpose, these three different goals can potentially clash or "contradict" with each other, if and when they come to cross-purposes. These three different "contradictions" are inherent within all of us, as part of our sexual lives.
If Ennis did agree to live with Jack, it would destroy that part of Ennis's character that Jack was most in love with. Perhaps my favorite scene with Jack is when he is with Ennis, telling him, at first, that he wondered if what happened at the bottom of the steps to the apartment over the laundromat would happen when he came up to Riverton, WY from Texas. Then Jack turns suddenly so his face is next to Ennis's ears, that says, no, that wasn't true: he knew what would happen when they got together, again. At that moment, Jack seems to be in love with Ennis and the whole world.
I think what Jack saw in Ennis, at his best, was a "universal" love (not just the more limited love for a single person in the high emotions of romantic passion). Ennis opened a window in Jack's mind to a larger view of the world. But Jack became desperate for Ennis's company (his wish to live together). Jack was afraid that window would close without having Ennis in his presence.
But if Ennis had done what Jack wished, Ennis would have destroyed the part of himself that Jack loved most. Again, Jack seems willing to abandon his wife, Lureen, and his son, Bobby, at a moment's notice. (Of course, Jack stays in his marriage throughout his years of waiting for Ennis. He doesn't get a divorce and then assume a promiscuous life of "one-night stands" while waiting for Ennis, as a single gay man. Of course, Jack probably was homosexually promiscuous while he was married to Lureen - at least, until he met Randall.)
Ennis, at least a part of him, is determined to stay "decent" by doing what he thinks is "right." He doesn't follow wild passion with Jack by leaving his wife, Alma, and their daughters, Alma, Jr. and Jenny, behind. (Ennis's affection for his daughters is obvious. In the middle of an argument with Alma about her going to work or her staying home to have supper together, Ennis stops his raging long enough - before he goes back to kicking the white wood-plank wall of the building behind him - to suddenly look down at his daughters on the swing and ask them, very calmly, with the interest of a devoted father, "Do you need a push?" Years later, Ennis drops off a teenage Alma, Jr. at Alma's and Monroe's house - who has just asked Ennis if she can move in with him because she views her mother, Alma, as being too restrictive. Ennis carefully, fondly, perhaps wistfully waits and watches to make sure his daughter gets in through the front door, safely.)
The somber, beautiful colors of the mountains and the wilderness (lots of deep blues mixed with dark greens, sometimes tans), as the movie's director, Ang Lee films them, symbolizes (for me) the tragedy of Jack's predicament: caught between loving a man whom if Jacks's greatest wish was fulfilled would destroy the very thing he seeks most in life.
-
The incompatibility apparently didn't keep Ennis from releasing Jack. I wonder, I don't know about that. But going on along on the premise stated here, wouldn't that make Ennis morally dishonest, a hypocrite and Jack his victim? He loses the " moral high ground", every time he sleeps with Jack, who is he kidding?
Or am I wrong here?
-
Each is locked in who and what he is. Neither can change. Neither can change the other. Neither is stronger than the other or wants to live without the other. It's this series of impossibilities that makes it a tragedy.
-
Interesting points here.
I have to think about what manhattangirl said here. Was it openly dishonest, or a simple compartmentalization of both mind and heart that is so common with many of us?
Also, s the incompatibility simply imagined? Or did it ever occur to them that they were incompatible? Perhaps the closest scene that seems to corraborate this would be the fight by the stream...
-
I think they were more alike than different where it counted. Their relationship would'nt have lasted so long if there was no feelings of compatability. The only thing I see inompatible is a diference in rationalization of ideals. They are two simple country boys who had similiar backgrounds and bad role models for fathers.
-
As you said, aintfoolin -- their backgrounds were similar, and that at least is some basis for compatibility. They were very different personalities, just because they were -- whatever it is that gives us our personalities. But I don't think they would have seen themselves as incompatible. Just that the situation, to Ennis, was too fraught to really consider that it could be some kind of life reallity for him. He would have come to believe it possible and desirable later, I believe, but then it was too late.
Even the argument by the stream, as you mentioned, Thomas, was just haggling the fine points. We don't want to be with someone who thinks exactly the same as us. Each of them brought to the other new perspectives, and some of them would have gelled nicely, and some of them wouldn't have.
I think Ennis's "values" were confused, and mostly based on fear of looking too far outside his little world.
kathy
-
They fulfill that part of themselves in one another that was missing. Separately they were miserable, leading empty lives, Ennis's only goal to make money for child support, Jack's only goal, well, he was a saleman, taking his rodeo flash and dash to the farm machine business. These were simple men. Neither of them glamorous or worldly. Both were just awkward country boys, I don't think they would have classified as cowboys, but the wore the clothes, they try to be near the cowboy way of life as much as they could, working on a ranch, riding the rodeo circuit.
They both had dreams, that could never be reached. But through out all of it, they loved each other. That's the one dream that could have been possible if fear hadn't control them. And maybe, just maybe their dream of owning something of their own could have been a reality.
But the fear of discovery, the fear of love, the fear their desires, the fear of each other, losing each other, and of themselves even thinking such a thing could be possible, was what I think was the dominating factor, Ennis believe it, Jack succumb to his belief. Through the years the one thing that was true, and they desperately tried to hold on to is each other, and nearly destroyed the little they did have.
-
As you said, aintfoolin -- their backgrounds were similar, and that at least is some basis for compatibility. They were very different personalities, just because they were -- whatever it is that gives us our personalities. But I don't think they would have seen themselves as incompatible. Just that the situation, to Ennis, was too fraught to really consider that it could be some kind of life reallity for him. He would have come to believe it possible and desirable later, I believe, but then it was too late.
Even the argument by the stream, as you mentioned, Thomas, was just haggling the fine points. We don't want to be with someone who thinks exactly the same as us. Each of them brought to the other new perspectives, and some of them would have gelled nicely, and some of them wouldn't have.
I think Ennis's "values" were confused, and mostly based on fear of looking too far outside his little world.
kathy
I do believe that they appreciated each other's prespectives, in spite of all the conflict and heart-aches.
And I do think sometimes that for Ennis, it was not a conscious desire to dominate; rather, as you said kathy, it was more a confusion that seemed to put out mixed signals.
Ennis seemed to be more afraid than anything else. His seeming to dominate certain issues perhaps arises from a fear that disallowed him to see things any other way. And Jack probably understood this well, which may be why we see him acquiese all too often.
-
They both had dreams, that could never be reached. But through out all of it, they loved each other. That's the one dream that could have been possible if fear hadn't control them. And maybe, just maybe their dream of owning something of their own could have been a reality.
Whatever our opinions on the issue of dominance, I think all of us agree that their love was what anchored them, and informed their actions, both good or bad.
-
Ennis & Jack Loved Each Other
Whatever our opinions on the issue of dominance, I think all of us agree that their love was what anchored them, and informed their actions, both good or bad.
Ennis & Jack did love each other. Love is what "anchored" them. For good or bad, it anchored them to each other. Love, not dominance, was the fundamental emotion in their bond to each other.
Ennis "knew" that he loved Jack, for a long time. Unfortunately, he did not realize this until about a year after they came down from Brokeback Mt. By then, it was "too late." They were both married and had children.
That's what Ennis tells Jack at the Siesta Motel four years later, in 1967. (When Jack left Signal, Wyoming in his pickup truck, after they came down from Brokeback Mt. in 1963, Ennis suddenly feels sick. It's "as if his intestines were being pulled out yard-by-yard." He turns into the doorway of a shed he's walking by, stoops, squats, and begans hitting the wall with his fist. He thought he had the dry heaves from a hangover. He doesn't feel better for a long time afterwards, according to Annie Proulx in her Short Story.) When Jack is with him in the Siesta Motel, Ennis tells him he should have never left him "outta his sight."
Jack may never have fully known (consciously) that what he felt for Ennis was love. Annie Proulx describes Jack's favorite memory of Ennis in her Short Story: holding Jack from behind on Brokeback Mt. in front of the campfire, rocking him into a trance, humming a song to Jack...satisfying a "sexless" hunger in Jack. As the story's narrator, Annie Proulx says that Jack was never fully conscious of what he felt for Ennis (that satisfied his "sexless" hunger).
So, when we see Ennis & Jack on Brokeback Mt. in 1963, neither of them is fully conscious of what they feel for each other. They - two young men in rural Wyoming in the homophobic America of the early 1960s - have no idea of what their possibilities in life could be. They are two young men who haven't realized they've fallen in love with each other.
After four years apart, Jack writes a general delivery postcard to Ennis in Riverton, Wyoming. (Perhaps not having been able to get Ennis's full address, he addresses it simply to "general delivery". Jack could have spent a lot of time tracking Ennis down to find out where he was living. Or, did Jack know from Ennis's descriptions to him on Brokeback Mt. in 1963 of his future plans for marriage to his then fiancé, Alma, that Ennis would be living in Riverton?) Ennis replies on a blank postcard to Jack in Texas, "You bet."
Ennis, as he later tells Jack at the Siesta Motel (in the Short Story), wondered if Jack didn't try to contact him since Brokeback Mt. because he was still angry about Ennis hitting him the last day they were on Brokeback Mt. (Did Ennis ever think of writing a letter to Jack and send it in care of his parents, whom Jack had told him lived in Lightning Flat, WY?)
Unknown to Ennis, Jack reapplied for his job at Brokeback Mt., the following summer. When the ranch manager, Joe Aguirre, turns Jack down in the ranch office trailer, Jack asks if Ennis del Mar has been around. Obviously, Jack was still interested in Ennis.
Even before that, Jack asked Ennis if he might come back to herd on Brokeback Mt. the next summer when they came down to Signal, in 1963, from herding. (This was the same day Ennis had hit Jack with his surprise punch. Jack must have already "gotten over" Ennis's blow, if he ever felt there was ever anything he had to "get over with" - as far as his wanting to be with Ennis was concerned.) On that day, before Jack leaves in his pickup truck to his parents' ranch in Lightning Flat, WY, Ennis says that he's going to get married to Alma. Then in parting, says, "see you around.") Ennis seems to have discounted (or forgotten) the significance of Jack's question - or hint - that he'd like to be with Ennis, again, next summer, in 1964, on Brokeback Mt.
Ennis is twitching with excitement, jumpy in excited anticipation, while he waits for Jack to come to Riverton, WY, in 1967. Alma, probably curious, proposes that they all go out to a restaurant. Ennis replies that Jack is not the "restaurant type."
(In the Short Story, when Ennis says Jack is not the restaurant "type," Annie Proulx describes Ennis as thinking, while he says this to Alma, of the cans of beans sitting on a log with dirty spoons sticking out of them at their camp on Brokeback Mt. This image recurs at the end of the Short Story, in Ennis's dreams of Jack, taking greater prominence in the dreams that go bad. The pillows become wet with Ennis's tears; the sheets of Ennis's bed remain dry on those difficult nights.)
Ennis smiles the widest, most heartfelt grin he probably smiles in the whole movie when he realizes that Jack has arrived in his pickup truck beneath the apartment over the laundromat. (Ennis is probably more deeply emotional in a happy way in this scene than he is at any other point in the movie.)
At the top of the steps to the apartment over the laundromat, Ennis greets Jack, "Jack fu**in' Twist!" (using the profanity to express disbelief that Jack is once again before his eyes). They embrace. Ennis pulls back, looks around. Then he initiates a kiss with Jack, a sudden release of all his pent-up feelings for Jack that Jack readily responds to (almost with tears in his eyes: full of grief for their years apart; at the same time, happy to be with Ennis, again). Ennis, frightened by the strength of the emotions that overwhelm them both, calls their emotions at this moment "this thing." He fears it will stalk them and return at some impropitious, unfortunate time that will put them in danger from anti-homosexual assailants.
In the end, at the beginning of their final argument in May 1983 on the barren shores of the mountain lake, you can see Ennis acting in dominating ways that are common to the movie's "stud ducks": L.D. Newsome (Lureen's father), John C. Twist (Jack's father), Joe Aguirre. Ennis rants loudly about what he sees as Jack's character flaws, bad behavior, etc. (He doesn't seem to know how to speak to Jack in a soft voice - with any understanding. Or, he chooses not to because he sees his rants as a useful tactic to get Jack to stay on a "short leash": seeing each other a couple of times of year for what Jack calls a "f***" in a high altitude place, far away, at a cold time of year. Jack says he'd rather go someplace warm. When he suggests Mexico, Ennis attacks, saying he knows what "boys like you" Jack go to Mexico for.)
Here, Ennis is carefully watching how Jack responds during this argument. He continuously "sneaks peeks" at Jack, in fact, as he rants at him.
This is something you can also see L.D. Newsome do when he gets up, again, to turn the television back on after Jack has shut it off before their Thanksgiving meal that took Lureen three hours to make. L.D. Newsome, Jack's father-in-law is very obvious in his observations of Jack's response to his latest provocation of his son-in-law. He's waiting to see how Jack reacts before he decides what move he'll make next against Jack, seeking to enforce (reassure himself of?) his position as "stud duck of the pond."
John C. Twist does the same with Ennis. Ennis comes for Jack's ashes at Jack's parents ranch in Lightning Flat, WY. Jack's father is carefully watching Ennis as he tells Ennis about Jack's plans for the ranch. Jack, the last time he visited his parents (after his May 1983 argument with Ennis) no longer talked about bringing Ennis to his parents' ranch as his ranch partner. Jack changed his plans. He was planning to bring up a ranch neighbor from Texas.
Finally, Joe Aguirre, carefully "sizes up" his young ranch hand prospects, Ennis & Jack, before he hires them. He does this many times when he speaks to them on other occasions. (He probably does with everyone else, too.)
But Ennis is no longer looking to see how Jack reacts after Jack asks Ennis bitterly, "How do I quit you?" Instead, Ennis loses control of himself completely (perhaps for the first time since they kissed at the bottom of the steps to the apartment over the laundromat).
Instead of slyly, subtly watching to see what Jack does, Ennis breaks down, crying ("because of you, I'm this way...nothing!"). He hold his hands over his face, reduced to a crumpled, broken rag doll of a human being, torn apart by his emotions of grief. He tries to prevent the world from seeing him. (He's not trying to watch to see what Jack does anymore). He fumbles as he tries to keep his hands over his eyes while also wiping away the tears.
Any effort to dominate the situation is completely stripped away. I think that men, especially, will look away, often into the distance, when they decide to tell each other the truth (talking about what's on their minds). They simply concentrate on what's on their minds, letting the words pour out intuitively. There's no strategy, no effort to match words to a particular effect you wish to see your words have upon others. (A "stud duck" would naturally be interested in the impact his words are having upon others in his efforts to exert "control" over them, in order to manipulate them toward fulfilling some purpose the stud duck has for them.)
Ennis looks off into the distance on Brokeback Mt., when after the first night they have sex together in the main camp, he returns from herding the next evening, finds Jack, and tells him this is a "One shot deal..." (Ennis goes on to claim, "I ain't no queer." Jack responds, "Me neither," with a softness, perhaps even something of a hesitation in his voice and a sad melancholy in his eyes that seems to declare that Jack knows what he's just said is a lie.)
It's not always that way, though. Ennis is also being honest about his feelings when they are camping together next to the stream at some point after Ennis's divorce: Ennis turns to Jack, looks at him, and asks if Jack ever wonders if people can tell who "fellas like us are," just by looking at them, not knowing anything else about them.
When Ennis breaks down and cries, in torment and grief during their May 1983 argument, he does attempt to resist, at first, when Jack rushes to embrace his forlorn lover, desperate in his agony, into the comfort of his arms. Ennis breaks free. Jack, refusing to give up, comes back, again, embracing Ennis, telling him everything will be alright. (Does Jack decide at this point he must abandon Ennis, for Ennis's own good?)
Ennis's collapse shows that love, not a wish to dominate, is his primary emotion toward Jack.
-
In the end, at the beginning of their final argument in May 1983 on the barren shores of the mountain lake, you can see Ennis acting in dominating ways that are common to the movie's "stud ducks": L.D. Newsome (Lureen's father), John C. Twist (Jack's father), Joe Aguirre. Ennis rants loudly about what he sees as Jack's character flaws, bad behavior, etc. (He doesn't seem to know how to speak to Jack in a soft voice - with any understanding. Or, he chooses not to because he sees his rants as a useful tactic to get Jack to stay on a "short leash": seeing each other a couple of times of year for what Jack calls a "f***" in a high altitude place, far away, at a cold time of year. Jack says he'd rather go someplace warm. When he suggests Mexico, Ennis attacks, saying he knows what "boys like you" Jack go to Mexico for.)
Here, Ennis is carefully watching how Jack responds during this argument. He continuously "sneaks peeks" at Jack, in fact, as he rants at him.
This is something you can also see L.D. Newsome do when he gets up, again, to turn the television back on after Jack has shut it off before their Thanksgiving meal that took Lureen three hours to make. L.D. Newsome, Jack's father-in-law is very obvious in his observations of Jack's response to his latest provocation of his son-in-law. He's waiting to see how Jack reacts before he decides what move he'll make next against Jack, seeking to enforce (reassure himself of?) his position as "stud duck of the pond."
John C. Twist does the same with Ennis. Ennis comes for Jack's ashes at Jack's parents ranch in Lightning Flat, WY. Jack's father is carefully watching Ennis as he tells Ennis about Jack's plans for the ranch. Jack, the last time he visited his parents (after his May 1983 argument with Ennis) no longer talked about bringing Ennis to his parents' ranch as his ranch partner. Jack changed his plans. He was planning to bring up a ranch neighbor from Texas.
Finally, Joe Aguirre, carefully "sizes up" his young ranch hand prospects, Ennis & Jack, before he hires them. He does this many times when he speaks to them on other occasions. (He probably does with everyone else, too.)
But Ennis is no longer looking to see how Jack reacts after Jack asks Ennis bitterly, "How do I quit you?" Instead, Ennis loses control of himself completely (perhaps for the first time since they kissed at the bottom of the steps to the apartment over the laundromat).
Instead of slyly, subtly watching to see what Jack does, Ennis breaks down, crying ("because of you, I'm this way...nothing!"). He hold his hands over his face, reduced to a crumpled, broken rag doll of a human being, torn apart by his emotions of grief. He tries to prevent the world from seeing him. (He's not trying to watch to see what Jack does anymore). He fumbles as he tries to keep his hands over his eyes while also wiping away the tears.
Any effort to dominate the situation is completely stripped away. I think that men, especially, will look away, often into the distance, when they decide to tell each other the truth (talking about what's on their minds). They simply concentrate on what's on their minds, letting the words pour out intuitively. There's no strategy, no effort to match words to a particular effect you wish to see your words have upon others. (A "stud duck" would naturally be interested in the impact his words are having upon others in his efforts to exert "control" over them, in order to manipulate them toward fulfilling some purpose the stud duck has for them.)
Ennis looks off into the distance on Brokeback Mt., when after the first night they have sex together in the main camp, he returns from herding the next evening, finds Jack, and tells him this is a "One shot deal..." (Ennis goes on to claim, "I ain't no queer." Jack responds, "Me neither," with a softness, perhaps even something of a hesitation in his voice and a sad melancholy in his eyes that seems to declare that Jack knows what he's just said is a lie.)
It's not always that way, though. Ennis is also being honest about his feelings when they are camping together next to the stream at some point after Ennis's divorce: Ennis turns to Jack, looks at him, and asks if Jack ever wonders if people can tell who "fellas like us are," just by looking at them, not knowing anything else about them.
When Ennis breaks down and cries, in torment and grief during their May 1983 argument, he does attempt to resist, at first, when Jack rushes to embrace his forlorn lover, desperate in his agony, into the comfort of his arms. Ennis breaks free. Jack, refusing to give up, comes back, again, embracing Ennis, telling him everything will be alright. (Does Jack decide at this point he must abandon Ennis, for Ennis's own good?)
Ennis's collapse shows that love, not a wish to dominate, is his primary emotion toward Jack.
Although the confrontation scene was a contest of wills and an exchange of recriminations, I do think that Ennis never consciously intended to impose his will on Jack. As I had noted in earlier posts, Ennis was probably convinced that his way of doing things was the only way to preserve their love from the hostility of society as they knew it.
I think Ennis finally collapsing shows that his attempt to dominate HIS OWN emotions about hios love for Jack proved futile. As much as he wanted to deny his love for another man, he could not bring himself to repudiate it. "I can't stand it anymore, Jack" indicates that the power struggle was as much inside Ennis as it was between the two of them.
-
Beautifully said Tpe. My sentiments exactly!
-
Beautifully said Tpe. My sentiments exactly!
Thanks, aintfoolin, for this confirmation!
Ennis struggling with himself: I guess there lies the issue of dominance.
-
Thanks, aintfoolin, for this confirmation!
Ennis struggling with himself: I guess there lies the issue of dominance.
Dominance is about control, and Ennis's struggling was certainly about control. Trying to make sure he and Jack were safe. As for his supposed denial of his sexuality, if the world at that time welcomed homosexuals with open arms, he would not have been struggling so.
kathy
-
Although the confrontation scene was a contest of wills and an exchange of recriminations, I do think that Ennis never consciously intended to impose his will on Jack. As I had noted in earlier posts, Ennis was probably convinced that his way of doing things was the only way to preserve their love from the hostility of society as they knew it.
I think Ennis finally collapsing shows that his attempt to dominate HIS OWN emotions about hios love for Jack proved futile. As much as he wanted to deny his love for another man, he could not bring himself to repudiate it. "I can't stand it anymore, Jack" indicates that the power struggle was as much inside Ennis as it was between the two of them.
It was exactly at that point that Ennis's control, dominance slips, you're right it wasn't to control Jack, but more likely then not it was all in the effort to control himself. But when Jack wasn't willing to play along in this effort, when it looked as if he going to call it quits, Ennis didn't strike out against him, he breaks down. Ennis's control was based on Jack's willingness to let him have it, and as always Jack yields again to Ennis.
-
It was exactly at that point that Ennis's control, dominance slips, you're right it wasn't to control Jack, but more likely then not it was all in the effort to control himself. But when Jack wasn't willing to play along in this effort, when it looked as if he going to call it quits, Ennis didn't strike out against him, he breaks down. Ennis's control was based on Jack's willingness to let him have it, and as always Jack yields again to Ennis.
And you know what, manhattangirl? IN spite of all the frustration, I think Jack loved Ennis all the more because of this. Jack perhaps willingly subjected himself to an Ennis dominated by unseen demons. It was the best he could do out of love.
-
Ennis, Despite His Doubts, Keeps Jack (Doesn't Want to Destroy Jack's Marriage to Lureen, Either?)
The incompatibility apparently didn't keep Ennis from releasing Jack. I wonder, I don't know about that. But going on along on the premise stated here, wouldn't that make Ennis morally dishonest, a hypocrite and Jack his victim? He loses the " moral high ground", every time he sleeps with Jack, who is he kidding?
Or am I wrong here?
It's an interesting point, manhattangirl. Ennis obviously is torn between his love for Jack and his wish to remain "decent."
Ennis's wish for he & Jack to "remain decent" is a matter of Ennis's commitment to the welfare of his wife, Alma, and his daughters, Alma, Jr. and Jenny, and Jack's commitment to his wife, Lureen, and his son, Bobby. Ennis's fear of being harmed, or even murdered, with the exposure of their homosexuality also prevents him from living with Jack.
In addition, mental rigidity also prevents him from expanding his view of the world beyond a social conformity to the homophobic values of the conservative rural Wyoming he lives in. A more liberal view would allow him the opportunity to live an openly homosexual life. (There is some sign in the movie that Ennis was adapting a more liberal view of his homosexuality. Ennis is watching a TV show - with a dark haired man on the TV screen and a hand gun flashed in the background - in his & Alma's apartment over the laundromat. Alma asks Ennis if he wants to go to a church dance. Ennis, who was very introverted anyway and probably doesn't enjoy going out to social events where he has to meet large numbers of people, tells Alma he doesn't want to be around the fire-and-brimstone crowd.)
Perhaps Ennis has doubts about living with Jack, even in the end - when Ennis's own daughters are close to the age of majority (18 years old) and he will no longer have to pay child support - because he is also troubled about destroying Jack's marriage. At one point, Ennis asks Jack if everything is "normal" in their marriage between him and Lureen. Ennis & Jack are on a camping trip (the one by the stream? where Ennis asks if people "know" about "fellas like us" - if they can tell if you are homosexual just by looking at you).
Ennis seems somewhat surprised that Jack has managed to stay together so long with Lureen. In fact, things even seem to stay on an even keel between Jack & Lureen (at least from Ennis's perspective), unlike Ennis's marriage to Alma (with Ennis's & Alma's many fights and the gradual distance between them that grows ever wider).
Of course, there are fewer financial pressures on Jack & Lureen's marriage. They are family members of a family-owned and operated farm implement dealership in Childress, TX (just slightly to the southeast of Texas' northern panhandle). Ennis, despite Alma's suggestion to become utilities worker, chooses to remain a ranch hand, telling Alma in a self-deprecatingly joking manner that he's so clumsy he'd probably electrocute himself. (Ennis is actually very athletic. He's a good horseman. He's quick when he uses his fists in a fight.) Alma decides to work in the grocery store, herself, to bring in more family income.
But Jack later tells Ennis (on the barren shore of the mountain lake, before their May 1983 argument?) that he and Lureen might as well be conducting their marriage over the telephone. If Jack & Lureen are already leading separate lives (perhaps not consciously doing so), there may be less opportunity for them to have the sort of disagreements Ennis & Alma had.
Lureen is very busy in the farm implement dealership. (She is probably a workaholic, just like Ennis.)
Yet, Lureen also would like her husband to pay more attention to her. Jack & Lureen are sitting together at the same table with Randall Malone and Randall's wife, Lashawn. The two women begin to complain - in apparent good humor (yet, also leaving no doubt they'd like things to be different) - about how husbands never like to dance with their wives. Obviously, Lureen is hinting that she would like Jack to ask her to dance (and, perhaps, in general, be more attentive to her, romantically). But, instead, Jack asks Randall's wife if she wants to dance!
What would be the right way for Ennis & Jack to get out of their marriages (if Ennis were to ever agree to any of Jack's plans for them to live together)? Obviously, there are no hard and fast rules, here.
Under many circumstances, two male lovers may simply need to clear out of their marriages as fast they can, without ever stopping to look back (sometimes even when children are involved). It might be too dangerous for these two male lovers to inform their wives about what they are planning to do, when they are going to do it, and where they'll end up - let alone tell their wives who they are planning to do this with (their male lover).
Ennis knows what can happen to two men who live together. Ennis knows all-too-well what happened to the old gay ranchers, Earl & Ray. (With his father laughing, Ennis was shown Earl's body in the irrigation ditch, with his penis pulled off and his face covered in welts from the beatings of a tire iron, when Ennis was nine years old.)
Even heterosexual extramarital affairs can be dangerous enough, at times. (A jealous spouse might kill the husband or wife who leaves the marriage for somebody else, even if the third party is of the opposite gender.)
But, in general, isn't it best for gay men to explain to their wives what has happened? Their wives are people whom they've lived with intimately. They've shared their lives with them.
Certainly, their wives have invested a large part of themselves in their marriage (even if their husband is gay). Presumably, they love their husbands. It would be very difficult to lose a husband you love (even if he were gay).
If married gay men discuss their predicament (being a gay man married to a straight woman) with their wives, they might reduce the emotional pain of the situation: for their wives, as well as themselves. Their wives could have already suspected something is "wrong" in the marriage. Knowing what's "wrong" might help. At least, they'd have a better understanding of the dilemma they were facing. Nonetheless, when a gay man leaves his marriage, it is bound to inflict emotional pain upon his wife (as the partner left behind).
Alma "knew what she saw" when she saw Ennis & Jack kissing each other through the screen door of the apartment above the laundromat in Riverton, WY in 1967. Finding the note in the tackle box that she had left for Ennis - the tackle box that he had never opened in five years of "fishing" trips with Jack - only confirmed for Alma what she already knew Ennis & Jack were doing together on their "fishing" trips.
Lureen, too, might have had her suspicions about Jack. Ennis calls Jack long-distance in Texas after the postcard he sends Jack returns marked deceased.
(On the postcard, Ennis wrote Jack they could meet in November - as Ennis originally wanted to do, which was the start of his & Jack's May 1983 argument.) It is the second time he's called Jack long-distance in Texas. (The first time was when Alma divorced Ennis. Jack mistakenly thought Ennis was saying they were now free to live together and immediately drove 1200 miles from Texas to be with him. Ennis probably turned to Jack - as his confidant to whom he told everything to - in consolation for the loss of his marriage to Alma.)
Lureen answers the phone.
Lureen tells Ennis over the telephone that she didn't know how to contact Ennis. Jack kept all the names and telephone numbers of his friends in his head (including Ennis's name and telephone number). Why would Jack feel he needed to keep his friends hidden from her?
Lureen said Jack's body was cremated. He wanted the ashes taken to Brokeback Mt. Jack always talked about Brokeback Mt. being his favorite place. Lureen tells Ennis it might only be an imaginary place where the bluebirds sing at the whiskey springs. When Ennis tells her, "No, ma'am. Brokeback Mountain was a real place...," Lureen's eyes become watery, although the business voice she is using remains cold. Ennis told her that was where he & Jack herded sheep one summer.
Needless to say, any children in such a marriage will also feel the loss of a father (a gay father) if the marriage ends. After a divorce, children usually see one parent much less frequently than they did when their parents were still married to each other (and living in the same house, in the same town).
Sometimes, a gay husband and a straight wife might agree to stay married even after the husband reveals he is gay. The wife may allow the husband to have a male lover, to satisfy sexual and emotional needs that can't otherwise be met within the marriage.
Obviously, such an arrangement - openly arrived at between husband and wife - might be difficult for Ennis to imagine between himself and Alma. But he was already living that way.
In fact, he decided, himself, that was what he & Jack were going to do. He makes this decision quickly at the Siesta Motel (in the Short Story). He justifies it by telling Jack that this was all they could do - since they were already married and had children. (The homophobic society they lived in might also kill them if they chose to do otherwise.)
All that was possible for them to do in this situation was to go on living as they were - and see each other once in a while. Jack responds, "Once every four fu**in' years, Ennis?!" (Ennis quickly replies it would be more often than that.)
-
Ennis's wish for he & Jack to "remain decent" is a matter of Ennis's commitment to the welfare of his wife, Alma, and his daughters, Alma, Jr. and Jenny, and Jack's commitment to his wife, Lureen, and his son, Bobby.
Ennis tending the sheep? Or did he want the protection? Sheparding in the center of the flock, the flock wandered off, and he was alone. His fear is what he tended, held on to, and his fear is what flourish.
-
Ennis tending the sheep? Or did he want the protection? Sheparding in the center of the flock, the flock wandered off, and he was alone. His fear is what he tended, held on to, and his fear is what flourish.
If I understand you correctly here manhattangirl, you are bringing up the issue of whether Ennis "used" his wife and family as a protective facade behind which he could hide his true self, am I correct?
I do agree that Ennis seemed to have been dominated by his own fears, primarily.
-
Yes, I've always believe that his marriage to him, insured his safety, remember when he told Jack of his divorce and Jack went to him, , his fear showed the minute Jack pulled up in the truck. He had to hurt Jack, then embrace him, why? Remember the look on his face at the passing truck, and the way he brushed Jack off.
-
Yes, I've always believe that his marriage to him, insured his safety, remember when he told Jack of his divorce and Jack went to him, , his fear showed the minute Jack pulled up in the truck. He had to hurt Jack, then embrace him, why? Remember the look on his face at the passing truck, and the way he brushed Jack off.
Perhaps he loved Alma in his own peculiar way. And he did seem to love his daughters. But yes, I somehow share your feeling that he used his marriage this way. The fear that dominated him seemed to have spilled over into his own life decisions regarding marriage and family.
-
Perhaps he loved Alma in his own peculiar way. And he did seem to love his daughters. But yes, I somehow share your feeling that he used his marriage this way. The fear that dominated him seemed to have spilled over into his own life decisions regarding marriage and family.
I doubt if Ennis in any way loved Alma, I know that is what most of us like to think he loved her in one way or another, but I feel he care for her, felt responsible for her, but love? Ennis lived his life as it was taught to him, as he saw it. His sister married, his brother married, so when he found himself on his own, at nineteen, he also will marry. Ennis lived his life not questioning anything, doing what he was suppose to. He was content with what life was seemingly giving him.
Who is Ennis really? This is not questioned until he meets Jack. Ennis was then introduce to himself in a way that ran counter to everything he was taught. He came into his own emotionally, spiritually, sexually in the arms of another man, and this was too much for him to accept, but couldn't reject. He fought hard against the idea of his homosexuality but celebrated it in the love he found with Jack.
Ennis tried to live the "unqueer" life, desperately holding on the facade, as it slips away from him, he couldn't control his heart, his mind, his body it belonged to Jack Twist, and there was nothing he could do about it.
-
I doubt if Ennis in any way loved Alma, I know that is what most of us like to think he loved her in one way or another, but I feel he care for her, felt responsible for her, but love? Ennis lived his life as it was taught to him, as he saw it. His sister married, his brother married, so when he found himself on his own, at nineteen, he also will marry. Ennis lived his life not questioning anything, doing what he was suppose to. He was content with what life was seemingly giving him.
Who is Ennis really? This is not questioned until he meets Jack. Ennis was then introduce to himself in a way that ran counter to everything he was taught. He came into his own emotionally, spiritually, sexually in the arms of another man, and this was too much for him to accept, but couldn't reject. He fought hard against the idea of his homosexuality but celebrated it in the love he found with Jack.
Ennis tried to live the "unqueer" life, desperately holding on the facade, as it slips away from him, he couldn't control his heart, his mind, his body it belonged to Jack Twist, and there was nothing he could do about it.
You may have a point. Perhaps he cared for her more than he loved her. And initially, he did seem to dominate her initially, no?
It is really hard to put a clean answer to Ennis's identity, especially when we talk about the dymanic of dominance with regard to his love for Jack. But yes, one thing I seem to know is that he struggled primarily with himslef and his identity because of what he found out about himself through Jack. THis is perhaps why his struggle at mastery over himself became somewhat disguised into waht seemed like a desire to dominate Jack -- Jack was, after all, the catalyst for the struggle within.
-
You may have a point. Perhaps he cared for her more than he loved her. And initially, he did seem to dominate her initially, no?
It is really hard to put a clean answer to Ennis's identity, especially when we talk about the dymanic of dominance with regard to his love for Jack. But yes, one thing I seem to know is that he struggled primarily with himself and his identity because of what he found out about himself through Jack. This is perhaps why his struggle at mastery over himself became somewhat disguised into what seemed like a desire to dominate Jack -- Jack was, after all, the catalyst for the struggle within.
This is just right, Thomas. Ennis is a difficult person and personality, and how you have described it is probably very close to just what was going on with him in his dealings with Jack.
kathy
-
This is just right, Thomas. Ennis is a difficult person and personality, and how you have described it is probably very close to just what was going on with him in his dealings with Jack.
kathy
Thanks kathy.
Often, we fear those people we love the most because they hold the power to reveal to us so much of who we are. This is why we sometimes resist love, as much as we try to embrace it.
-
Alma's Independence; Did Ennis Love Alma?
You may have a point. Perhaps he cared for her more than he loved her. And initially, he did seem to dominate her initially, no?
If Ennis did "dominate" Alma, initially, was it that she, too, was willing to go along with what Ennis wanted (just as Jack did later on)? She agreed to live on a lonely ranch, far away from other people (who being far away would be less likely to find out about Ennis's homosexuality).
Ennis, on a ranch, would find it easier to maintain the facade of being "normal" (heterosexual), since being on a ranch helped to reinforce a particular image of himself. (Ennis describes his parents as "ranch folk" to Jack, very early in the movie.)
But later, of course, Alma begins to assert herself more in their marriage. She persuades Ennis to move to town. She meets his practical argument to the contrary by finding a cheap place to live in town: the apartment over the laundromat in Riverton, WY (meeting Ennis's contention that living on the ranch was cheaper than living in town). She also overcomes his emotional sentiments to stay on the ranch by telling Ennis that his daughters, Alma, Jr. and Jenny, will be able to have friends and won't have to grow up as "lonely" as Ennis did (an argument that convinces Ennis despite having at least one brother and one sister, if not more, of his own). Alma adds that she won't be as "lonely" in town, either. Neither will Ennis.
At this point, if it wasn't that way before, the balance (of who loves the other most) in their marriage becomes equal. (It may have been that way before. At the outdoor drive-in movie, when they are sitting in their vehicle watching a black & white Southern California beach movie typical of the 1960s, Ennis drapes his arm behind Alma. She pulls his hand down onto her shoulder, the fingers touching her body. He accepts her gesture showing a wish for greater closeness betwen them he doesn't resist.)
It's hard to distinguish between "caring" and "love." I suppose "love" is a word to show taking pleasure in having love for somebody. (Certainly, Ennis took great pleasure in his love of Jack, for example.) Yet, watching Ennis & Alma slide down the snowy hill on the sled, and playing with each other, when Alma pulls him into the snow, there were also times when Ennis enjoyed Alma's company, too.
I think that Ennis, at least as far as he described his own views (to Jack at the Siesta Motel in 1967) would say that even if he & Jack didn't love their wives, they should still remain with them. At the Siesta Motel, Ennis told Jack they should remain "decent" - presumably by remaining with their wives and children, taking these commitments seriously. Ennis may have even doubted Jack wanted his son, Bobby. (Jack said that he'd rather have "none of neither" when Ennis tells him that he wished he had a boy, just as Jack had. But Jack was probably just frustrated by Ennis's unwillingness to live together. He did care about his son's educational difficulties because of dyslexia.)
I agree that Ennis was afraid - very afraid - of what might happen to both him & Jack if their public heterosexual facades were to be removed (if they fell apart simply because Ennis & Jack stopped caring about carrying on the pretense of heterosexuality or if they were stripped away from them because of their exposure by others, such as Alma's accusation, when she and Ennis were washing dishes together after Thanksgiving).
But I think also Ennis cared about his wife and daughters: about what would happen to them if he left them for Jack. How would they feel? How much would they be hurt? I also think worried about what would happen to Jack's family in the same way (even if Jack didn't appear to).
-
Alma's Independence; Did Ennis Love Alma?
If Ennis did "dominate" Alma, initially, was it that she, too, was willing to go along with what Ennis wanted (just as Jack did later on)? She agreed to live on a lonely ranch, far away from other people (who being far away would be less likely to find out about Ennis's homosexuality).
Ennis, on a ranch, would find it easier to maintain the facade of being "normal" (heterosexual), since being on a ranch helped to reinforce a particular image of himself. (Ennis describes his parents as "ranch folk" to Jack, very early in the movie.)
But later, of course, Alma begins to assert herself more in their marriage. She persuades Ennis to move to town. She meets his practical argument to the contrary by finding a cheap place to live in town: the apartment over the laundromat in Riverton, WY (meeting Ennis's contention that living on the ranch was cheaper than living in town). She also overcomes his emotional sentiments to stay on the ranch by telling Ennis that his daughters, Alma, Jr. and Jenny, will be able to have friends and won't have to grow up as "lonely" as Ennis did (an argument that convinces Ennis despite having at least one brother and one sister, if not more, of his own). Alma adds that she won't be as "lonely" in town, either. Neither will Ennis.
At this point, if it wasn't that way before, the balance (of who loves the other most) in their marriage becomes equal. (It may have been that way before. At the outdoor drive-in movie, when they are sitting in their vehicle watching a black & white Southern California beach movie typical of the 1960s, Ennis drapes his arm behind Alma. She pulls his hand down onto her shoulder, the fingers touching her body. He accepts her gesture showing a wish for greater closeness betwen them he doesn't resist.)
It's hard to distinguish between "caring" and "love." I suppose "love" is a word to show taking pleasure in having love for somebody. (Certainly, Ennis took great pleasure in his love of Jack, for example.) Yet, watching Ennis & Alma slide down the snowy hill on the sled, and playing with each other, when Alma pulls him into the snow, there were also times when Ennis enjoyed Alma's company, too.
I think that Ennis, at least as far as he described his own views (to Jack at the Siesta Motel in 1967) would say that even if he & Jack didn't love their wives, they should still remain with them. At the Siesta Motel, Ennis told Jack they should remain "decent" - presumably by remaining with their wives and children, taking these commitments seriously. Ennis may have even doubted Jack wanted his son, Bobby. (Jack said that he'd rather have "none of neither" when Ennis tells him that he wished he had a boy, just as Jack had. But Jack was probably just frustrated by Ennis's unwillingness to live together. He did care about his son's educational difficulties because of dyslexia.)
I agree that Ennis was afraid - very afraid - of what might happen to both him & Jack if their public heterosexual facades were to be removed (if they fell apart simply because Ennis & Jack stopped caring about carrying on the pretense of heterosexuality or if they were stripped away from them because of their exposure by others, such as Alma's accusation, when she and Ennis were washing dishes together after Thanksgiving).
But I think also Ennis cared about his wife and daughters: about what would happen to them if he left them for Jack. How would they feel? How much would they be hurt? I also think worried about what would happen to Jack's family in the same way (even if Jack didn't appear to).
What you say here makes a lot of sense to me, jetzenpolis. she, too, was willing to go along with what Ennis wanted (just as Jack did later on)? -- I think this reveals much about the situation.
Ennis caring for his family is certainly tied to his notion of decency: his idea of honor/integrity -- the right thing to do. But I do think that he did love his daughters as much as a father could love those who are his own -- even if they are the fruit of something that turned out to be short of love.
-
Ennis's Personality: Inner Conflict, Mixture of Many (often Contradictory) Traits, Values, Attitudes
...Ennis lived his life as it was taught to him, as he saw it. His sister married, his brother married, so when he found himself on his own, at nineteen, he also will marry. Ennis lived his life not questioning anything, doing what he was suppose to...
Who is Ennis really?...
Ennis tried to live the "unqueer" life, desperately holding on the facade, as it slips away from him, he couldn't control his heart, his mind, his body...there was nothing he could do about it.
It is really hard to put a clean answer to Ennis's identity, especially when we talk about the dynamic of dominance with regard to his love for Jack. But yes, one thing I seem to know is that he struggled primarily with himself and his identity because of what he found out about himself through Jack. This is perhaps why his struggle at mastery over himself became somewhat disguised into what seemed like a desire to dominate Jack -- Jack was, after all, the catalyst for the struggle within.
Ennis's personality is a composite of many conflicting character traits, values, aspirations, fears, and moods. Thus, it is impossible to find a "clean" answer to Ennis's identity.
I agree, tpe, that Ennis's struggle is primarily with himself. He has inner conflicts about what sort of social identity he has, in the relationships built between himself and the other people who are significant in his life: ranch hand, family man, husband, father, "normal" guy, homosexual, Jack's lover, etc. In addition, he has to figure out how to balance these conflicting identities. He must not only balance them with each other but also with his values and with his fears, emotions, conformities, and sense of independence.
As Ennis struggled for "mastery" over himself , he also seemed to subvert and sabotage this "mastery" of himself, too. After all, it is Ennis who replies, "You bet" (presumably with excitement), when Jack sends his first post card addressed "general delivery" to Ennis in Riverton, WY in 1967. Ennis comes under the control of the "thing" (his uncontrolled emotions of joy upon seeing Jack, again, for the first time in four years) and initiates his kiss with Jack at the bottom of the steps up to the apartment over the laundromat. Ennis sees Jack frequently after that on "fishing" trips. (In their May 1983 argument, Jack complains that Ennis used to "come away easy" - from Alma and his daughters for their "fishing" trips.) Alma, in their Thanksgiving argument, while doing the dishes at her second husband Monroe's house, points out that Ennis was all "perky" when he came back from his "fishing" trips with Jack. (Alma tells Ennis that he never took her and their daughters on any vacations, only Jack.)
Ennis never stops seeing Jack. Even after their May 1983 argument, Ennis is ready to go on as before. He sends Jack a postcard saying that they can meet in November (just as Ennis originally decided upon before their May 1983 argument, much to Jack's resulting disappointment and bitterness). Only when the postcard is returned marked "deceased" does Ennis discover that Jack is dead.
My take on Ennis is that he would never agree to live with Jack, although he still loves him and would go on seeing him regularly (on "fishing" trips, a couple of times per year, in a cold place, far away, for a "high altitude f***" as Jack complained in their May 1983 argument). I believe there are differences in their attitudes that could not be overcome (or that Ennis was unwilling to overcome).
However, everything else that has been said about why Ennis refuses to live with Jack is also probably correct. Ennis is afraid of what will happen to him and Jack if their homosexuality is exposed. As manhattangirl says, Ennis may have sought conformity to the world around him in order to avoid being in conflict with it. Thus, by blending in, camouflaged (so to speak, as a "heterosexual"), he remains safe from it (and its homophobia). Ennis might have gone along with what everybody else did because he, too, wanted to be "normal" (heterosexual) just like everybody else, even if he wasn't. As an introvert, Ennis probably didn't wish to "stand out," either.
Again, it's not an "either/or" question in regard to Ennis's personality. That is, it's not a question of whether Ennis is either "afraid" of living with Jack (because of society's hatred of their homosexuality) or whether Ennis doesn't "want" to live with Jack (for reasons of his own because of differences between their personalities, values, attitudes, outlooks on life, etc.).
Rather than it being an "either/or" question, Ennis can be both: he's both afraid of public exposure of his & Jack's homosexuality and he's also troubled by many things he sees in Jack's attitude. (For example, Ennis appears to be troubled by Jack's homosexual promiscuity. Perhaps Ennis may have been less troubled by this than it first appears, though. He could have already suspected Jack was having sex with other men for a long time. When Ennis says, "...Mexico? I know what boys like you, Jack, do in Mexico..." and "If I ever find about what I don't know...," in their May 1983 argument, he is saying, more or less, that he already knows what Jack does and is willing to pretend that it's not happening. I suspect there's something else that's troubling him about Jack that would prevent him from ever agreeing to live with him.)
Whatever character traits, attitudes, and behaviors Jack has that might make it impossible for Ennis to agree to Jack's wish to live together, it can be agreed that substantial differences between them exist. It's just a matter of how much weight which with these differences press down upon the question of their living together. I might say that these differences between Ennis & Jack weigh enough on Ennis's mind that they prevent him from agreeing to live with Jack. You might say although these differences exist, they would not be enough to prevent Ennis from living with Jack (if Ennis could overcome his own fears about his own homosexuality).
Nor do I think my interpretations of Ennis are necessarily the only ones. Other viewpoints provide a very valuable perspective on Ennis. For example, when Ennis & Alma are at the outdoor drive-in movie, watching a 1960s black & white Southern California beach movie, you could look at Ennis from many different angles. Is Ennis just conforming to the standards of 1960s American society and its expectations of universal heterosexuality as "normal" when he drapes his arm behind Alma, sitting beside him in the vehicle? You might also see some hesitation in Ennis's movement of his arm, as he slides it into an outstretched position behind Alma. Does such hesitation (whether it actually occurred in the movie or is only just a distortion of my memory) show Ennis's introversion and shyness, his uncertainty and self-doubt? Or does it show that Ennis has his own doubts about the wisdom of pretending he's heterosexual (when he knows he isn't)? Perhaps his conscience might be troubling him about "foolin'" Alma, leading her to believe that he has an heterosexual interest in her that he doesn't. Perhaps all of these things are going on in Ennis at the same time. There might be other thoughts within him that other people will see that we don't. There's no certain answer, here.
Yet all of these different ways of looking at Ennis are helpful in providing insight into his character.
Ennis's personality is further complicated because he's become so expert at hiding what he feels and hiding who he is. Alma, of course, in their Thanksgiving argument, having told Ennis that she found the same note she had put in his tackle box five years later, says "don't try to fool me Ennis! Jack Twist?...Jack Nasty!" Alma "knows" that Ennis & Jack were having sex together. Ennis still tries to tell her "You know nuthin' about it!" as he grabs her arm and twists it to keep her from saying anything more. (Ennis might also have been upset with her attack on Jack and her view of his love for Jack as something that's only "physical" sex and, thus, "dirty." This might be a third case where Ennis lost control of himself. He bolted, perhaps as much afraid of his own loss of self-control as of having his homosexuality exposed, with Alma shouting behind him, "Get out of my house!")
There's a psychological theory about how you can tell when people are lying in a courtroom. Judges and lawyers often make the common mistake of thinking that if people are speaking loudly, shouting, yelling, and displaying lots of emotion they must be telling the truth. (This is a very dangerous assumption, of course, and an unprofessional one, if it's used to determing the guilt or innocence of a defendant to any significant degree rather than relying upon physical evidence and the consistency of testimony.)
This theory relies upon an observation of the general character of facial expression while someone is speaking. When someone is lying, their face becomes less animated. The facial muscles are held more rigidly. This rigidity in the expression of facial muscles is unconscious. Someone telling a lie has no control over it. Thus, when telling a lie - according to this theory - people will be noticeably less animated in their facial expressions than when they are being truthful.
I read about this theory in an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper. It could have been around the time of the Monica Lewinsky affair (or perhaps much earlier, since the article has stayed with me, in my memory, for a long time). I decided to put it to the test.
U.S. President Bill Clinton said in a nationally televised White House news conference, on January 26, 1998, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." I watched his facial expression to see how rigid his face was. For a normally very animated, effusive speaker such as Bill Clinton (who has been described as being at his "best" in front of an audience), his face seemed almost deathly stiff.
A similar rigidity appears on Ennis's face from time to time throughout the movie. (Of course, this is how the actor, Heath Ledger, plays the character. It is perhaps one of the best acting performances ever. It is certainly one that Annie Proulx, herself, finds amazing, saying that she felt that Heath Ledger had read her mind when she saw the movie, in her January 19, 2006 "Bookworm" radio interview on KCRW-FM, the Santa Monica College radio station in Santa Monica, CA.)
Ennis's facial rigidness seems especially pronounced after his divorce from Alma. But it also occurs before his divorce. On one of their camping trips (while Ennis is still married to Alma), Ennis tells Jack that there's no way two men can live together. Then Ennis tells Jack about how his father showed his young son, Ennis, age 9, and his older brother, K.E., age 11, the old gay rancher Earl's body in the irrigation ditch, the face covered with welts from a tire iron. Ennis's face is very rigid. Ennis is looking away from Jack. His eyes are sad (disappointed because he can't let himself agree to live with Jack?). But his eyes look as if they are looking out through the mask Ennis's face has become. Was Ennis lying to Jack when he told him there was no way two men could live together?
At times, Ennis's mask (facial rigidity) slips away. It falls off when he asks Jack by the stream if Jack has ever wondered if people "know" about "fellas like us" (whether people could tell if Ennis & Jack were homosexual just by looking at them). It's completely removed when Ennis breaks down in their May 1983 argument (and loses control of his emotions, perhaps the first - or second time - that happened since the "thing" overtook him, at the bottom of the landing steps to the apartment over the laundromat in 1967, when Ennis kissed Jack).
He never puts that mask back on after that (at least not with so much rigidity). His face never again seems to give his whole personality the impression of his mask's ghastly pallor. He appears much more vulnerable. He refuses to carry on the pretense of heterosexual romance with the waitress, Cassie. There's a "young" look on his face when he sees Jack's parents in Lightning Flat, WY (when he attempts to collect Jack's ashes to take to Brokeback Mt.) He even agrees to attend his daughter Alma, Jr.'s wedding. His eyes are sad as he looks at the memorial he's made for Jack in his trailer, with the two bloody shirts from their last day on Brokeback Mt. (bloodied by Ennis's nose bleed caused accidentally by Jack) on a hanger with a postcard of Brokeback Mt.
Whatever it is that we see in Ennis's personality that draws us to him - or, whatever it is that we think we see in Ennis's personality - I think it starts to become clearer to us as we go over the details of the movie (again and again). For those of who are so deeply moved by the movie, there is something deep inside of us that the movie has touched upon. It is now emerging out of the depths of our minds, perhaps into conscious thought.
It takes time for this happen. In the meanwhile, we may feel a lot of confusion about Ennis and the other characters. Our minds turn this way and that, as they grope their way through confusion to understanding.
To find answers to the question of Ennis's character, it's necessary to look at many different sides of his character. These, of course, will leave varying impressions upon us, good and bad.
We sort out which of these impressions seem most significant and which seem less significant. I think it's vital that we always keep in mind what we find admirable in either Ennis or Jack (or any of the other characters). We care about Brokeback Mountain because we care about what happens to the characters in it. We care about the characters because we find something in them that moves us, that stirs our emotions. I don't think Brokeback Mountain would have the effect upon us it has if we weren't touched to the heart by Ennis & Jack in some way.
-
Ennis's "unqueernees" he tried to project, his sexual desire, his need, and his love for Jack are all aspects of his life Ennis tried to dominate but had a tough time doing it, so what's the easier way of doing it, is to dominate the object of his uncontrollable desire.
Jack knew this. He knew exactly what Ennis was going through and why Ennis was doing it, "I'm not you", "I can't make it on a couple of high altitude f@#ks" he tells Ennis in the end. "you're too much for me", "I wish I knew how to quit you". And this coming from the object of desire, the one person he wasn't going to lose.
Ennis tried to live exactly opposite of who he was. But the idea of Ennis ever marrying again was out to the question. Alma recommended Ennis remarry again, which he burshed off, Cassie asked his daughter about him remarrying, his daughter wisely answered "might not be the marrying kind", Even Jack asked him why didn't remarry. Ennis would never marry because life with a woman was impossible for him. In the same respect life with Jack was also impossible for him, the fear of living with another man meant death, but Jack was the person he wasn't willing to let go, Jack gave him some kind of a life.
To be able to juggle all these aspects, emotions, one has to be able to dominate and control. And for Ennis to keep control, he had to dominate, and he had to dominate Jack. There was no other way to do it. He had to keep some kind of appearance of normalcy, he had to keep Jack.
-
Ennis's Personality: Inner Conflict, Mixture of Many (often Contradictory) Traits, Values, Attitudes
Ennis's personality is a composite of many conflicting character traits, values, aspirations, fears, and moods. Thus, it is impossible to find a "clean" answer to Ennis's identity.
I agree, tpe, that Ennis's struggle is primarily with himself. He has inner conflicts about what sort of social identity he has, in the relationships built between himself and the other people who are significant in his life: ranch hand, family man, husband, father, "normal" guy, homosexual, Jack's lover, etc. In addition, he has to figure out how to balance these conflicting identities. He must not only balance them with each other but also with his values and with his fears, emotions, conformities, and sense of independence.
As Ennis struggled for "mastery" over himself , he also seemed to subvert and sabotage this "mastery" of himself, too. After all, it is Ennis who replies, "You bet" (presumably with excitement), when Jack sends his first post card addressed "general delivery" to Ennis in Riverton, WY in 1967. Ennis comes under the control of the "thing" (his uncontrolled emotions of joy upon seeing Jack, again, for the first time in four years) and initiates his kiss with Jack at the bottom of the steps up to the apartment over the laundromat. Ennis sees Jack frequently after that on "fishing" trips. (In their May 1983 argument, Jack complains that Ennis used to "come away easy" - from Alma and his daughters for their "fishing" trips.) Alma, in their Thanksgiving argument, while doing the dishes at her second husband Monroe's house, points out that Ennis was all "perky" when he came back from his "fishing" trips with Jack. (Alma tells Ennis that he never took her and their daughters on any vacations, only Jack.)
Ennis never stops seeing Jack. Even after their May 1983 argument, Ennis is ready to go on as before. He sends Jack a postcard saying that they can meet in November (just as Ennis originally decided upon before their May 1983 argument, much to Jack's resulting disappointment and bitterness). Only when the postcard is returned marked "deceased" does Ennis discover that Jack is dead.
My take on Ennis is that he would never agree to live with Jack, although he still loves him and would go on seeing him regularly (on "fishing" trips, a couple of times per year, in a cold place, far away, for a "high altitude f***" as Jack complained in their May 1983 argument). I believe there are differences in their attitudes that could not be overcome (or that Ennis was unwilling to overcome).
However, everything else that has been said about why Ennis refuses to live with Jack is also probably correct. Ennis is afraid of what will happen to him and Jack if their homosexuality is exposed. As manhattangirl says, Ennis may have sought conformity to the world around him in order to avoid being in conflict with it. Thus, by blending in, camouflaged (so to speak, as a "heterosexual"), he remains safe from it (and its homophobia). Ennis might have gone along with what everybody else did because he, too, wanted to be "normal" (heterosexual) just like everybody else, even if he wasn't. As an introvert, Ennis probably didn't wish to "stand out," either.
Again, it's not an "either/or" question in regard to Ennis's personality. That is, it's not a question of whether Ennis is either "afraid" of living with Jack (because of society's hatred of their homosexuality) or whether Ennis doesn't "want" to live with Jack (for reasons of his own because of differences between their personalities, values, attitudes, outlooks on life, etc.).
Rather than it being an "either/or" question, Ennis can be both: he's both afraid of public exposure of his & Jack's homosexuality and he's also troubled by many things he sees in Jack's attitude. (For example, Ennis appears to be troubled by Jack's homosexual promiscuity. Perhaps Ennis may have been less troubled by this than it first appears, though. He could have already suspected Jack was having sex with other men for a long time. When Ennis says, "...Mexico? I know what boys like you, Jack, do in Mexico..." and "If I ever find about what I don't know...," in their May 1983 argument, he is saying, more or less, that he already knows what Jack does and is willing to pretend that it's not happening. I suspect there's something else that's troubling him about Jack that would prevent him from ever agreeing to live with him.)
Whatever character traits, attitudes, and behaviors Jack has that might make it impossible for Ennis to agree to Jack's wish to live together, it can be agreed that substantial differences between them exist. It's just a matter of how much weight which with these differences press down upon the question of their living together. I might say that these differences between Ennis & Jack weigh enough on Ennis's mind that they prevent him from agreeing to live with Jack. You might say although these differences exist, they would not be enough to prevent Ennis from living with Jack (if Ennis could overcome his own fears about his own homosexuality).
Nor do I think my interpretations of Ennis are necessarily the only ones. Other viewpoints provide a very valuable perspective on Ennis. For example, when Ennis & Alma are at the outdoor drive-in movie, watching a 1960s black & white Southern California beach movie, you could look at Ennis from many different angles. Is Ennis just conforming to the standards of 1960s American society and its expectations of universal heterosexuality as "normal" when he drapes his arm behind Alma, sitting beside him in the vehicle? You might also see some hesitation in Ennis's movement of his arm, as he slides it into an outstretched position behind Alma. Does such hesitation (whether it actually occurred in the movie or is only just a distortion of my memory) show Ennis's introversion and shyness, his uncertainty and self-doubt? Or does it show that Ennis has his own doubts about the wisdom of pretending he's heterosexual (when he knows he isn't)? Perhaps his conscience might be troubling him about "foolin'" Alma, leading her to believe that he has an heterosexual interest in her that he doesn't. Perhaps all of these things are going on in Ennis at the same time. There might be other thoughts within him that other people will see that we don't. There's no certain answer, here.
Yet all of these different ways of looking at Ennis are helpful in providing insight into his character.
Ennis's personality is further complicated because he's become so expert at hiding what he feels and hiding who he is. Alma, of course, in their Thanksgiving argument, having told Ennis that she found the same note she had put in his tackle box five years later, says "don't try to fool me Ennis! Jack Twist?...Jack Nasty!" Alma "knows" that Ennis & Jack were having sex together. Ennis still tries to tell her "You know nuthin' about it!" as he grabs her arm and twists it to keep her from saying anything more. (Ennis might also have been upset with her attack on Jack and her view of his love for Jack as something that's only "physical" sex and, thus, "dirty." This might be a third case where Ennis lost control of himself. He bolted, perhaps as much afraid of his own loss of self-control as of having his homosexuality exposed, with Alma shouting behind him, "Get out of my house!")
There's a psychological theory about how you can tell when people are lying in a courtroom. Judges and lawyers often make the common mistake of thinking that if people are speaking loudly, shouting, yelling, and displaying lots of emotion they must be telling the truth. (This is a very dangerous assumption, of course, and an unprofessional one, if it's used to determing the guilt or innocence of a defendant to any significant degree rather than relying upon physical evidence and the consistency of testimony.)
This theory relies upon an observation of the general character of facial expression while someone is speaking. When someone is lying, their face becomes less animated. The facial muscles are held more rigidly. This rigidity in the expression of facial muscles is unconscious. Someone telling a lie has no control over it. Thus, when telling a lie - according to this theory - people will be noticeably less animated in their facial expressions than when they are being truthful.
I read about this theory in an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper. It could have been around the time of the Monica Lewinsky affair (or perhaps much earlier, since the article has stayed with me, in my memory, for a long time). I decided to put it to the test.
U.S. President Bill Clinton said in a nationally televised White House news conference, on January 26, 1998, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." I watched his facial expression to see how rigid his face was. For a normally very animated, effusive speaker such as Bill Clinton (who has been described as being at his "best" in front of an audience), his face seemed almost deathly stiff.
A similar rigidity appears on Ennis's face from time to time throughout the movie. (Of course, this is how the actor, Heath Ledger, plays the character. It is perhaps one of the best acting performances ever. It is certainly one that Annie Proulx, herself, finds amazing, saying that she felt that Heath Ledger had read her mind when she saw the movie, in her January 19, 2006 "Bookworm" radio interview on KCRW-FM, the Santa Monica College radio station in Santa Monica, CA.)
Ennis's facial rigidness seems especially pronounced after his divorce from Alma. But it also occurs before his divorce. On one of their camping trips (while Ennis is still married to Alma), Ennis tells Jack that there's no way two men can live together. Then Ennis tells Jack about how his father showed his young son, Ennis, age 9, and his older brother, K.E., age 11, the old gay rancher Earl's body in the irrigation ditch, the face covered with welts from a tire iron. Ennis's face is very rigid. Ennis is looking away from Jack. His eyes are sad (disappointed because he can't let himself agree to live with Jack?). But his eyes look as if they are looking out through the mask Ennis's face has become. Was Ennis lying to Jack when he told him there was no way two men could live together?
At times, Ennis's mask (facial rigidity) slips away. It falls off when he asks Jack by the stream if Jack has ever wondered if people "know" about "fellas like us" (whether people could tell if Ennis & Jack were homosexual just by looking at them). It's completely removed when Ennis breaks down in their May 1983 argument (and loses control of his emotions, perhaps the first - or second time - that happened since the "thing" overtook him, at the bottom of the landing steps to the apartment over the laundromat in 1967, when Ennis kissed Jack).
He never puts that mask back on after that (at least not with so much rigidity). His face never again seems to give his whole personality the impression of his mask's ghastly pallor. He appears much more vulnerable. He refuses to carry on the pretense of heterosexual romance with the waitress, Cassie. There's a "young" look on his face when he sees Jack's parents in Lightning Flat, WY (when he attempts to collect Jack's ashes to take to Brokeback Mt.) He even agrees to attend his daughter Alma, Jr.'s wedding. His eyes are sad as he looks at the memorial he's made for Jack in his trailer, with the two bloody shirts from their last day on Brokeback Mt. (bloodied by Ennis's nose bleed caused accidentally by Jack) on a hanger with a postcard of Brokeback Mt.
Whatever it is that we see in Ennis's personality that draws us to him - or, whatever it is that we think we see in Ennis's personality - I think it starts to become clearer to us as we go over the details of the movie (again and again). For those of who are so deeply moved by the movie, there is something deep inside of us that the movie has touched upon. It is now emerging out of the depths of our minds, perhaps into conscious thought.
It takes time for this happen. In the meanwhile, we may feel a lot of confusion about Ennis and the other characters. Our minds turn this way and that, as they grope their way through confusion to understanding.
To find answers to the question of Ennis's character, it's necessary to look at many different sides of his character. These, of course, will leave varying impressions upon us, good and bad.
We sort out which of these impressions seem most significant and which seem less significant. I think it's vital that we always keep in mind what we find admirable in either Ennis or Jack (or any of the other characters). We care about Brokeback Mountain because we care about what happens to the characters in it. We care about the characters because we find something in them that moves us, that stirs our emotions. I don't think Brokeback Mountain would have the effect upon us it has if we weren't touched to the heart by Ennis & Jack in some way.
I highlighted the portions that struck me, in particular.
For you, it would seem then that Ennis's behavior toward Jack is due in part to a "revulsion" to aspects of Jack's behavior, and not really an issue of dominance -- i.e., imposing his will for the sake of exercising power. From what you say here, Ennis did seem to have personal objectios to certain things about Jack, and would therefore imply an underlying incompatibility between them.
I would open the floor to reactions about this from the other members.
It is a challenging proposition.
-
But isn't the living that life of so call "normalcy" is exactly what is killing Ennis spiritually and mentally, along with personality?
Ennis's sexuality is the reason for his trouble mind. This may not be a popular opinion, but I truly think that Ennis identified his homosexuality, named it, called it out, and tried to tame it. Jack was just being who he was. But Ennis thought on it, hid it, suppressed it. It was this "thing" that he wrestle with. In the same respect in some odd way accepted it, he had to for without accepting it how could he be with Jack whom he loved, need and wanted more than anyone in his life.
On this basis alone whatever values, views of Jack, the need to conform is totally based on his fear, and his realization of his sexuality. He loses part of himself every year that goes by. He hardens his position with Jack, but at what cost? What is left to him, until at the end love was what he really was fighting against.
Ennis wasn't a Puritan, he didn't look down on Jack for going Mexico, he was enraged, jealous, hurt. He knew why Jack went to Mexico, how could he stop him from going, what could he do keep him faithful, giving it only to him? And what is Jack to do, when the man he love and want, limits him to once or twice a year be with him. It's amazing that Jack returns every year, and why? He loves Ennis. Jack wasn't like Ennis, nor was he suppose to be. Ennis was his own creation.
Two things were at the root of Ennis's being and caused him to struggle with his identity as a man: his sexuality and his fear of it. To control both whatever Ennis said or done was to keep safe the "thing" that caused him great pain, confusion, doubt, but something he couldn't live without. IMO.
-
But isn't the living that life of so call "normalcy" is exactly what is killing Ennis spiritually and mentally, along with personality?
Ennis's sexuality is the reason for his trouble mind. This may not be a popular opinion, but I truly think that Ennis identified his homosexuality, named it, called it out, and tried to tame it. Jack was just being who he was. But Ennis thought on it, hid it, suppressed it. It was this "thing" that he wrestle with. In the same respect in some odd way accepted it, he had to for without accepting it how could he be with Jack whom he loved, need and wanted more than anyone in his life.
On this basis alone whatever values, views of Jack, the need to conform is totally based on his fear, and his realization of his sexuality. He loses part of himself every year that goes by. He hardens his position with Jack, but at what cost? What is left to him, until at the end love was what he really was fighting against.
for going Mexico, he was enraged, jealous, hurt. He knew why Jack went to Mexico, how could he stop him from going, what could he do keep him faithful, giving it only to him? And what is Jack to do, when the man he love and want, limits him to once or twice a year be with him. It's amazing that Jack returns every year, and why? He loves Ennis. Jack wasn't like Ennis, nor was he suppose to be. Ennis was his own creation.
Ennis wasn't a Puritan, he didn't look down on Jack
Two things were at the root of Ennis's being and caused him to struggle with his identity as a man: his sexuality and his fear of it. To control both whatever Ennis said or done was to keep safe the "thing" that caused him great pain, confusion, doubt, but something he couldn't live without. IMO.
Yes, he was hurt, jeaulous , shocked and very angry (which stems from the hurt ), that his suspision was confirmed about Mexico. Even shoved and threatened Jack. As a man who grew up with certain values, Ennis may very well have been repulsed by his lover Jack , paying strangers for sex in Mexico. Giving away a part of himself that Ennis selfishly considered his alone. These values are something apart from his love for Jack. Ennis will always love Jack , for enlightening him to true love alone though he may disagree with Jack on some matters. He had these values before he met Jack.
He was raised up in a home where everyone walked basically the straight and narrow road through life. Order and obediance ruled , or you would be dealt with with a firm hand. He must never stray from his past upbringing or there will be bad consecquences to be paid. This drill went on until it was fully ingrained in his head. Jack, visiting Mexico to have cheap sex with someone is totally * out of order* in Ennis's mind though Jack did it out of desperation for *closeness* physically with someone.
Ennis saw a graphic picture of death at a young age which I feel made Ennis fear death( and a horrible death like he saw) , traumatized him into thinking that if he allows his true self to shine through, He will be hurt or killed and even worsre for him, have happen what he is convinced happened concerning Jack's death. . The tireirons got him. This may or not be true but to Ennis it is a *most likely* scenario.
Ennis's fears are what drives alot of his decisions in the relationship with Jack he wants to protect Jack, thus preserving the love he has for him, It's not vindicative on his part to dominate Jack either. Yes, Ennis is a very masculine, dominanant personality. but he will never be willing to hurt Jack directly by not fully committing to the relationship by living together.
I have often spoke of Ennis's sacrifices to be with Jack when he could. He quit jobs to be with Jack. Suffered through the humiliation of divorce from Alma, although saddened to tears over it ,he had to realize it was best, but he also felt the loss of his family and his failures concerning them. All to be with Jack.
And sweet Jack was there, through all of it . Met Ennis's fam at some points along the way and treated them with respect, Met Ennis for 20 years to spend time with him. Loved above and beyond for Ennis,
I still believe that Ennis really wanted to be what Jack wanted him to be, but Jack was asking something of Ennis that Ennis not just would'nt give.., but could'nt give. Could'nt ready himself for what he was sure would befall them if they defied a narrow minded society. His fears ruled him, but so did his basic core values and beliefs,To him, it's Earl and Ray all over again , but this time, it was going to be some one HE loved. His Jack. I think he really believed this .
In the end Ennis greived for what could have been, but most of all he greived for the companionship, yes, the sex, the understanding , the acceptantace , the friendship, and yes the love he had for Jack. Everything he had in Jack was no longer availiable to him , not because he wanted to dominate Jack but because he could'nt protect him. This is MO.
-
But isn't the living that life of so call "normalcy" is exactly what is killing Ennis spiritually and mentally, along with personality?
Ennis's sexuality is the reason for his trouble mind. This may not be a popular opinion, but I truly think that Ennis identified his homosexuality, named it, called it out, and tried to tame it. Jack was just being who he was. But Ennis thought on it, hid it, suppressed it. It was this "thing" that he wrestle with. In the same respect in some odd way accepted it, he had to for without accepting it how could he be with Jack whom he loved, need and wanted more than anyone in his life.
Excellent! My thought, exactly.
There is an intrinsic dichotomy within Ennis -- call it a split identity. A part of him rejects his true nature, whereasthe other part reacts to Jack with whole heart and mind. The struggle between these two competing halves for dominance is the true source of Ennis's pain.
On this basis alone whatever values, views of Jack, the need to conform is totally based on his fear, and his realization of his sexuality. He loses part of himself every year that goes by. He hardens his position with Jack, but at what cost? What is left to him, until at the end love was what he really was fighting against.
Ennis wasn't a Puritan, he didn't look down on Jack for going Mexico, he was enraged, jealous, hurt. He knew why Jack went to Mexico, how could he stop him from going, what could he do keep him faithful, giving it only to him? And what is Jack to do, when the man he love and want, limits him to once or twice a year be with him. It's amazing that Jack returns every year, and why? He loves Ennis. Jack wasn't like Ennis, nor was he suppose to be. Ennis was his own creation.
Two things were at the root of Ennis's being and caused him to struggle with his identity as a man: his sexuality and his fear of it. To control both whatever Ennis said or done was to keep safe the "thing" that caused him great pain, confusion, doubt, but something he couldn't live without. IMO.
Agreed. There was jealousy in Ennis's reaction. It must have surprised Ennis too. Perhaps he had never admitted it until then that he cared about who Jack consorted with. He cared because that part of him that reacted to Jack did not want to share him with anyone else.
This was quite unreasonable, given that Ennis wanted his cake and eat it too, so to speak. It reveals the fissure in Ennis's nature...
-
***
Ennis's fears are what drives alot of his decisions in the relationship with Jack he wants to protect Jack, thus preserving the love he has for him, It's not vindicative on his part to dominate Jack either. Yes, Ennis is a very masculine, dominanant personality. but he will never be willing to hurt Jack directly by not fully committing to the relationship by living together.
I have often spoke of Ennis's sacrifices to be with Jack when he could. He quit jobs to be with Jack. Suffered through the humiliation of divorce from Alma, although saddened to tears over it ,he had to realize it was best, but he also felt the loss of his family and his failures concerning them. All to be with Jack.
***
In the end Ennis greived for what could have been, but most of all he greived for the companionship, yes, the sex, the understanding , the acceptantace , the friendship, and yes the love he had for Jack. Everything he had in Jack was no longer availiable to him , not because he wanted to dominate Jack but because he could'nt protect him. This is MO.
I think what you also say here is also true, aintfoolin. I really do believe that Ennis insisted on his point of view because this was the only way he knew to protect their love for each other.
Ennis's flaw was his inability to see any other possibility beyond that point of view. He was so dominated by this fear that it made him blind to the possibilities of taking risks. Sadly, he found this out all too late.
-
I think what you also say here is also true, aintfoolin. I really do believe that Ennis insisted on his point of view because this was the only way he knew to protect their love for each other.
Ennis's flaw was his inability to see any other possibility beyond that point of view. He was so dominated by this fear that it made him blind to the possibilities of taking risks. Sadly, he found this out all too late.
So sad, that Ennis couldn't break out of that limited view. And it kept being perpetuated by his staying in the small town and only going to the wilderness to meet Jack. Whereas Jack knew some of the bigger cities. Besides Jack being a risk-taker, and as you said, Thomas, risk was not part of Ennis's nature. It might have been, though...
kathy
-
Kathy, tpe , aintfoolin, great exchanges. Ennis was not a risk taker like Kathy and tpe pointed out, "I'll stick with beans", comment showed us that. Ennis may have been a dominant male, but he also was subserviant to the rules. Jack was not a dominant male, and was submissive to Ennis, but broke the rules when needed. This is what made Ennis almost crazy with fear and longing for Jack, could it be that control was the only answer in his keeping Jack on that short leash?
-
MG: Put perfectly, succinctly. This seems at the crux of this matter between them regarding dominance.
kathy
-
So sad, that Ennis couldn't break out of that limited view. And it kept being perpetuated by his staying in the small town and only going to the wilderness to meet Jack. Whereas Jack knew some of the bigger cities. Besides Jack being a risk-taker, and as you said, Thomas, risk was not part of Ennis's nature. It might have been, though...
kathy
What seemed to be Jack allowing Ennis to dominate the situation may after all be just Jack understanding that Ennis didn't want to take the risks. Jack was surprisingly too acquiescent. Perhaps it was his way of not insisting on Ennis taking the risks he himself took. Jack should have known better. To get what he wanted -- a life relatively out in the open with Ennis, risk was absolutely necessary.
-
Kathy, tpe , aintfoolin, great exchanges. Ennis was not a risk taker like Kathy and tpe pointed out, "I'll stick with beans", comment showed us that. Ennis may have been a dominant male, but he also was subserviant to the rules. Jack was not a dominant male, and was submissive to Ennis, but broke the rules when needed. This is what made Ennis almost crazy with fear and longing for Jack, could it be that control was the only answer in his keeping Jack on that short leash?
Good point, manhattangirl: "I'll stick with beans" certainly illustrates Ennis's point of view. Subservience to the "rules" was something that dominated Ennis himself -- and not only in his relationship with Jack, apparently. His not understanding Alma's growing demands may in part be due to this innate conservatism.