It's no can of worms to me! This is a "reprint." I originally ran it at AnnieProulx.com.
Many of us have realized that “Brokeback Mountain” is much stronger than the sum of its parts, that the story has power and universality that go far beyond its being just the tale of a couple of cowboys who happen to fall in love. I’ve been reticent to submit the following piece, but since the originator of this thread referred to both the mythology of “Brokeback,” and its tragic implications, I’ve felt empowered. And, since Annie Proulx herself refers to Brokeback as a mythological place, I decided “Oh, why not.” Everyone works through “Brokeback Mountain” in his or her own special way. This is mine.
When Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist meet they are equals. They are the same age, and from similar backgrounds. They are both dirt poor and “inured to the stoic life.” They have each suffered a childhood trauma. At age nine Ennis and his brother, K. E., are taken by their father to see the mutilated remains of a homosexual rancher, murdered with a tire iron because he was “different.” The impact on Ennis is irreversible. He is a homophobe, a word that he probably wouldn’t understand, but a concept that he grasps all to well. Jack discovers at age five, through a humiliating bathroom incident with his uncircumcised father, that he has been clipped. He feels that he has been branded; he feels that he is “different.” In Jack, Ennis discovers the only great love of his life, and the epitome of his greatest horror.
Ennis and Jack are Adam and Adam in a wilderness Garden of Eden. They are “the eternal couple,” both individually and together they embody the twisting together of love and passion, love and fear, love and hatred. Together they work to carve out an idyllic life on Brokeback. They gather food, they hunt, they tend the sheep, they cook… in all ways they take care of each other. They become one hand washing the other, one heart, one soul, two bodies inextricably entwined. They own the world, and nothing seems wrong.
There is a serpent in the Garden. The personification is the sheep “baron,” Joe Aquirre. He is everything that Ennis fears, and that Jack won’t believe can hurt them. He is the judge and executioner… but he will not harm them while they are on Brokeback. He will let them believe that it could “always be like this,” and then call them back to “Middle Earth” before their time. It is when they ride away from their paradise that Aquirre and his spawn of ignorance, arrogance, hatred, and baseless bigotry will begin their stranglehold. First as an unexpected and, at the time, incomprehensible, burning blow to Ennis’ belly… a blow that brings him, heaving, to his knees… Then, into their lives with marriage, family responsibilities and ever-increasing personal baggage. The love, untouched… the partnership eroded, the more they yearn to be together, the farther the fear and hatred push them apart until the clinching coils of the serpent tighten on a tire iron with a litany of Jack’s indiscretions emblazoned on it in his own blood. Ennis is left alone, sustained by dreams… not of what might have been, but of what once was.
Are Jack and Ennis tragic, in the classical sense? Yes. Although as a ranch hand and a rodeo rider they lack the nobility usually associated of the kings and heroes of the classic age. Their personal dignities, battered though they may be, and their mythic identities are adequate for this argument. Are they flawed? Certainly. It is inflexibly that will ultimately destroy them. It is their singular adherences as to how their relationship should proceed: Ennis, with caution, Jack, with abandon. There is no compromise. There can be no happy ending.
“Brokeback Mountain” is a narrative and, whether visual or verbal, should not judged by the same restraints as would be a drama intended for the stage. We have the necessary unity of character, but there is no unity of time or place. We traverse twenty years and many miles in the space of fifty pages, or two hours and fourteen minutes. Even so, the piece is a genuine tragedy… a singularly American tragedy.
We have our Protagonist. There is no Ennis without Jack; no Jack without Ennis. For this argument, they are one. Our Antagonist? To a greater or lesser extent, everyone else… anyone who would stand in judgment of them and their love. There is one exception, someone who emerges in the darkest hour.
We have an initial incident: They meet. Is it fate? Joe Aguirre needs two men. It is only Ennis and Jack who appear in his trailer, each having come from a far corner of Wyoming. They quickly bond, each “glad to have a companion where none had been expected.” We all know the ascending action that brings them together as lovers, and reunites them again and again with a passion that Ennis never could have dreamed, and that Jack obsessively pursues.
A climax occurs when the opposing forces are most equal. In the Greek theater, a device called “stichomythia” may be used to mark the climax. This is a series of lines of dialog that become progressively shorter and faster until the climax is met. The climax in “Brokeback Mountain” occurs at the final camp-out. Instead of the lines shortening, they lengthen in a way uncharacteristic of these men. In the climactic moment Jack says, “You’re too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you.” In the story Ennis simply collapses. In the screenplay he retorts… and then collapses… into Jack’s arms. While their love will never grow old, the damage has been done. Jack knows that a real home with Ennis, the ” little cow-and-calf operation” of his dreams will never happen. Ennis knows that he runs the risk of losing Jack. Neither of them can, nor will, compromise. Love has met its match. Hatred and fear have won the day. The coil of the serpent’s tail tightens.
We need a messenger to announce the bad news. It is Ennis’ postcard to Jack, returned, stamped “deceased.”
We need an “epiphany,” literally a showing forth, a coming of understanding, so that we can begin to appreciate what has transpired. It is Ennis’ discovery of their shirts, stained with his blood of twenty years ago…”like two skins, one inside the other, two in one,” the manifestation of his Jack’s undying love for him, and his for Jack.
We must have catharsis. We need an emotional release, a purification. We have it in three words, “Jack, I swear—.” We have it, more certainly in the stinging tears in Ennis’ eyes. Until this moment, he has concealed his emotions with anger, with violence. Now he weeps, and we can weep with him.
Alma Jr., Ennis’ cherished daughter, now emerges. In the story it is mentioned that Ennis “might have to stay with his married daughter until he picks up another job.” In the film, he agrees to attend her wedding. Either way, her love will be his salvation. Just as a comforting Antigone, the daughter of King Oedipus, leads her broken and blind father from the ruins of Thebes toward his self-realization at Colonus, Alma will ease her father’s sorrow. He may never be fully healed or fully realized, there will be no pillar of cloud, there will be no deification… At best, there may only be the remembrance of Jack’s voice quietly, tenderly, whispering, “It’s alright Ennis. It’s alright.”
