Gosh, I love it when, on this forum, we get to a topic where it''s not civil disagreement, but each person developing, ever more, a fuller picture, and a more conclusive answer. Anne sees Jack as a dreamer. MPJ focuses on the love and how we can identify with them. Tpe simplifies my own 5 paragraphs to the obvious--the earnestness and reality of Jack. Lamusica goes further and speaks of Jack's child-like innocence. FlwrChild adds in the same applying also, in some ways, to Ennis. And Welshwitch notes that part of human nature where we need to see something human and even amusing in others, so that we can relate to them. I've probably missed somebody, so, please forgive that, but it is so very neat when we build, each upon the others posts, for a better over-all view.
I still think they nailed us, big-time, by being less of idealized, cardboard characters, but very human and with real faults, just like us, but faults we always live with, because they loved, and so we can look past that. And I do believe the origin of that trap (our loving them) derive from Annie Proulx's focus on realism. Whatever differences there are between the SS and the film, Annie's sub-theme was always there, that it's OK to be a loser, and maybe losers are the only real humans left around.
Yeah, I did miss someone - Baby Tammy, whose thoughts led to my own last sentence, above.
