Brokeback Mountain

“Tell you what, we could a had a good life together, a fuckin real good life. You wouldn’t do it, Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain. Everthing built on that. It’s all we got, boy, fuckin all, so I hope you know that if you don’t never know the rest.”

Of the love stories we have read this semester, I believe Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” was the most exemplary. The theme of love in this story is seen as a force of nature- one that cannot be controlled. The story is narrated by Ennis, our protagonist. The writing is italicized in the beginning and written in past tense, then written as a flashback, shifting to past tense. As the story begins, Ennis tells us how his current troubles pale in comparison to the pleasure he is filled with as a result of the dream he had just had about Jack Twist, his lover. The story then switches to past tense and Ennis tells us about his experience on Brokeback Mountain.

Ennis gets a summer job working as a camp tender on Brokeback Mountain. This is where he meets Jack, who also has a job there as a sheep herder. During their time together, they end up falling in love. However, they continuously deny their homosexuality. Ennis tells Jack a story about how when he was a child, his father took him to see the body of a murdered gay rancher. This is symbolic of the idea that society, at that time (the 1960’s), looks upon the love between two men unfavorably.

 One of the things I find very interesting is that Brokeback Mountain is a fictional setting in Wyoming. However, the rest of the areas mentioned in the story are non-fictional. I believe this was done intentionally, making Brokeback Mountain symbolic of love as a concept in the face of adversity, evident by the quote above. Love, in the story, is described as a force that cannot be controlled, despite the societal norms that might inhibit the love of these two men. Such is evident when Ennis says to Jack (about their relationship) “There’s no reins on this one. It scares the piss out of me”. Brokeback Mountain embodies, in my interpretation of the story, the ethereal romance that takes place between Jack and Ennis. It can be seen as too true and true delicate for the outside world during that time, which is why it develops in a fictional setting. The expression of their love in the outside world (in non-fictional settings) ends tragically. Ennis ends up divorced and his wife sees their love as sickening, while Jack ends up dead- Ennis suspects that he was murdered. Similarly, when their boss see’s Jack and Ennis through the binoculars, it can be seen as the representation of the way the outside world looks down on their love, thus interfering with and defiling a place of beauty with judgment the same way judgment defiled the life they could have had together. However, despite the societal norms they were instilled with, their love could not be controlled, as Ennis still dreams of Jack.