Topic: The Death of Earl

[Patriot1]

This morning I was watching Brokeback Mountain.  I have seen it near 200 times now.  The more I watch it the more I cry it seems.  Originally I cried over the sad scenes and over time I would also cry over the happy ones. This morning something new was added.  I don't recall ever seeing a discussion here about this and I feel it should be mentioned. 

I was sitting here watching, only paying half attention to it because I was dreaming at the same time. Dreaming about how wonderful it would be to have someone love me just half as much as Jack loved Ennis. Dreaming about some very lovely and meaningful personal messages I have received from people here.

Suddenly, and without any warning, I started to cry uncontrollably.  It was such a shock.  It took my mind five, maybe more, seconds to catch up with my eyes. Why was I crying? I never cried at this point in the movie before. I am so ashamed to admit that all the thoughts that were flooding into my mind had never occurred to me before.  And this happening to me, a person I always thought was sensitive to others.

There, before my eyes lay Earl, dead. Even if I were capable of accepting there are people in this world who truly believe that homosexuality is against God and nature and that homosexuals should be shunned, what kind of monsters could take an innocent and kindly old man and beat him with a tire iron, spur him and drag him around by his privates?  What kind of monsters could torture another human being until he was dead? Oh, the enormity of the hate these men must have had. What had Earl done to these men that was so horrendous as to deserve this? What I felt for these men wasn't hate, it was total confusion. I couldn't make my mind imagine what it could be that made them even think of doing such a horrible thing, much less carry it out. Where these men even human? Or were they devils from the pits of hell.

Then my mind went to Earl. Oh, poor Earl, to spend his last minutes on this earth in absolute terror and pain. I couldn't imagine what he was feeling. I didn't want to imagine it. It was just too horrible to imagine.  Just as a tidalwave washes over the earth ripping everything in its path out of the earth, a tidalwave of emotion was washing over me, ripping my heart out.  For Earl, all I could say was thank God it was over for him. No more terror and no more pain.

As soon as I managed to subdue the tremendous emotions I was feeling, and to get my crying under control a little, the other victim of this horrible crime entered my mind.  Poor Rich.  His lover taken from him in such an unthinkable way.  Rich, left alone to grieve for the rest of his life. Rich, left to live in terror every day of the remainder of his life wondering if one day these same men would do to him what they had done to the person he loved with all his heart.

I saw, I felt, and I didn't want their sacrifice to go by without a thought and unremembered.


EDIT:

As Esme just pointed out to me, these men still exist today.  Remember Matthew Shepard and keep him in your heart.

[Rønnaug]

I have always watched this with a sense of dread... Liek you say Patriot1, what makes people do this? We need go no further than your own description than to know it is still happening. Matthew Sheppard ended his life because of people like ( probably) Ennis' dad...

Let's hope Brokeback will lead to an awareness of this and we can stop some of this gay bashing.

I will watch this scene the next time and think of Rich. I have not thought about him in all this and I think he deserves to be remembered too... Thanks Patriot1 

[tpe]

Patriot1, I love you for your sentiments here.


I have always found it interesting that no mention was made in Ennis's story about Rich and what happened to him after the atrocious murder of Earl.  Well, I guess this was a good thing, as we did see that side of the equation with respect to Ennis in the last scenes.

If Rich loved Earl half as much as Ennis loved Jack, it would have been enough to say that the murder must have been Hell on earth...

[welshwitch]

Yes, this was a beautiful post. I think Rich was a sort of parallel with Ennis, except that Ennis, having kept his secret for so long, didn't have to live in the shadow of the terror of being victimised. Instead he became like Rich, alone in a world without the man he loved, knowing that he might have died in terror, in pain, and mutilated, and knowing that if they'd been together that might not have happened. As someone said elsewhere, damned if you do and damned if you don't. Ennis survived, and survival may not be everything, or even anything.His only consolation must have been that for a few periods of his life he'd been loved - my feeling is that his torment was to know only when it was too late how much he'd loved in return and to regret that he was never able to tell Jack that.

The murder Ennis saw must have happened in the early 50s - how terrible to realise that some people haven't travelled far from the attitudes underlying that scene.

[LuvJackNasty]

Beautiful posts!  :\'(

[FlwrChild]

Beautiful thoughts, everyone!
I always think of Matthew Shepard during these two scenes (Ennis's story and his image of Jack's 'murder'). I too ache over what they felt in their last moments. I've wondered about Rich a bit, but he usually gets lost in the shuffle with so much going on in this movie. I have always thought that Ennis suffers more than Jack because Jack's pain is over and he is at peace (and in my beliefs wrapped safe in loving arms). While poor Ennis is left to remember, regret and endure for the rest of his life and has so much longer to wait to be wrapped in those arms and find his peace. Sorry if I'm rambling. It's late. Patriot, thank you for sharing your thoughts and for caring so much about Rich and Earl.

[amtamburo]

I am ashamed to admit that I never gave more then a passing thought to Earl or Rich... but looking at it this way, they are no different then Jack and Ennis except for the fact that they tried to have a life together.  I grieve for Earl and Jack, the "victims" of these senseless murders, but more so I grieve for Rich and especially Ennis. Rich knew that Earl loved him, and had the knowledge that he loved Earl and had more then likely expressed it to him. So yes, he was alone and hurting, but he has that loving memory and knowledge of loving and being loved to sustain him.

Ennis now has to live with the rest of his life alone as well, but he must live with the knowledge that he was offered love and denied again and again that it existed because he was to scared to accept it. He was forced to recognize that love when he found the shirts and discovered only then just what he had thrown away and how much that love meant and could have meant to him.

Even sadder still though is the fact that Ennis must finish out his days with the knowledge that he never told Jack, the man that gave him love so selflessly for almost 20 years and asked almost nothing in return, how much he loved him. He must live on knowing that Jack died without ever really knowing that Ennis loved him at all. 

[tpe]

Thank you amtamburo .

You know, in a deep sense, Jack always knew that Ennis loved him.  BUt I know what you mean.  As implied in Jack's recollection about the embrace from behind, Jack always realized that there were limits set around that love.   It is sad to realize that Jack's death became, in itself, the ultimate "limit" that hedged-in Ennis for the rest of his life.  Ennis's final and eternal faithfulness became both a haven and a prison for him.  This is in contrast to the case of Rich who, although we was also left without his beloved, nonetheless was blessed with a love that was truly a life shared with the other.

[LuvJackNasty]

It saddens me that there are still Jack's & Ennis' or Earls' & Rich's in this world. People should be allowed to be happy with the one that they love. It is not for anyone else to decide what is "right" and what is "wrong". I never could and never will comprehend how people can be so cruel to another human being because they don't like his/her orientation, race, religion etc. I find that reprehensible. Even taking the love aspect out of it- just having to pretend to be someone you aren't because your life may depend on it is something I can't fathom- something that breaks my heart.

I wouldn't be "ashamed" that you didn't react to Earl and Rich sooner. Young Ennis carried the "lesson" of what happens to "boys like that" when his father showed him Earl. It traumatized him- as it would have to most of us. He spent his life trying to deny who he was and eventually denying both he and Jack more time together and some happiness because of fear- because he didn't want either one of them to be Earl. I think he spent a lot of time thinking on Earl and not so much on Rich. The cruel irony is that he became Rich- his lover is dead, there's nothing he can do about it and he has to live his life lonely and shattered. I wonder what reminders Rich has of Earl. Ennis has the shirts and I also wonder if he realizes that he's Rich. When Ennis is alone in that trailer with those shirts I wonder,  if he could, if he'd go back and  take the risk to have that sweet life with Jack. Because either way- being Earl or Rich is death.

Patriot- wonderful post. I went to bed with it on my mind and it's been on my mind all monring.
The replies in this thread are both beautiful and heartbreaking.  :\'(

[MississaugaRed]

It saddens me that there are still Jack's & Ennis' or Earls' & Rich's in this world. People should be allowed to be happy with the one that they love. It is not for anyone else to decide what is "right" and what is "wrong". I never could and never will comprehend how people can be so cruel to another human being because they don't like his/her orientation, race, religion etc. I find that reprehensible. Even taking the love aspect out of it- just having to pretend to be someone you aren't because your life may depend on it is something I can't fathom- something that breaks my heart.

I wouldn't be "ashamed" that you didn't react to Earl and Rich sooner. Young Ennis carried the "lesson" of what happens to "boys like that" when his father showed him Earl. It traumatized him- as it would have to most of us. He spent his life trying to deny who he was and eventually denying both he and Jack more time together and some happiness because of fear- because he didn't want either one of them to be Earl. I think he spent a lot of time thinking on Earl and not so much on Rich. The cruel irony is that he became Rich- his lover is dead, there's nothing he can do about it and he has to live his life lonely and shattered. I wonder what reminders Rich has of Earl. Ennis has the shirts and I also wonder if he realizes that he's Rich. When Ennis is alone in that trailer with those shirts I wonder,  if he could, if he'd go back and  take the risk to have that sweet life with Jack. Because either way- being Earl or Rich is death.

Patriot- wonderful post. I went to bed with it on my mind and it's been on my mind all monring.
The replies in this thread are both beautiful and heartbreaking.  :'(

So true, LJN - beautiful sentiments, including your own words!  Patriot1 has given us a heartbreaking glimpse into not just the BBM story but the story of too many man and women today still.

I think our (ej collective) inability to truly comprehend how it's possible for one human being to treat another this way is a blessing; I would not choose to walk the corridors of a mind capable of such things. We can only hope to effect some changes to these minds early on, before they become too dark to ever come into the light again.

And this is why I too often prefer the 4 legged animals to the 2 legged ones.   

Lovely posts everyone; Patriot1, thank you for sharing this.

[edgar]

Earl and Rich certainly prefigure Jack and Ennis.... one dies, the other "lives" to suffer forever.

OT, but for comparison...

In Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_, both lovers die in a terrible, star-crossed tragedy of prejudice, micommunication, and fate. However, the fact that the two lovers are united in death is a bittersweet consolation. This world did not deserve their love.

In the adapted musical _West Side Story_, Tony dies, but Maria lives on.... and you sense in her bitter, tear-stained, hate-filled exit, that it would have been perhaps more merciful if she had died with Tony. Instead, one can imagine her alone.... growing old... trusting no one.....

The tragedy of Rich is the tragedy of Ennis. Ennis saw the tortured body of Earl, but he learned the wrong lesson. The worse tragedy is to be Rich, not Earl. 

Jack, I swear....

[tpe]

The tragedy of Rich is the tragedy of Ennis. Ennis saw the tortured body of Earl, but he learned the wrong lesson. The worse tragedy is to be Rich, not Earl. 

This is perfect.

Well said, edgar.

[FlwrChild]

You nailed it edgar! And so beautifully said too.