Topic: Ennis & Jack-change and redemption

[Tony]

Most of us love BBM because it tugs at the heart of anyone who has a heart.  And there is a central theme of love being universal as a force
that can't be boxed in.  But am thinking several of the passages point also to the issues of change and redemption.  Did anybody notice that
early on, there was a scene where Jack carries a lamb across a stream, almost like the Good Shepherd?  I don't think it was an accident.  Ennis
was someone paralyzed by emotional repression and he was, basically,doomed.  Then there is the ending, where a battered, weary Ennis is
challenged by his daughter to commit---to go to her wedding.  He makes a sudden decision- he will commit.  And then that is followed by the
haunting ending--"Jack....I swear...".  Maybe not in the SS, but in the movie, it seems to me that Jack taught him HOW to love, to break free
and in that sense, his love for Ennis was redemptive, changing Ennis into someone who could finally risk--commitment.
    Another way of putting this is--what would have Ennis have been had he never met Jack?  The divorce from Alma was going to happen
anyway.  And after that--no place else to go.  There are many layers to this movie, but I think the last scenes do point to the love having
been redemptive.  As in, Jack left him grieving, for the rest of his life, yes, but not spiritually and emotionally dead from the lonely childhood
and the shallow posing of men proving they are men by not loving.  Is this going to get me excommunicated as a "Brokie"? Saying there is
another central theme besides love between two men?  And by redemption, I do mean just that--saved from the hell of a life with no meaning.

[babytammy7]

Hello Tony!!!

I agree with you. In fact, I didn’t agree with Ang Lee when he said that BBM was an American love story ‘cause it is more than that. I share your redemption's idea; it's so true for me, but I have my own ideas too. Well, for me, BBM is a love story, of course, but I’ve always thought that it is a story about people who has the impossibility to express the feelings, and about shame, and, as consequence of that, about loss. To illustrate all of these complicate mechanisms of human being the film is articulated around a love story.

About the impossibility to express feelings: Ennis was a man of few words ‘cause he had a painful difficult to define what he was feeling inside, what he wanted, what he needed, what he was afraid of. This impossibility to express himself deteriorate his relationship with the rest of people and with himself, preventing his happiness ‘cause he never say what he’s really thinking and feeling and then he never has got what he wish.
 
And in the other hand (about shame) he was ashamed of what he wished, and what he really was: a gay man, or a least, a man in love with another man. The film is showing how shame and guilty, through lies, can leads you to the pain and loss, how the refusal of who you really are destroy your entire life, your world…..
The film is a story about an introverted and insecure man who lost everything ‘cause he wasn’t able to accept his love and his sexuality. An important consequence of that refusal is the loss that it cause in people’s life who are living around him; all kind of loss. Loss of trust in everyone who was part of his life in some way (Alma-Ennis, Casie-Ennis, Ennis-Jack). Loss of love (Alma, Casie, Lureen, Ennis, Jack). Loss of family. Loss of dreams. Loss of happiness. And at the end, loss of life or loss of someone you loved (Jack’s death).

I think if Ennis weren’t gay and Jack were Jackie but Ennis were ashamed of his skin’s colour, it would be the same story. The shame and the refusal of what you are leads you to the abyss. I’ve always thought that even if Ennis and Jack were living in big city, nowadays, with tolerant people, Ennis would do the same things in the same way, Ennis would be the same ashamed man, ‘cause the society wasn’t the real problem in BBM; Ennis was the real problem ‘cause he was ashamed of being gay (he hated queers), so he never wouldn’t be able to admit his love for Jack, although he were living in gay’s paradise. I think the Earl and Rich’s story was an excuse he told himself to deny his true fears. Of course, he was afraid of Earl’s death, but he was really afraid of his "abnormal" feelings…he was really ashamed of the fact he could be a queer.

So for me, BBM is a love story based on the shame and the impossibility to express who you really are.

Well, a good friend of mine said to me that BBM is a portrait about the parents’ influence in our childhood and how everything we learn, see and heard in that age can mark and define our life forever.

I hope you understand something ‘cause I have sooooooo many ideas in my mind, but I don’t speak English so I have no idea how to put them in words. Sorry so much. 

[lamusica]

True art means a piace of art affects the person who sees it, hears it,  reads it, or feels it.  It doesn't have to fit into a mold that the creator built around it.  So, if you see the story as redemptive, Tony, that is what it is to you and that is what makes this such a rich, deep piece of art.  I understand your point about the redemption, and I am sure you are right.  I focus more on the story as an allegory.  There are millions and millions of people who never love completely because they are afraid.  Ennis feared love for so many reasons.  We sometimes focus on his fear of gay-bashers, and that is real, but his real fear is of commitment, as you pointed out, and his fear of being weak.  He sees love as a giving in to another person, whether it be Alma or Jack. He's not able to do that.  He cannot be weak.  He didn't survive his childhood by being weak, and he can't break that pattern now.  He must be strong, and strong men do not, in his mind, give in to love, commitment, risk, change, etc.  So, to you Jack redeems Ennis; to me Jack just loves him, no matter what crap Ennis throws his way.  In all their years together, Ennis never weakens, commits, risks or changes.  That all comes AFTER Jack dies.  So, in a religious sense, I get your point.

BTW, welcome to this wonderful forum!

[aintfoolin]

Most of us love BBM because it tugs at the heart of anyone who has a heart.  And there is a central theme of love being universal as a force
that can't be boxed in.  But am thinking several of the passages point also to the issues of change and redemption.  Did anybody notice that
early on, there was a scene where Jack carries a lamb across a stream, almost like the Good Shepherd?  I don't think it was an accident.  Ennis
was someone paralyzed by emotional repression and he was, basically,doomed.  Then there is the ending, where a battered, weary Ennis is
challenged by his daughter to commit---to go to her wedding.  He makes a sudden decision- he will commit.  And then that is followed by the
haunting ending--"Jack....I swear...".  Maybe not in the SS, but in the movie, it seems to me that Jack taught him HOW to love, to break free
and in that sense, his love for Ennis was redemptive, changing Ennis into someone who could finally risk--commitment.
    Another way of putting this is--what would have Ennis have been had he never met Jack?  The divorce from Alma was going to happen
anyway.  And after that--no place else to go.  There are many layers to this movie, but I think the last scenes do point to the love having
been redemptive.  As in, Jack left him grieving, for the rest of his life, yes, but not spiritually and emotionally dead from the lonely childhood
and the shallow posing of men proving they are men by not loving.  Is this going to get me excommunicated as a "Brokie"? Saying there is
another central theme besides love between two men?  And by redemption, I do mean just that--saved from the hell of a life with no meaning.

 This is the way I picure it.  I feel through the years, Ennis felt he had to deny his true self for fear of actually defining himself as a gay man. Deep down inside somewhere though I feel he knew the truth but just could'nt admit it or define it. It was just "this thing" that grabbed hold of him every time  he met Jack.

 He was acting the part, feeling it too every time they made love and every time Ennis met with Jack or longed for him during the abscences in between these meetings. Looked forward to the moments they would go into the mountains and once again he could enjoy being with him. This is what is so complicated and confusing to Jack and the veiwers of the film concerning Ennis. How could he deny what is so obviously so.

When he met Jack, his life was drasticly changed from a lonely existence to a completion like he'd never known before, but still he was he was unable to define it  or say out loud what he felt. Only came close to it in the "aint no reins on this one" scene, so he was aware that this "thing" was not something he could not control, these feelings were real to him. Jack was showing Ennis something he could'nt bring himself to look at with eyes wide open. It is a very difficult task for Jack, trying to get Ennis to at least acknowledge that this "thing" had a name.

In the end it was the passion of the confrontation scene where I feel Jack brought Ennis face to face with his fears and shame. It was Jack, finally bringing  the truth home to Ennis about his fears and what it was doing to both of them. Jack himself was the truth to Ennis.  He knew a relationship must progress and grow to become stronger in a spiritual and emotional sense but serious personal decisions about love  also must be made. Acknowledgements and personal responsibilities must be faced if Jack is to feel Ennis is serious about him and the "no reins" statement made earlier.  I think Jack held on to this admission, it being his own redemption, his hope to go on. Otherwise the statement rings hollow.

After Jack's death, Ennis found that it was time that he did'nt have . Time had come for him to "fess up" to himself about how he denied Jack a life together, that he loved Jack, that  it was indeed Jack who showed him how to love and accept love in return as a gay man. Though Jack was gone, Ennis did recieve redemption when he found the shirts. Now he could define it, put a name to  what this "thing" was, It could only be love, Jack's love and his for Jack.  What does he as a man profit to gain the approval of society,but looses his reason for existing in the first place ( Jack and his love for him) He learned a valuble lesson from Jack in that all the years he denied  Jack and himself true happiness, He is forced by Jack's true nature of love , a gift of redemption, to swear to not let it be lost forever.  Now he knows what Jack was saying through words and actions all along.

He swore to use what Jack had taught him to give love and to embrace it whenever an opportunity presented itself, for it can be snatched away in the blink of an eye. This I feel is where Ennis was truly redeemed by Jack , through this valuable lesson he taught him. In this way, Jack will forever live inside him. MO.

[tpe]

Most of us love BBM because it tugs at the heart of anyone who has a heart.  And there is a central theme of love being universal as a force
that can't be boxed in.  But am thinking several of the passages point also to the issues of change and redemption.  Did anybody notice that
early on, there was a scene where Jack carries a lamb across a stream, almost like the Good Shepherd?  I don't think it was an accident.  Ennis
was someone paralyzed by emotional repression and he was, basically,doomed.  Then there is the ending, where a battered, weary Ennis is
challenged by his daughter to commit---to go to her wedding.  He makes a sudden decision- he will commit.  And then that is followed by the
haunting ending--"Jack....I swear...".  Maybe not in the SS, but in the movie, it seems to me that Jack taught him HOW to love, to break free
and in that sense, his love for Ennis was redemptive, changing Ennis into someone who could finally risk--commitment.
    Another way of putting this is--what would have Ennis have been had he never met Jack?  The divorce from Alma was going to happen
anyway.  And after that--no place else to go.  There are many layers to this movie, but I think the last scenes do point to the love having
been redemptive.  As in, Jack left him grieving, for the rest of his life, yes, but not spiritually and emotionally dead from the lonely childhood
and the shallow posing of men proving they are men by not loving.  Is this going to get me excommunicated as a "Brokie"? Saying there is
another central theme besides love between two men?  And by redemption, I do mean just that--saved from the hell of a life with no meaning.

I do think there is a redemptive element in the end.  We see it in his accepting the wedding invitation.  Even in his final words "I swear...", we see it, even though it is seen through a veil of tears.

I think it is part of the redemptive power of love: that we can lose someone wothout loving that love, and that we can live the pain, knowing that we have lived and loved all the same.

[welshwitch]

REdemptive in the religious sense - I don't know. But in the more general sense of opening Ennis up to the range of human feelings, yes, probably. In Jack's case, I don't think so - inmany ways it seems possible to see him as frustrated and almost resentful, specially by the end, and looking about for alternatives. Ennis always has his own sense that he's doing the right thing to keep him gong, then after Jack's death the knowledge that he has loved and been loved in return. while Jack clings to the shirts in life as a symbol of what there had been, Ennis clings to them after Jack's death as a symbol of what is enduring.

[Tony]

Did not mean in the religious sense.  There are subtle religious undertones within this movie, including what I called the Good Shepherd
scene (Jack carrying a lamb across rough waters), the sudden switch from Ennis puking his guts out, to the "Our Father" prayer, the
innocence of both from religious dogma (shown in the scene where they are singing on the mountain), and Ennis having contempt for
fire and brimstone preaching.
     But these seem to be trying to pry us loose from standard religious/denominational thinking to a broader sense of metaphysical and
real-world redemption, which is a double whammy.  So I do very much mean what the last person replying said was possible- redemption
in that context.  Jack saved Ennis from a life with no meaning and no hope of being loved for himself.  Thanks for supporting that
as possible and also, my apologies for not being more specific.  Tony.

[tpe]

Did not mean in the religious sense.  There are subtle religious undertones within this movie, including what I called the Good Shepherd
scene (Jack carrying a lamb across rough waters), the sudden switch from Ennis puking his guts out, to the "Our Father" prayer, the
innocence of both from religious dogma (shown in the scene where they are singing on the mountain), and Ennis having contempt for
fire and brimstone preaching.
     But these seem to be trying to pry us loose from standard religious/denominational thinking to a broader sense of metaphysical and
real-world redemption, which is a double whammy.  So I do very much mean what the last person replying said was possible- redemption
in that context.  Jack saved Ennis from a life with no meaning and no hope of being loved for himself.  Thanks for supporting that
as possible and also, my apologies for not being more specific.  Tony.

Yes Tony, I do feel that there are religious and classical allusions in the film. 

There is a thread specifically devoted to the image of the Good Shepherd in BBM the movie.  I should try to find it and point it out to you.  It also touches on the famous poem by Juan de la Cruz (John of the Cross) about the Good Shepherd in love, with reference to the character of Jack Twist...

The sense of redemption here is more "mythological" to me.  Not in the full blown sense of Wagner's "Redemption through Love", but something related...

[Tony]

It's probably not a good idea to get off-topic and get into the schmoozy and personal, but have really appreciated some of the replies to the
question I raised.  When I first saw BBM, one scene that affected me was Jack challenging his father-in-law over being an ignorant S O B.
Am kind of limited because of a condition called agoraphobia, which limits my social life, but was ticked off by what friends and family I
have being....ignorant.  And by that I mean---they have trouble empathizing with others. and getting out of the little boxes they call their
minds.  So it's been, for me, a gift to know that you guys are there and that you think and feel and go where I can't go.  I deeply
appreciate your very existence.
     But it's no good to suppose people are automatically ignorant because they don't react exactly as we do.  Many years ago, I had a bunch
of marine friends from the local bar and they were war-weary and battered.  They kept using the homophobic "F" word too much and it was
bugging me, to where I complained.  And they go: Aw, Tony, we don't mean it that way.  We mean EVERYbody is a f----t.  See, you got
your officers and they're medal f----ts, and your bankers, and they're money f----ts, and your motor pool marines and they're grease
f----ts!! No harm meant. So I go...well what do call a gay guy, then?  They ruminated on this for a minute until one said--well that would
be a F----t -f----t!  Actually, despite the use of that word, they were very tolerant and not ignorant at all. Maybe cynical. But given the
tribal love they had for each other, and that some had been a little sexually dubious, I think they would have liked BBM way back then, for
at least, having been battered by the world,they respected the hurts in other people.
     Again,am way off-topic, and stressed out because i gotta go to the dentist and my mind is wandering.  Back to the main point---love can
redeem and that is no challenge to a formalized redemption taught by the various faiths.  Ennis was near to being a dying soul and his love
for Jack redeemed him.  But even if you don't agree, thanks again for not having closed minds and shallow hearts.  Don't know why I tossed
in the story about the marines---maybe because I remembered they were good people and not so ignorant as they might have seemed at
first glance.  Thanks for the replies---it's good to know you are there.  Tony.

[babytammy7]

I deeply
appreciate your very existence.
    .  Thanks for the replies---it's good to know you are there.  Tony.

Oh Tony...thank you so much for your beautiful words!!! For us it's real good to know you are there too, and also we all really appreciate your presence in our forum and your brokie friendship 

Nice to meet you 

[FlwrChild]

Wow. I just stumbled on this thread. Wonderful insights.

I definitely think there are themes of redemption here. And you've put it well. The tragedy (or one element of it anyway) is that Ennis learned his lessons too late to make use of them while Jack was alive. How much more tragic it would have been if he'd never learned them at all. In this way, the gift that Jack has given him is a valuable one indeed.

I also think that there are a lot of themes in this story, which is why it's so universally appealing. There is truly something to touch everyone. And a little piece of ourselves that is represented. Sometimes in ways that we don't even recognize at first. I'm glad you decided to share your thoughts on this topic. In my opinion, there are no wrong interpretations, just personal responses. It's a rare story indeed that can cover so many bases. Great posts, everyone.

[tpe]

Wow. I just stumbled on this thread. Wonderful insights.

I definitely think there are themes of redemption here. And you've put it well. The tragedy (or one element of it anyway) is that Ennis learned his lessons too late to make use of them while Jack was alive. How much more tragic it would have been if he'd never learned them at all. In this way, the gift that Jack has given him is a valuable one indeed.

I also think that there are a lot of themes in this story, which is why it's so universally appealing. There is truly something to touch everyone. And a little piece of ourselves that is represented. Sometimes in ways that we don't even recognize at first. I'm glad you decided to share your thoughts on this topic. In my opinion, there are no wrong interpretations, just personal responses. It's a rare story indeed that can cover so many bases. Great posts, everyone.

Thanks Flwrchild.  Redemption is a strange thing, no?   Sometimes, by a sheer act of losing or dying, we are set free.

[Tony]

HELP!!!!!----Is anybody out there an English major or student?  On this topic, of love and redemption in BBM, it suddenly occurred to me that
there is a poem by an American author, 19th century, I think, that goes right to the point, long before BBM.
    Problem is, am not much on poetry and was especially averse to anything romantic.  But this one was haunting, just like the collision
between Ennis and Jack.  The guy almost describes himself like a spider---"ever weaving, ever spinning" ,casting out threads into the
darkness until "some gossamer thread connects" and his soul is redeemed.
    We don't have many famous American poets and it was in a standard school textbook, so SOMEBODY'S gotta remember this one.  I mean,
there was only about 100, or even less, poems by Americans that ever made it into textbooks for all students.  And I always preferred a beer
and a pool game to any of them.  So now that I need it---I can't remember who wrote it.
     It does go directly to the loneliness of both Jack and Ennis and their hoping for someone who could be someone to them (Jack, actively,
Ennis, clumsily and wary).  It is an overly romantic poem, best fit for those who stumbled out of their first viewing of this film or for those
who carry some scars from the encounter, over time.  But it does relate to this topic and if ANYBODY knows, or is, an English major---could
you pass along the author and the title?  If I remember correctly, it's a knock-down punch, unexpected, like the film.  But---if nobody knows,
no biggie.  It's just that it sums up the hunger there.....before redemption, before..."the immortal beloved". referred to by one of those
European composers, Mozart or Beethoven or somebody.  Dammit- I skipped that class, too!

[FlwrChild]

Hmm, is this the one?

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them--ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,--seeking the spheres, to
connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form'd--till the ductile anchor
hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

-Walt Whitman

I don't know if it speaks to redemption (and this may not be the poem you were thinking of) but it certainly speaks of their connection, and the image of them each adrift to an extent until they found each other and became each other's anchors for the rest of their lives.

As to redemption, my feeling is this. Ennis spent so many years denying not just Jack, but himself. His calling Lureen, going to Lightning Flat to see Jack's parents, erecting the 'shrine' of the shirts in his closet, and the final declaration "Jack, I swear" shows his redemption through his willingness to acknowledge, finally, what they were to each other and to hold that in his heart. And I think you're right, Thomas. Jack's dying gave Ennis the freedom, through the jolt of the loss and the depth of his grief, to finally be able to recognize that.

[Tony]

Yep, that's the one.  Thank you, Flower Child.  Wasn't much on poetry but I knew there was something, deep in the past, that troubled me.
And somehow it related to BBM.  Am glad you think so, too.  Tony.

[tpe]

Yep, that's the one.  Thank you, Flower Child.  Wasn't much on poetry but I knew there was something, deep in the past, that troubled me.
And somehow it related to BBM.  Am glad you think so, too.  Tony.

The pendant to this poem is about the imprisoned soul released in death:

At the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful, fortress’d house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks—from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.

Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper
Set ope the doors, O soul!

Tenderly! be not impatient!
(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh!
Strong is your hold, O love!)


This poem is more about transcendence, rather than redemption.  But it is through the former that we usually attain the latter. 

[FlwrChild]

Well put, Thomas.

[tpe]

Well put, Thomas.

Thanks Flwrchild.  I love the "spider" poem very much. 

[Tony]

That further post from TPE kinda knocked me down as it hit too close to home.  We're not supposed to tell our personal stories-uncool-but,
if you will permit, I will pass along how BBM has carried me through a tough and ugly part of my life.  If you don't print it, that's OK.
     I have a condition called agoraphobia, which means I can't go very far from my home without having severe physical symptoms.
Always knew, rationally, it was from unhealthy grieving over the loss of my parents.  So I go to see BBM and-wham-the grieving scenes blew
me away.  Emotionally (which is different from rationally) I knew I was clinging to the old family home just like Ennis was cliinging to Jack's
shirt, and I began to have some progress out of the agoraphobia.  Little did I know---I was going to need it.
      In March of last year, I went out the front door on my exercise walk around the Navy Base in Norfolk. And like Ennis, I come across a
daggum bear.  Only this bear, you could call George W. Bush and and I got mauled.
     I have a Russian studies background and my friends always kidded me about being on a  security risk list, which I always brushed off
as stupid.  Even after I brushed up against a spy case here (Glenn Souther) and was interviewed by the FBI, I shrugged it off.
     But that day in March, a sailor tracked, circled and confronted me twice.  Freaked me out.  The more so when very soon, I had tactical
units with walkie-talkies in front of me and behind me, every damned day.  Four months later-the explanation.  Front page news story-they
had a sailor spy in custody, Ariel Weinmann.  Charged with stealing "classified biographies."  He had been put up at a motel near my home
and they had let him out, for---exercise walks, as they negotiated with him.  The story was, he was angry after coming across evidence
of wrongful spying and was going to take out George Bush and his Iraq war.  But the damn fool didn't go to the N.Y.Times-he turned it over
to Russia.  And I recognized his photo- that was the sailor who had given me so much trouble.  Only thing wrong, the Navy  said they had
him 3 days later than the day I met him and may have lied to the courts.
    Anyway, I got harrassed senseless-arrest wagons outside my house, and all kinds of intimidation.  Under all this pressure, I lost the
old family home.  Not so good for an agoraphobic.  I lost bad, but I had found another theme in BBM as I endured all this crap---it's OK
to be a loser.  I was discredited, Weinmann got a sweetheart deal, and George W. escaped a domestic spying scandal.  But life can flare
up pretty rough sometimes.
    Am I off-topic?  Hell no.  If it wasn't for BBM, I never would have survived the loss of my home, and never would have adjusted to how
it's OK to lose.  But TPE's post about being freed from the walls around us....sometimes maybe even the walls we love---hit home.
   So, back to love and redemption and Ennis and Jack.  I'd go a little further and say my love for them was a bridge over very troubled
waters and kept me in one piece.  That's my story.  Let's go back to them- they are still with us, still healing us and still bringing a
bittersweet beauty into a sometimes very ugly world.

[FlwrChild]

Well, I guess your post came full circle back on topic. Especially since, as you say, "they are still with us, still healing us and still bringing a bittersweet beauty into a sometimes very ugly world."

So many people have found something healing in BBM, so perhaps in that way, it has brought redemption to us as well.

[Tony]

Ummmmm-sorry for that last post.  Thought about it and felt I shoulda stuck to the rule of no personal stuff-goes off-track.  Have heard
there's a Monty Python character who gets lizards and newts thrown his way by a wizard but he goes: Oy got bet-tuh! I'll leave it there.
   Anyway, was on another site going into the sexuality of Ennis and a question came up which might also be relevant here.  Does anyone
think  Ennis could have fallen in love with a male other than Jack?  Can you picture any other circumstances whereby he would have been
vulnerable emotionally, or was the chemistry so rare it HAD to be Jack?  Sounds like a nothing question, but going there kinda-sorta forces
a review, or replay of who they were and what the heck was going on.
    Am focusing on Ennis because Jack seemed to be looking for real love from anyone, whereas, with Ennis the love snuck up on him and
I don't think he ever saw it coming.  So far, I can't picture Ennis falling for anyone else, which makes it more of a metaphysical collision.
Also, there is a literary theory that where you start from generates, in the text, where you have to go to.
    So is it possible, that by beginning with someone who had trouble with loneliness (even with Alma already in the background) there had
to be- an immortal beloved, unique and able to redeem by love (the topic of this thread) because otherwise there would be no story?
    OK---forget the literary theory--too deep.  Could anybody just weigh in on whether they think, if not Jack, it could have been someone
else?  Tony.

[tpe]

That further post from TPE kinda knocked me down as it hit too close to home.  We're not supposed to tell our personal stories-uncool-but,
if you will permit, I will pass along how BBM has carried me through a tough and ugly part of my life.  If you don't print it, that's OK.
     I have a condition called agoraphobia, which means I can't go very far from my home without having severe physical symptoms.
Always knew, rationally, it was from unhealthy grieving over the loss of my parents.  So I go to see BBM and-wham-the grieving scenes blew
me away.  Emotionally (which is different from rationally) I knew I was clinging to the old family home just like Ennis was cliinging to Jack's
shirt, and I began to have some progress out of the agoraphobia.  Little did I know---I was going to need it.
      In March of last year, I went out the front door on my exercise walk around the Navy Base in Norfolk. And like Ennis, I come across a
daggum bear.  Only this bear, you could call George W. Bush and and I got mauled.
     I have a Russian studies background and my friends always kidded me about being on a  security risk list, which I always brushed off
as stupid.  Even after I brushed up against a spy case here (Glenn Souther) and was interviewed by the FBI, I shrugged it off.
     But that day in March, a sailor tracked, circled and confronted me twice.  Freaked me out.  The more so when very soon, I had tactical
units with walkie-talkies in front of me and behind me, every damned day.  Four months later-the explanation.  Front page news story-they
had a sailor spy in custody, Ariel Weinmann.  Charged with stealing "classified biographies."  He had been put up at a motel near my home
and they had let him out, for---exercise walks, as they negotiated with him.  The story was, he was angry after coming across evidence
of wrongful spying and was going to take out George Bush and his Iraq war.  But the damn fool didn't go to the N.Y.Times-he turned it over
to Russia.  And I recognized his photo- that was the sailor who had given me so much trouble.  Only thing wrong, the Navy  said they had
him 3 days later than the day I met him and may have lied to the courts.
    Anyway, I got harrassed senseless-arrest wagons outside my house, and all kinds of intimidation.  Under all this pressure, I lost the
old family home.  Not so good for an agoraphobic.  I lost bad, but I had found another theme in BBM as I endured all this crap---it's OK
to be a loser.  I was discredited, Weinmann got a sweetheart deal, and George W. escaped a domestic spying scandal.  But life can flare
up pretty rough sometimes.
    Am I off-topic?  Hell no.  If it wasn't for BBM, I never would have survived the loss of my home, and never would have adjusted to how
it's OK to lose.  But TPE's post about being freed from the walls around us....sometimes maybe even the walls we love---hit home.
   So, back to love and redemption and Ennis and Jack.  I'd go a little further and say my love for them was a bridge over very troubled
waters and kept me in one piece.  That's my story.  Let's go back to them- they are still with us, still healing us and still bringing a
bittersweet beauty into a sometimes very ugly world.

Tony, thank you for sharing this with us.  We can only try to understand what you went through and what you are probably still dealing with. 

But I reiterate what FlwrChild pointed out from what you said: "they are still with us, still healing us and still bringing a bittersweet beauty into a sometimes very ugly world."

That beauty is our saving grace.

[FlwrChild]

"That beauty is our saving grace."

Isn't it, though?

Very well put, Thomas.

[tpe]

"That beauty is our saving grace."

Isn't it, though?

Very well put, Thomas.

Thanks FlwrChild.   I think that for most of us here, such beauty has saved us many a time from despair.   Hope and consolation -- they are a form of redemption, no?  And many a time, such beauty gives us precisely these.

For Ennis, it is the memory of their love that saves him, I think, even in the face of death and bitterness.

[myprivatejack]

AMEN TO THIS,TPE.


                                                          

[Tony]

Thanks for the two replies this morning.  Want, if I can, to cover several areas, the final one exploring the topic in a new way, if you are
willing.  First, was not so off-topic as I feared, when a post from TPE triggered my personal story. A huge factor in Ennis refusing to commit
was a hate crime he had seen as a child.  There was, and is, some fraction of my troubles, showing some level of hate from the local feds.
But, most people have seen the video of that student in Florida yesterday, tasered after persisting in a question. And last year, locally,
an elderly couple had two marines break into their home, and, using an intelligence school manual, beat them and terrorized them.  the
local paper is in bed with the military here, so it was the t.v. channels that began wondering---why that particular couple?  Only thing unusual
about them was that--they were prominent in helping the homeless.  My point?  Brokies, please be careful.  The hate crime Ennis saw was central
to the story.  But hate crimes  have mutated and metastazied into areas we would not have thought.  Ask that student in Florida.  Please,
without letting it rule your lives, still remember, it never hurts to keep in mind--it can happen to you.  We AREN'T past the days of what Ennis saw.
    Next, some of the replies have gone into a level of beauty I have not seen before.  In you, as people.  FlowerChild finds beauty everywhere
and, ever so casually, passes it along.  TPE is so thoughtful, it's like he looks, thinks, and then, matches her.  And the others are no slouches
either.  This theme may have a short run, but it has had some rare insights and many thanks for that.
   But finally, nobody is venturing any answer to my question- could Ennis have loved any other male than Jack?  The recent use of the phrase
"soul-mate" has been so promiscuous that it's lost its original force.  EVERYbody uses it and so the concept is watered down- of two people
meant to be together and with no one else.  The arts sometimes propose this and,often, modern music (Moody Blues: "I know you're out there
somewhere").  We all know we can love many people-that's a given.  But can it be true that two were meant for each other, sometimes?
Again, could you personally imagine Ennis falling for someone other than Jack?  Could he have found redeeming love from someone else?
Seems like it's an uncomfortable question and so--no takers.  Or maybe too dull.  BabyTammy-I know you're out there somewhere---if no one
else will give it a go, would you, please?  Thanks, Tony.

[babytammy7]

Dear Tony, sorry so much for my silence!!! I've read all your post but my english is horrible and is so difficult for me express my thoughts in english.....

Sadly, I think that Ennis never would love another man again. It's not only that Jack was the love of his life, but, as I said before, he was ashamed of what he wished, and what he really was: a gay man, or a least, a man in love with another man. He found out through the shirts that Jack loved him so much and that fact changed him so much in so many ways, but, though he have found redeeming love from Jack, if he later had met another man he probably would  have done the same things in the same way and he would have been the same ashamed man, 'cause, as I said in my post, the society wasn’t the real problem; Ennis was the real problem ‘cause he was ashamed of being gay.

I think Ennis learned how to love, how to be more tolerant, more understanding, less paranoid. He learned that if he was loving somebody he have to show him that love, and not hiding it to him as he did with Jack. He learned that perhaps he have to say I love you in any time. He learned that it were better if he let people loving him instead of pushing them away (sorry I don't really know how to say that in english..... ). But I think that Ennis was still keeping without accept his sexuality; I think that he never would talk about it with somebody. So, for me, as long as Ennis don't accept his real gay condittion he couldn't be in love with another man or at least he couldn't have a fine and normal relationship, 'cause, if you are ashamed of loving somebody 'cause that fact changed you into a person who you are ashamed of being, how could you try to love again?

OMG, I'm so sorry Tony, I can't say it in english; I hope it makes any sense for you.

Be well sweety 

[proulxfan]

Tony,

Let me add my thanks for the profound insights and experiences you have shared here.

The easy answer to your question about the possibility of Ennis loving a man other than Jack is "no". And I suspect many will subscribe to the notion that Jack is the only person who could offer Ennis the "opportunity" to be released from the captivity of his fear and shame.

But I feel the question is a bit more complicated, that their meeting on Brokeback Mountain and all it came to mean to both of them was a singular conjunction of time, place and person.

I believe Ennis was at a time of his life at age nineteen, with recently severed ties to his immediate family, such as it was, where he could be open to the potential of friendship/love in a way that he never was again for the duration of the story. Certainly the need for these would be especially acute, and there was still just enough boy left in him to let him dare taking the risk.

And the setting of Brokeback, with contact with the rest of the world being limited to the Friday pick-up of supplies, allowed Ennis (and Jack) a unique sense of freedom and safety. Only such a setting could enable the boldness to step outside the boundaries of his self-imposed isolation: physical, spiritual, emotional...

Given these two "liberating" influences, there remains the question of whether Jack Twist was uniquely qualified to bring Ennnis out of himself, however temporarily. Certainly Jack's capacity to dream the impossible, his gregariousness and comparative lack of fear and inhibition were special and essential qualities. So were his limitations and relative ineptitude, which empowered Ennis's sense of self-confidence, stroking his "need to be needed".

But I guess what I'm saying here is that given the depth of Ennis's neediness-as described by Proulx-his youth, and the sublime qualities of the setting, I think it is just possible that some other man, whose qualities and needs complemented Ennis's own, might have been able to bridge the gulf enforcing Ennis's loneliness. But I doubt it would have been possible in his regular world, and by the time he was married to Alma, the window of opportunity would be firmly closed. And even within the conjunction of time and place on BBM, it would have taken a rare and highly perceptive man to have accomplished what Jack was able to do.

In the words of "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy": Impossible? No. Just very, very improbable.  

[babytammy7]

Tony,

Let me add my thanks for the profound insights and experiences you have shared here.

The easy answer to your question about the possibility of Ennis loving a man other than Jack is "no". And I suspect many will subscribe to the notion that Jack is the only person who could offer Ennis the "opportunity" to be released from the captivity of his fear and shame.

But I feel the question is a bit more complicated, that their meeting on Brokeback Mountain and all it came to mean to both of them was a singular conjunction of time, place and person.

I believe Ennis was at a time of his life at age nineteen, with recently severed ties to his immediate family, such as it was, where he could be open to the potential of friendship/love in a way that he never was again for the duration of the story. Certainly the need for these would be especially acute, and there was still just enough boy left in him to let him dare taking the risk.

And the setting of Brokeback, with contact with the rest of the world being limited to the Friday pick-up of supplies, allowed Ennis (and Jack) a unique sense of freedom and safety. Only such a setting could enable the boldness to step outside the boundaries of his self-imposed isolation: physical, spiritual, emotional...

Given these two "liberating" influences, there remains the question of whether Jack Twist was uniquely qualified to bring Ennnis out of himself, however temporarily. Certainly Jack's capacity to dream the impossible, his gregariousness and comparative lack of fear and inhibition were special and essential qualities. So were his limitations and relative ineptitude, which empowered Ennis's sense of self-confidence, stroking his "need to be needed".

But I guess what I'm saying here is that given the depth of Ennis's neediness-as described by Proulx-his youth, and the sublime qualities of the setting, I think it is just possible that some other man, whose qualities and needs complemented Ennis's own, might have been able to bridge the gulf enforcing Ennis's loneliness. But I doubt it would have been possible in his regular world, and by the time he was married to Alma, the window of opportunity would be firmly closed. And even within the conjunction of time and place on BBM, it would have taken a rare and highly perceptive man to have accomplished what Jack was able to do.

In the words of "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy": Impossible? No. Just very, very improbable.  

Oh friend, what a beautiful and powerful post!!! Thank you so much for that    I really agree with you!!!

[FlwrChild]

proulxfan, I couldn't have said it any better. You have absolutely hit the nail on the head as to the unique set of circumstances that made their relationship possible. I would be inclined to add, though, that I do think Jack and Ennis were, in some way, meant to be together. Of course, keep in mind I am a hopeless romantic. But everything was just so perfectly aligned to allow for this relationship to bloom there on that mountain - why not the who as well as the time, place, etc?

In this past year and a half, I have really embraced the idea of meant-to-be relationships, and a certain sense of everything falling together in a specific way for a reason.

Aside from that, though, I do think that it is unlikely, given his situation, that Ennis would have been open to the idea of starting anything with another man, for the reasons you pointed out.

And Tony, I don't know if this completely addresses your question, but there is a thread entitled If Ennis never met Jack and it can be accessed here:

http://ennisjack.com/index.php?topic=11385.0

I hope I haven't gone horribly off topic.

And I hope that helps.