Annie Proulx’s use of “headlong” in the context of Ennis’s descent from BBM at the end of the summer with Jack made me think of the lines from Milton’s Paradise Lost when God casts the Rebel Angel out of heaven.
Proulx:
The mountain boiled with demonic energy, glazed with flickering broken-cloud light, the wind combed the grass and drew from the damaged krummholz and slit rock a bestial drone. As they descended the slope Ennis felt that he was in a slow-motion, but headlong, irreversible fall.
“Headlong” is not a common word; both Proulx and Milton are referring to The Fall.
Milton:
Him the Almighty Power hurled headlong from the ethereal sky, down to bottomless perdition, there to dwell in adamantine chains and penal fire, who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.
I’m not suggesting that Ennis offended God in any way, except perhaps by his failure to accept himself.
Psychosexual identity rules with a sort of omnipotence in our lives that we oppose at our peril.
