“Brokeback Mountain” by Annie Proulx Essay

Broke anchor MountainAnnie Proulx was born on August 22, 1935, in Norwich, Connecticut, into a family of farmers, mill workers, inventors, and artists whose ancestors had operated there for iii centuries. Because of her fathers c areer in textiles, Proulxs family constantly moved, so she lived in several states, including North Carolina, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island. She earned a bachelors horizontal surface in hi written report from the University of Vermont in 1969 and then went on to graduate from Concordia University with a Masters degree in Art in 1973 (Info Please). Starting as a Journalist, her first published work of fiction was The Costums Lounge and she subsequently published stories in Grays Sporting Journal in the upstart 1970s, even outtually publishing her first collection in 1988 and her first novel in 1992.Proulx has twice won the O. Henry Prize for the course of instructions shell short story (Info Please). In 1998, she won for Brokeback Mountain, which ha d appeared in The New Yorker on October 13, 1997. Proulx won again the by-line year for The Mud Below, which appeared in The New Yorker June 22 and 29, 1999. Both appear in her 1999 collection of short stories, Close Range Wyoming Stories. Proulx emphasizes a heartbreaking tale of two homo finish upual individuals who struggle to be together, jump out by the norms and rules of society.I found Brokeback Mountain to be a rattling real and compassionate tale of two cowboys who unexpectedly found acknowlight-emitting diodege in each other. In a most peaceful aspect, away from the world, two cowboys embody one of the most disquieting issues affecting our entire culture. The pain experient by every character is believable as is the anger. Proulx does a great bloodline of letting Enniss confusion and his accompanying anger percolate downstairs the cloak of social conformity. It is a gar manpowert that doesnt fit, yet he is terrified to remove it. Proulx helps depict the depth of pa in experienced when the object of love is socially unacceptable, and the anger one experiences when forced to live dishonestly.Proulx is the narrator of Brokeback Mountain. She posits the story of Ennis Del Mar and seaman Twists summer on Brokeback Mountain, and the many an(prenominal) years after that, and the deep love they develop for one another in an intolerant world.The point of view of the story is third person omniscient. The account is real in tone and employs description and dialogue to examine the actions, emotions and thoughts of the characters.Proulx describes a sequence of events from a beginning point in time, when the characters are introduced in the year 1963 in Wyoming, to the end of the story nearly 20 years later. Throughout the story, Ennis and prick reunite for brief liaisons on camping trips in remote settings all over the course of 20 years. Proulx uses setting details to heighten the thematic significance of the story. The most effective use of setting as symbol occurs when she juxtaposes harsh and stunning images of the landscapes cruel beauty to suggest the difficult nature of Enniss and bulls relationship.The story starts out with Ennis Del Mar getting a job on the bay window as a sheep herder with mother fucker Twist. Day after day, Ennis tends the camp while Jack herds the sheep and sleeps out on the mountain with them. One day, when Jack complains closely his commutin four hours a day, he accepts Enniss offer to switch jobs. Every evening, they piece of ground supper by the campfire, talking horses and rodeo, rough transmission line events, wrecks and injuries sustained, (Proulx 75) and other details of their hard lives in the West. Toward the end of the summer when they shift the camp, the distance Ennis has to ride out to the sheep grows longer and he begins to stay later at the camp at night.One evening, after the two sing drunken songs by the campfire, Ennis decides it is too late to go out to the sheep and so be ds down at the campsite. After his shivering wakes Jack, he insists that Ennis share his bedroll. Soon after, the two have sex, something Ennis had never done before. Their knowledgeable activity live ons more frequent in the following days while they some(prenominal) insist that neither of them is queer. One day the foreman, Joe Aguirre, watches them together through his binoculars. At the end of the summer, When Jack asks Ennis if he is coming back to the mountain the next summer, Ennis tells him that he will be getting married in December and then will try to denudation work on a ranch. Jack determines to go back home and then maybe to Texas, and the two say an awkward goodbye. As Ennis drives away, his gut wrenches and he feels as great(p) as he ever had. Ennis marries Almaand their first child, Alma Jr., is born a year later and after their second child is born, Alma convinces Ennis to get a place in town, so she doesnt have to deal with anymore lonesome ranches. Four summ ers after their first on Brokeback Mountain, Jack visits Ennis. When Jack first arrives, he and Ennis share a passionate embrace, watched by Alma.When Jack meets Alma, he announces that he too is married and has a baby boy. After a few awkward moments, Ennis and Jack leave, pick up a bottle of whiskey and head for a motel where they spend the night together. They talk of how they missed each other and Jack suggests that he married his wife, Lureen, because she came from a wealthy family. Ennis admits that he has been thinking about whether he is gay, but insists that he is not because though he does not enjoy sex with women, he has not been with any other man. Jack declares the same. After the two express their passion for each other, Ennis determines that nothing can be done since they both have families and warns Jack that if they are seen together, they may be killed. The only future Ennis can see for the two of them is to get together once in a while, explaining if you cant fix it you got to stand it. After a while, Ennis and Alma begin to grow apart and she starts to resent him for not finding a steady job, and always going with Jack on fishing trips.Eventually, they divorce and Alma remarries but stays in touch with Ennis and lets him visit their children. During the following years, Ennis and Jack occasionally meet on different ranges throughout the West. One night, they catch each other up on their lives, both admitting affairs with women and problems with their own children. After complaining about the low density of their time together, Jack suggests that they move to Mexico, but Ennis declines, insisting that he has to stay and work. Months later, when Ennis receives back a postcard he had sent to Jack marked DECEASED, he calls Lureen, who informs him that Jack was killed when a tire blew up in his face.Ennis suspects, however, that he was murdered after he was caught with another man. He makes a trip to see Jacks parents and offers to take Jacks ashes up to Brokeback Mountain, where Jack had told Lureen that he wanted to be buried. During the visit, Ennis goes up to Jacks room where he finds Jacks shirt, which is covered in Enniss blood. Inside the shirt, he finds one of his own. Ennis then buries his face in Jacks shirt, hoping to be able to comprehend his scent, but there is nothing there. Before Ennis leaves, Mr. Twist informs him thatJacks ashes will be buried in the family plot. Ennis would have dreams of Jack and visions of their time in Brokeback Mountain, which fills him with both sorrow and joy.The protagonist of the story are Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar. Proulx gives a good description of both stating They were raised on small, poor ranches in opposite corners of the state, Jack Twist in Lightning Flat, up on the Montana border, Ennis del Mar from around Sage, near the Utah line, both high school pull down out country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough mannered, rough spok en, inured to the stoic life(Proulx 74.) The antagonist of the story would be the locals and society for killing Jack because they didnt find it acceptable for a man to be living with another man. I think both Ennis and Jack changed because they were both very masculine, rough, cowboys who had never been with a man before until they had a sexual encounter with each other and realized they were in love. This change is very believable because there are many people in our society today who are homosexual, marry their partners, and even take pride in universe gay.The storys use of language is informal. Informal language is characterized by spontaneous speech and situations that describe natural or real life. Its used by family and friends, which proves the story has informal dialogue with casual conversation.The external encroach of the story is Man versus Society. Jack and Ennis must hide their relationship because of its unchaste content. Thus, they live a life hiding from their tr ue feelings. At times they even tried to deny their nature. Because of the threat of being ostracized and possible killed, these men led a life separate from their love for one another. In the end, their prejudice, along with everyone elses, killed Jack. The internal conflict of the story is Man versus Himself. Proulx sketches a picture of two men who live in a constant struggle with their ideas of morality and presents a devastating study of Jack and Ennis subsequent struggle with both their families and their work as they try to come to terms with their sexual relationship. In exploring the intimacies and sexual pleasures emerging fromthis masculine world, Proulx captures the destruction and isolation, which comes from both mens disapproval of their homosexual tendencies.Proulx identifies this conflict when she writes, There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you cant fix it youve got to stand it (Proul x 79). Throughout the story the reader sees Jack and Ennis deal with the fact that they do not approve of their own feelings. The moral norm in the American West was that homosexuals are perverts. Ennis lives his adult life plagued by the remembrance of a man who was brutally killed because people thought him to be a homosexual. In essence these two live a life that could have been a lot happier if there werent prejudices that prevented them from being together. What I find most arouse is that it wasnt other peoples prejudices that kept them apart these men are kept apart by their own morals. They truly believed that their homosexuality was immoral.The mop up of the story is when Ennis sends Jack a postcard about getting together in November and it got sent back to him stamped DECEASED. After Ennis visits Jacks parents and they tell him of Jack trying to fix up a ranch for him and another man, Ennis realizes that it wasnt the tire that blew out that killed him. The locals murdered him for being homosexual and there was no resolution. As Ennis said, If you cant fix it youve got to stand it.I found that Proulx used the descriptive settings as a symbol. The most effective use of setting as symbol occurs when she describes harsh and beautiful images of the landscapes cruel beauty to suggest the difficult nature of Enniss and Jacks relationship. For example, she describes the angelic cold air of the mountain on their first morning with the phallic rearing lodge pole pines massed in slabs of somber malachite(Proulx 74). When Ennis and Jack begin their sexual relationship, Proulx captures its harsh and exhilarating duality when she describes Jack and Ennis as flying in the euphoric, bitter air (Proulx 76) on the mountain.The title of the story is Brokeback Mountain. The title is the line of the mountain where Ennis and Jack worked together when they first met.Brokeback Mountain represents all the memories the two cowboys had together and where their intimacy and love for each other deepened.I believe the story only had one significant meaning which was that although love is prescriptively understood by people as a feeling between a man and a woman, as the evolution of human beings continues, love should be looked in another way. Any two people, no matter what gender or race, can find love.Shame is a major theme in the story. Enniss internalization of the belief that homosexuality is indecent and punishable by death, causes him to be ashamed about the intensity of his feelings for Jack. At the beginning of their relationship on the mountain, he insists that he is not queer, that their feelings for each other are not indicative of his sexual orientation.His shame, conjugate with his need to maintain his marriage in the face of public scrutiny, causes him to lie continually to Alma about his feelings for Jack, insisting that when she catches the two in a heated embrace, their actions are a result of their not having seen each other for years. His internalized homophobia makes him unable to accept himself or act congruently. Ennis needs to maintain the illusion of a conventional life, even if that life denies him the one person he desires most.The plot of this short story mirrors many experiences that gays have had to deal with in todays society, such as banding gay marriages or homosexual hate crimes. There have been many incidents where homosexuals have been threatened, abused, and even killed because people dont agree with their lifestyles.Although I was very skeptical about reading this story at first, I found it to be very eye opening and real. Proulx does a wonderful job of telling a tale of two men who develop a deep love for each other but who are forced to live separate lives in an intolerant world. I think the story will help people empathize diversity in each other and become more tolerant.Works CitedAnnie Proulx Biography. Info Please. 2007. Information Please Database. 13 Oct. 2008 .Proulx, Annie. Brokeback Mountain. The New Yorker 13 Oct. 1997 74-85.