Topic: The word "Quit"

[jackster]

Howdy wongadonga:

With questions about word usage like this I usually find it best to go back to where the word came from – Annie. She uses the word “quit” five times in the short story – and tellingly at some of the most critical scenes in the story –

1. "Jesus Christ, quit hammerin’ and get over here”

2. free to drop things, quit if he had to, and go into the mountains at short notice . . .

3 & 4 . "Jack, I got a work. Them earlier days I used a quit the jobs. . . . . Let me tell you, I can't quit this one.

5. I wish I knew how to quit you."

I say this only because we know Annie is very thorough and leaves nothin' to chance. If the word is here five times, there's a pretty good reason for it. Especially in this case where Jack first uses quit just moments before they are seen having their first sexual encounter and then at the end where he uses just moments before they part and he dies. Moment's here meaning moments in the storyline not necessarily real time.

This probably not coincidence. Annie's getting us ready for Jack's final use of this word; quit hammerin’, quit the job(s), quit you.

To more directly answer your question, I'd say no it's not common usage, but it's not unusual enough so that most everyone wouldn't understand right away the meaning, especially after being “set-up” by Annie in this manner. It's short, simple, unambiguous in its intention. And here it means more than just leaving, it means (trying) to bring an end, a cessation, and this is what Jack can't do, doesn't know how to do. He leaves Ennis several times a year, they separate and he goes back to Texas, etc. but he can't quit Ennis, and the idea of Ennis. It is in him in a way that maybe he (or Ennis) doesn't understand. So, IMHO anyway, Randall or no Randall, Jack wasn't going to be able to quit the emotional ties he had with Ennis.
 

[wongadonga]

thanks for that, and I had not noticed other uses, I guess because they were used in more predictable contexts.

maybe I was influenced by 30 second bunnies picking it up

also you say hammering, when I thought it was yammerin

bit like when I first went to USA and guy was talking about a bloke "hacking" for coughing - but I soon got to understand the lingo, even Aluminum for the English word Aluminium

but "sodder" for solder had me tricked for a while

[ethan]

Howdy wongadonga:

With questions about word usage like this I usually find it best to go back to where the word came from – Annie. She uses the word “quit” five times in the short story – and tellingly at some of the most critical scenes in the story –

1. "Jesus Christ, quit hammerin’ and get over here”

2. free to drop things, quit if he had to, and go into the mountains at short notice . . .

3 & 4 . "Jack, I got a work. Them earlier days I used a quit the jobs. . . . . Let me tell you, I can't quit this one.

5. I wish I knew how to quit you."

I say this only because we know Annie is very thorough and leaves nothin' to chance. If the word is here five times, there's a pretty good reason for it. Especially in this case where Jack first uses quit just moments before they are seen having their first sexual encounter and then at the end where he uses just moments before they part and he dies. Moment's here meaning moments in the storyline not necessarily real time.

This probably not coincidence. Annie's getting us ready for Jack's final use of this word; quit hammerin’, quit the job(s), quit you.

To more directly answer your question, I'd say no it's not common usage, but it's not unusual enough so that most everyone wouldn't understand right away the meaning, especially after being “set-up” by Annie in this manner. It's short, simple, unambiguous in its intention. And here it means more than just leaving, it means (trying) to bring an end, a cessation, and this is what Jack can't do, doesn't know how to do. He leaves Ennis several times a year, they separate and he goes back to Texas, etc. but he can't quit Ennis, and the idea of Ennis. It is in him in a way that maybe he (or Ennis) doesn't understand. So, IMHO anyway, Randall or no Randall, Jack wasn't going to be able to quit the emotional ties he had with Ennis.
 

eloquently said. Thank you, jackster. Gotta appreciate the short story and AP's choices of words. 

[chowhound]

Although, wongadonga (splendid name!), I don't live in the United States - I live to the North of it, in Canada - I would have thought "quit" was fairly common these days especially as a noun - "quitter". It's become almost commonplace to hear somebody praised for not being a "quitter".

As usual, I'm in complete agreement with Jackster when he writes "...(trying) to bring an end, a cessation, and this is what Jack can't do, doesn't know how to do. He leaves Ennis several times a year, they separate and he goes back to Texas, etc. but he can't quit Ennis, and the idea of Ennis. It is in him in a way that maybe he (or Ennis) doesn't understand. So, IMHO anyway, Randall or no Randall, Jack wasn't going to be able to quit the emotional ties he had with Ennis."

What Jackster says is confirmed for me by one of the most moving and poignant lines in the whole movie. This occurs when Jack, during their final meeting, says to Ennis: "Tell you what...truth is, sometimes I miss you so bad I can hardly stand it..." I find that one of those piercingly honest lines which not only concerns the present but also all those past years now gone by.

[wongadonga]

The problem is he DID quit Ennis in year #1, just when Ennis was essentially crying out for help with his cold feet re marriage by "me and Alma".

Jack simply takes the coward's way out but turns up 4 years later when all manner of "familial matters" are in place.

so to then complain of unrequited love at year #17 is "tough titties" and Ennis' response [or lack of] says just that.

  note that unrequited has a quit

but Ennis does then point out the stupidity of Ennis moving to Texas via "you're a real thinker J F Twist" and appropriately refers to the same "whiskey streams" aspect of Jack's makeup, same as OMT, Lureen (and Jack's horse, who quit him up there on Brokeback because of his lousy harmonica playin )

[chowhound]

The problem is he DID quit Ennis in year #1, just when Ennis was essentially crying out for help with his cold feet re marriage by "me and Alma".

Jack simply takes the coward's way out but turns up 4 years later when all manner of "familial matters" are in place.

so to then complain of unrequited love at year #17 is "tough titties" and Ennis' response [or lack of] says just that.

  note that unrequited has a quit

but Ennis does then point out the stupidity of Ennis moving to Texas via "you're a real thinker J F Twist" and appropriately refers to the same "whiskey streams" aspect of Jack's makeup, same as OMT, Lureen (and Jack's horse, who quit him up there on Brokeback because of his lousy harmonica playin )

Wongadonga, you're not a divorced Australian who identifies himself as Lester on IMDb are you? You sound so much like him. This is the same misguided reading of Brokeback Mountain that he's been pushing on IMDb for years now.

[wongadonga]

sorry chowhound, my thoughts on the titular movie are mine to share as I please with other Brokies.

comes under "The First", so please quit yer yammering or I'll have to ask Lureen for a loan of her tire iron 

[miniangel]

Wongadonga, while we are all entitled to our interpretations of the film as a standalone work, I think that in the story, Annie Proulx makes it clear that Jack didn't quit Ennis at the end of the summer. Rather he was pushed away by a man who couldn't face up to his own feelings, and due to his (Jack's) own issues with his father he was unable to push back for a continuation. IMHO, of course.