Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain

Annie Proulx

         “Ennis didn’t know about the accident for months until his postcard to Jack saying that November still looked like the first chance came back stamped DECEASED. He called Jack’s number in Childress, something he had only done once before when Alma divorced him and Jack had misunderstood the reason for the call, had driven twelve hundred miles north for nothing. This would be all right, Jack would answer, had to answer. But he did not. It was Lureen and she said who? Who is this? And when he told her again she said in a level voice yes, Jack was pumping up a flat on the truck out on a back road when the tire blew up. The bead was damaged somehow and the force of the explosion slammed the rim into his face, broke his nose and jaw and knocked him unconscious on his back. By the time someone came along he had drowned in his own blood” (Proulx 277).

         This passage is one of the most important passages in the story because it is tragically ironic. Ennis forced Jack to live a life of complacency and sadness because he did not want to be together. Ennis feared that if he came out as gay, he would be mutilated with a tire iron like the ranch farmer was when he was younger. His father had brought him to see the mutilated man when he was younger to make him afraid of homosexuality. Ennis refused to accept who he was and whom he loved. However in the end, all of the precautionary measures that Ennis took to prevent this tragic fate proved to be unsuccessful. Jack had married a girl from Texas and raised a family with her. He only get to spend the occasional get-away with Ennis but his fate remained the same. Ennis suspected that he was murdered with a tire iron but homophobic individuals in their community.

         I find it interesting that it was Jack who was murdered and not Ennis. Jack was the one who was more-openly gay and had affairs both with men and women while Ennis did everything he could to conceal his identity. There are so many questions that I have about the nature of his death.

         First of all, what does it mean to die such a violent death? To me, it means that the murderers truly hated Jack for being homosexual, even if he hadn’t come out openly in public. They took their rage out on an innocent man because his car broke down. Second, to have the author say that Jack drowned in his own blood is rare. Normally, people with that kind of injury bleed out but instead, the imagery suggests his blood consumes him. It doesn’t really make sense.

         The mountain setting in Wyoming is also crucial to the story. The first time that Jack and Ennis were together was in the privacy of the mountains. Even still, their boss caught them when he was spying on them with his binoculars but he didn’t seem to mind. When they returned home to a more urbanized setting, they had to hide their identity from the rest of the world because of the conservative nature of their communities. This seems ironic because people in cities and urban areas are generally categorized as more liberal than the people that reside in the mountains and boonies. Yet, it is the people in the urbanized areas that take their rage and hatred out on Jack. This story is filled with tragic examples of irony.