Brokeback Mountain
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Last updated about 3 years ago
8 questions
During this lesson you will read excerpts of Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx.
The idea behind this lesson is to identify, analyse, evaluate the struggle unlikely characters might have.
At the end of this lesson you should have gained a different perspective and you have formed an opinion about the short story.
*This short story is at times quite explicit. We will read excerpts that are appropriate for everybody. If you are interested in the complete short story, feel free to use the link under the last assignment to open it.
Introduction
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 drop-out country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered, rough-spoken, inured to the stoic life. Ennis, reared by his older brother and sister after their parents drove off the only curve on Dead Horse Road, leaving them twenty-four dollars in cash and a two-mortgage ranch, applied at age fourteen for a hardship license that let him make the hour-long trip from the ranch to the high school. The pickup was old, no heater, one windshield wiper, and bad tires; when the transmission went, there was no money to fix it. He had wanted to be a sophomore, felt the word carried a kind of distinction, but the truck broke down short of it, pitching him directly into ranch work.
0
This is a story of two men who fall in love in Wyoming in the 1960s. What predictations about this love story can you make based on the setting of the story?
This is a story of two men who fall in love in Wyoming in the 1960s. What predictations about this love story can you make based on the setting of the story?
0
Make a list of forbidden loves we see in our society at the present moment.
Make a list of forbidden loves we see in our society at the present moment.
Close reading 1
Jack and Ennis claimed to be saving money for a small spread; in Ennis’s case that meant a tobacco can with two five-dollar bills inside. That spring, hungry for any job, each had signed up with Farm and Ranch Employment—they came together on paper as herder and camp tender for the same sheep operation north of Signal. The summer range lay above the tree line on Forest Service land on Brokeback Mountain. It would be Jack Twist’s second summer on the mountain, Ennis’s first. Neither of them was twenty.
They shook hands in the choky little trailer office in front of a table littered with scribbled papers, a Bakelite ashtray brimming with stubs. The venetian blinds hung askew and admitted a triangle of white light, the shadow of the foreman’s hand moving into it. Joe Aguirre, wavy hair the color of cigarette ash and parted down the middle, gave them his point of view.
“Forest Service got designated campsites on the allotments. Them camps can be a couple a miles from where we pasture the sheep. Bad predator loss, nobody near lookin after em at night. What I want—camp tender in the main camp where the Forest Service says, but the herder”—pointing at Jack with a chop of his hand—“pitch a pup tent on the Q.T. with the sheep, out a sight, and he’s goin a sleep there. Eat supper, breakfast in camp, but sleep with the sheep, hundred percent, no fire, don’t leave no sign. Roll up that tent every mornin case Forest Service snoops around. Got the dogs, your .30-.30, sleep there. Last summer had goddam near twenty-five-percent loss. I don’t want that again. You,” he said to Ennis, taking in the ragged hair, the big nicked hands, the jeans torn, button-gaping shirt, “Fridays twelve noon be down at the bridge with your next-week list and mules. Somebody with supplies’ll be there in a pickup.” He didn’t ask if Ennis had a watch but took a cheap round ticker on a braided cord from a box on a high shelf, wound and set it, tossed it to him as if he weren’t worth the reach. “Tomorrow mornin we’ll truck you up the jump-off.” Pair of deuces going nowhere.
"They go up the mountain but have different jobs. After some time, the distance between the herd and base camp is too far for Jack to go back."
“Too late to go out to them damn sheep,” said Ennis, dizzy drunk on all fours one cold hour when the moon had notched past two. The meadow stones glowed white-green and a flinty wind worked over the meadow, scraped the fire low, then ruffled it into yellow silk sashes. “Got you a extra blanket I’ll roll up out here and grab forty winks, ride out at first light.”
“Freeze your ass off when that fire dies down. Better off sleepin in the tent.”
“Doubt I’ll feel nothin.” But he staggered under canvas, pulled his boots off, snored on the ground cloth for a while, woke Jack with the clacking of his jaw.
“Jesus Christ, quit hammerin and get over here. Bedroll’s big enough,” said Jack in an irritable sleep-clogged voice. It was big enough, warm enough, and in a little while they deepened their intimacy considerably. Nothing he’d done before but no instruction manual needed. They went at it in silence.
Ennis woke in red dawn with his pants around his knees, a top-grade headache, and Jack butted against him; without saying anything about it, both knew how it would go for the rest of the summer, sheep be damned.
1
During that first night they spent together, they start their romantic relationship. How does Ennis feel about this?
During that first night they spent together, they start their romantic relationship. How does Ennis feel about this?
1
To what extent are there signs that this might turn out to be a long lasting relationship?
To what extent are there signs that this might turn out to be a long lasting relationship?
1
Who do you think feels or is going to feel more troubled about their love making?
Who do you think feels or is going to feel more troubled about their love making?
Close reading 2
“You goin a do this next summer?” said Jack to Ennis in the street, one leg already up in his green pickup. The wind was gusting hard and cold.
“Maybe not.” A dust plume rose and hazed the air with fine grit and he squinted against it. “Like I said, Alma and me’s gettin married in December. Try to get somethin on a ranch. You?” He looked away from Jack’s jaw, bruised blue from the hard punch Ennis had thrown him on the last day.
“If nothin better comes along. Thought some about going back up to my daddy’s place, give him a hand over the winter, then maybe head out for Texas in the spring. If the draft don’t get me.”
“Well, see you around, I guess.” The wind tumbled an empty feed bag down the street until it fetched up under the truck.
“Right,” said Jack, and they shook hands, hit each other on the shoulder; then there was forty feet of distance between them and nothing to do but drive away in opposite directions. Within a mile Ennis felt like someone was pulling his guts out hand over hand a yard at a time. He stopped at the side of the road and, in the whirling new snow, tried to puke but nothing came up. He felt about as bad as he ever had and it took a long time for the feeling to wear off.
In December Ennis married Alma Beers and had her pregnant by mid-January. He picked up a few short-lived ranch jobs, then settled in as a wrangler on the old Elwood Hi-Top place, north of Lost Cabin, in Washakie County. He was still working there in September when Alma, Jr., as he called his daughter, was born and their bedroom was full of the smell of old blood and milk and baby shit, and the sounds were of squalling and sucking and Alma’s sleepy groans, all reassuring of fecundity and life’s continuance to one who worked with livestock.
"After four years of not going to Brokeback Mountain, Ennis receives a letter from Jack to meet him. Ennis agrees and they reminisce over their shared experience."
“Listen. I’m thinkin, tell you what, if you and me had a little ranch together, little cow-and-calf operation, your horses, it’d be some sweet life. Like I said, I’m gettin out a rodeo. I ain’t no broke dick rider but I don’t got the bucks a ride out this slump I’m in and I don’t got the bones a keep gettin wrecked. I got it figured, got this plan Ennis, how we can do it, you and me. Lureen’s old man, you bet he’d give me a bunch if I’d get lost. Already more or less said it—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. It ain’t goin a be that way. We can’t. I’m stuck with what I got, caught in my own loop. Can’t get out of it. Jack, I don’t want a be like them guys you see around sometimes. And I don’t want a be dead. There was these two old guys ranched together down home, Earl and Rich—Dad would pass a remark when he seen them. They was a joke even though they was pretty tough old birds. I was what, nine years old, and they found Earl dead in a irrigation ditch. They’d took a tire iron to him, spurred him up, drug him around by his dick until it pulled off, just bloody pulp. What the tire iron done looked like pieces a burned tomatoes all over him, nose tore down from skiddin on gravel.”
“You seen that?”
“Dad made sure I seen it. Took me to see it. Me and K.E. Dad laughed about it. Hell, for all I know he done the job. If he was alive and was to put his head in that door right now you bet he’d go get his tire iron. Two guys livin together? No. All I can see is we get together once in a while way the hell out in the back a nowhere—”
How much is once in a while?” said Jack. “Once in a while ever four fuckin years?”
“No,” said Ennis, forbearing to ask whose fault that was. “I goddam hate it that you’re goin a drive away in the mornin and I’m goin back to work. But if you can’t fix it you got a stand it,” he said. “Shit. I been lookin at people on the street. This happen a other people? What the hell do they do?”
“It don’t happen in Wyomin and if it does I don’t know what they do, maybe go to Denver,” said Jack, sitting up, turning away from him, “and I don’t give a flyin fuck. Son of a bitch, Ennis, take a couple days off. Right now. Get us out a here. Throw your stuff in the back a my truck and let’s get up in the mountains. Couple a days. Call Alma up and tell her you’re goin. Come on, Ennis, you just shot my airplane out a the sky—give me somethin a go on. This ain’t no little thing that’s happenin here.”
The hollow ringing began again in the next room, and as if he were answering it Ennis picked up the phone on the bedside table, dialled his own number.
A slow corrosion worked between Ennis and Alma, no real trouble, just widening water. She was working at a grocery-store clerk job, saw she’d always have to work to keep ahead of the bills on what Ennis made. Alma asked Ennis to use rubbers because she dreaded another pregnancy. He said no to that, said he would be happy to leave her alone if she didn’t want any more of his kids. Under her breath she said, “I’d have em if you’d support em.” And under that thought, Anyway, what you like to do don’t make too many babies.
"Ennis and Alma get divorced but Ennis still feels too hesistant to enter a relationship with Jack. Instead he secretely goes to Brokeback Mountain with Jack for years. After many years, they end up in a discussion"
“Jack, I got a work. Them earlier days I used a quit the jobs. You got a wife with money, a good job. You forget how it is bein broke all the time. You ever hear a child support? I been payin out for years and got more to go. Let me tell you, I can’t quit this one. And I can’t get the time off. It was tough gettin this time—some a them late heifers is still calvin. You don’t leave then. You don’t. Scrope is a hell-raiser and he raised hell about me takin the week. I don’t blame him. He probly ain’t got a night’s sleep since I left. The trade-off was August. You got a better idea?”
“I did once.” The tone was bitter and accusatory.
Ennis said nothing, straightened up slowly, rubbed at his forehead; a horse stamped inside the trailer. He walked to his truck, put his hand on the trailer, said something that only the horses could hear, turned and walked back at a deliberate pace.
“You been a Mexico, Jack?” Mexico was the place. He’d heard. He was cutting fence now, trespassing in the shoot-em zone.
“Hell yes, I been. Where’s the fuckin problem?” Braced for it all these years and here it came, late and unexpected.
“I got a say this to you one time, Jack, and I ain’t foolin. What I don’t know,” said Ennis, “all them things I don’t know could get you killed if I should come to know them.”
“Try this one,” said Jack, “and I’ll say it just one time. 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. Everything 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. Count the damn few times we been together in twenty years. Measure the fuckin short leash you keep me on, then ask me about Mexico and then tell me you’ll kill me for needin it and not hardly never gettin it. You got no fuckin idea how bad it gets. I’m not you. I can’t make it on a couple a high-altitude fucks once or twice a year. You’re too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you.”
"Ennis leaves and Jack mutters that he will see Ennis tomorrow. That, however doesn't happen."
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.”
1
Explain the underlying emotion in the following passage:
Within a mile Ennis felt like someone was pulling his guts out hand over hand a yard at a time. He stopped at the side of the road and, in the whirling new snow, tried to puke but nothing came up.
Explain the underlying emotion in the following passage:
Within a mile Ennis felt like someone was pulling his guts out hand over hand a yard at a time. He stopped at the side of the road and, in the whirling new snow, tried to puke but nothing came up.
1
Explain the accusation Ennis makes of Jack and what that implies in the following passage:
“You been a Mexico, Jack?” Mexico was the place. He’d heard. He was cutting fence now, trespassing in the shoot-em zone.
“Hell yes, I been. Where’s the fuckin problem?”
Explain the accusation Ennis makes of Jack and what that implies in the following passage:
“You been a Mexico, Jack?” Mexico was the place. He’d heard. He was cutting fence now, trespassing in the shoot-em zone.
“Hell yes, I been. Where’s the fuckin problem?”
1
To what extent do you think Ennis and Jack are in a same-sex relationship?
To what extent do you think Ennis and Jack are in a same-sex relationship?
Evaluation
A few weeks later, on the Saturday, he threw all the Coffeepot’s dirty horse blankets into the back of his pickup and took them down to the Quik Stop Car Wash to turn the high-pressure spray on them. When the wet clean blankets were stowed in the truck bed he stepped into Higgins’ gift shop and busied himself with the postcard rack.
“Ennis, what are you lookin for, rootin through them postcards?” said Linda Higgins, throwing a sopping brown coffee filter into the garbage can.
“Scene a Brokeback Mountain.”
“Over in Fremont County?”
“No, north a here.”
“I didn’t order none a them. Let me get the order list. They got it I can get you a hunderd. I got a order some more cards anyway.”
“One’s enough,” said Ennis.
When it came—thirty cents—he pinned it up in his trailer, brass-headed tack in each corner. Below it he drove a nail and on the nail he hung a wire hanger and the two old shirts, his and Jack's, suspended from it. He stepped back and looked at the ensemble through a few stinging tears.
“Jack, I swear—” he said, though Jack had never asked him to swear anything and was himself not the swearing kind.
