In A Nutshell

Remember that movie Brokeback Mountain from a while back? It stirred up a whole lot
of controversy, nabbed itself an Academy Award nomination or two, and had mediocre
stand-up comments quoting it's famous "I wish I knew how to quit you line."
Yeah, we bet you remember that. But what you might not know is that because
Hollywood is now legally forbidden from producing original ideas, the movie
Brokeback Mountain was actually based on a short story called "Brokeback
Mountain" written by Annie Proulx. Long before Heath Ledger put his own twist on
high altitude shepherding, Proulx came along and gave us a love story that serves up
doses of elegance and pain in equal measures.
Why pain? Well, because in the olden days of the 1960s and 70s where the story is
set, a romantic relationship between two men was rather frowned upon. And by
"rather frowned upon" we mean that men who entered into such relationships risked
not only their reputations, but also their livesas Ennis and Jack do in "Brokeback
Mountain."
Proulx puts a whole new spin on the western genre. Sure, there are rodeos and
roadhouses. But this one's less about booze and broncos and more about forbidden
love and broken hearts. Proulx handles their story with sensitivity and compassion,
which means we see firsthand both the intense love these guys feel and the gutwrenching prejudice that keeps them apart. It's a short read, but it backs a wallop, so
get ready for a modern western for the ages.
Why Should I Care?
Simple. You should care because you read the news. LGBT rights have been the hip
thing to argue about for many a moon, and the debate doesn't seem fixin' to end
anytime soon. Supreme Court decisions, laws both fer and agin gay marriage,
protests, profiles, and more op-eds that you can count. It's all happening right outside
our doors. All you have to do is turn on the TV or click on over to Buzzfeed to see
what's going down.
Hey, even "Brokeback Mountain" itself got caught up in the debate, and while Proulx
insists that " It was just another story when I started writing it," when the movie came
out, she confessed, " I hope that it is going to start conversations and discussions, that
it's going to awaken in people an empathy for diversity, for each other and the larger
world" (source).
But Proulx's story doesn't have a preachy agenda. There are no Life Lessons or
Meaningful Morals to be learned. In fact, where you fall in this debate and what you
take away from this story is entirely up to you. What Proulx does show us is the love
between two men, plain and simple. She makes us feel for these guys, understand
their desire for each other, and appreciate the fact that they're probably made for
each otherthat is, if they had been made in another decade. Like all of us, Jack and
Ennis are stuck in their time and place, and must deal with their own identities in a
sometimes unfriendly world.
Why pain? Well, because in the olden days of the 1960s and 70s where the story is
set, a romantic relationship between two men was rather frowned upon. And by
"rather frowned upon" we mean that men who entered into such relationships risked
not only their reputations, but also their livesas Ennis and Jack do in "Brokeback
Mountain."
Proulx puts a whole new spin on the western genre. Sure, there are rodeos and
roadhouses. But this one's less about booze and broncos and more about forbidden
love and broken hearts. Proulx handles their story with sensitivity and compassion,
which means we see firsthand both the intense love these guys feel and the gut-

wrenching prejudice that keeps them apart. It's a short read, but it backs a wallop, so
get ready for a modern western for the ages.
Why Should I Care?
Simple. You should care because you read the news. LGBT rights have been the hip
thing to argue about for many a moon, and the debate doesn't seem fixin' to end
anytime soon. Supreme Court decisions, laws both fer and agin gay marriage,
protests, profiles, and more op-eds that you can count. It's all happening right outside
our doors. All you have to do is turn on the TV or click on over to Buzzfeed to see
what's going down.
Hey, even "Brokeback Mountain" itself got caught up in the debate, and while Proulx
insists that " It was just another story when I started writing it," when the movie came
out, she confessed, " I hope that it is going to start conversations and discussions, that
it's going to awaken in people an empathy for diversity, for each other and the larger
world" (source).
But Proulx's story doesn't have a preachy agenda. There are no Life Lessons or
Meaningful Morals to be learned. In fact, where you fall in this debate and what you
take away from this story is entirely up to you. What Proulx does show us is the love
between two men, plain and simple. She makes us feel for these guys, understand
their desire for each other, and appreciate the fact that they're probably made for
each otherthat is, if they had been made in another decade. Like all of us, Jack and
Ennis are stuck in their time and place, and must deal with their own identities in a
sometimes unfriendly world.
How It All Goes Down
Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist are a couple of good ol' country boys: strong on work
ethic, weak on schooling. They get paired together in the summer of 1963 to herd
sheep up on Brokeback Mountain. One thing leads to another, and the intimacy of
their work eventually leads to a night personal intimacy (which is a bit of a surprise to
both of them, since neither one considers himself gay.) They keep up an affair until
summer ends and they go their separate wayseven though it's clear that their love
is pretty doggone real.
Four years pass. They get married and have kids, all without seeing each other. Then
Jack shows up at Ennis's door one day and soon enough, they're in a passionate
embrace which Ennis's wife witnesses. They try to blow it off and she doesn't ask,
but some things can't be unseen, and the gents excuse themselves to a motel where
the affair begins anew.
Sporadic motel meetings and camping trip trysts continue for the next 20 years. It
eventually drives Ennis's wife away, but Jack's family stays together, even though his
own wife Lureen clearly Knows What He Did That Summer (and every summer
thereafter). Eventually though, the fact that they can't be together starts to catch up
with Jack, who can't keep his feelings to himself the way Ennis can.
Sadly, Jack dies when his "tire blows up," which Ennis thinks is code for "Jack got beat
do death in a hate crime." He talks to Lureen about it on the phone, then goes to
Jack's parents' house to try and talk them out of Jack's ashes. (Jack wanted them
buried on Brokeback Mountain.) Ennis can't convince them to part with the ashes, but
he finds a pair of shirts that Jack wore on Brokeback and makes off with them as
lovely parting gifts.
He hangs the shirts in his trailer, along with the postcard of Brokeback. The memories
are painful, but they're all he has.
"Brokeback Mountain" is not a bedtime story for the kiddos. Why? Because sex and
sexuality are front and center. Ennis and Jack, who would never in a million years

describe themselves as gay (in fact, the word "gay" is never uttered in the story), find
themselves embroiled in a sexual affair that spans decades and changes their lives
forever. No matter how much they try to stay apart, they always come back to each
other, which leaves them grappling with the reality of their sexual orientation, and
how it just won't fit in the world they live in.
When you're gay in Wyoming in the 1960s and 70s, repression is something we
imagined you'd have to get used to. In a lot of ways, "Brokeback Mountain" is about
the cost of that repression: how it can twist your guts into funny animal shapes, how it
can turn a rich fulfilling sex life into a life-threatening secret, and how even the most
innocuous comment becomes hateful and sinister under its weight.
We spend a lot of time Ennis and Jack. Sure, "Brokeback Mountain" is only a few pages
long, but it spans more then twenty years in these men's lives, so you can bet that
they get to a fair amount of reminiscing and, yes, regretting. In fact, at the end of the
day, their relationship is carried on through one single memory of the time they spent
together on Brokeback. That's when they had it good, and they'll never have it that
way again. In a way, all they have are their memories.
In "Brokeback Mountain," Ennis and Jack do have a choice. They can choose to be
together, or they can remain apart. Other than that, they don't have many choices at
all. And of course, the factors that determine the consequences of that one choice
they have are entirely beyond their control. 1960s rural Wyoming is not exactly a
place brimming with opportunity, and that lack of choice might explain why they're so
reluctant to pull the trigger on their love.
Ennis and Jack are cowboys in the classic sense: they're lean, tall, and not inclined to
say a whole lot. But "Brokeback Mountain" throws a big wrench in that stereotype in
that neither one sweeps a local cowgirl off her feetthey sweep each other off their
feet, completely. What's key to understand, though, is that their sexual identities don't
compromise their manly-man tendenciesthey're still a ranch hand and a rodeo rider
through and through. Rather their sexuality complicates their manliness, helping to
poke a hole in the cowboy stereotype we've all come to know.
Ennis Del Mar
Character Analysis
While this may be a story about the love between Ennis and Jack, Ennis is our main
man. Why's that? Well, to out it frankly, it's because he's the only one of the two main
characters who isn't dead at the end of the story.
And that's kind of the point. Sure, he and Jack are both "high school dropout country
boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered,
rough-spoken, inured to the stoic life." (3) Those surface similarities, however, hide
deep-set differences that explain why Ennis ends the story alive and Jack doesn't.
All Bottled Up
Ennis is the quiet one, the cautious one, the one who would rather keep quiet and stay
unobtrusive than yell "I love this man!" and face the consequences. In fact, he's the

kind of guy who'd rather not talk about anything even when it's staring him in the
face.
For example, when Alma catches Ennis and Jack in a fierce embrace, he pretty much
pretends it didn't happen. "'Ennis ' said Alma in her misery voice, but that didn't slow
him down on the stairs and he called back, 'Alma, you want smokes there's some in
the pocket a my blue shirt in the bedroom.'" (57). Yeah, this is not a man who wears
his heart on his sleeve or likes to talk out his problems.
It gets worse. After he fights with Alma on Thanksgiving, he pretty much just leaves
and lets other people do the emotional heavy lifting: "He didn't try to see his girls for a
long time, figuring they would look him up when they got the sense and years to move
out from Alma." (93). Poor Ennis is not exactly a model of emotional maturity. This
kind of drives Jack nuts, but Ennis is undaunted. "If you can't fix it you got a stand it,"
he tells Jack (78), which pretty much means "shut up and keep your head down."
Beneath the Gruff Exterior
There's a price for this, of course. Ennis's cork is wedged in a little tight. His emotions
run very deep and he isn't always aware of them. When he first leaves Jack after
Brokeback, for example, he "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" (38). Sure, these are physical symptoms we're
talking about, but their cause is emotional. It's quite possible that Ennis loves Jack, he
just doesn't know it, let alone how to deal.
Naturally, when those emotions do come out, it's a little loud and scary. When he
fights with Alma at Thanksgiving, "He seized her wrist; tears sprang and rolled, a dish
clattered" (89). He's a powerful man with some powerful feelings, and Proulx never
lets us forget it. That makes those moments where Ennis's emotions do show all the
more powerful.
Paying the Price
Ennis's inability to express himself is possibly the most tragic thing about "Brokeback
Mountain." In a sick way, it pays off because he's able to keep his desires in check.
That means he can keep a low profile and avoid a horrible fate like the one Jack
meets. But it also means that he's left alone in a trailer with only a couple of bloody
shirts for company. Poor Ennis.
But that's more than just a sad ending for a sad story. In fact, Ennis's quiet stoicism
points to one of the story's central themes: the effect of prejudice and intolerance on
a person's private life. In many ways, while Jack might dream about the possibilities of
a life together, Ennis knows it could never work because the worldor at least their
worldwill never accept them.
He knows he loves Jack, but he also knows that their love doesn't fit what society
allows. And as the end of the story puts it, "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
can't fix it you've got to stand it" (159).
Jack Twist
Character Analysis
Jack's a lot like Ennis in a lot of ways, since they're both "high school dropout country
boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered,

rough-spoken, inured to the stoic life." (3) He fits the stereotypical cowboys role to a T
even riding rodeosbut for the fact that
The Romantic
But unlike Ennis, he's full of hopes and dreams about them being together. As Jack's
dad tells Ennis, "Jack used a say, 'Ennis del Mar,' he used a say, 'I'm goin a bring him
up here one a these days and we'll lick this damn ranch into shape.' He had some halfbaked idea the two a you was goin a move up here, build a log cabin and help me run
this ranch and bring it up" (142). And the sad part is, Jack can't let go of that, even
when Ennis warns him about the dangers involved.
See, that's the other thing about Jack: he wears his heart on his sleeve. And because
he wears his heart on his sleeve, he needs a bit more affirmation that Ennis does: "You
got no fuckin idea how bad it gets. I'm not you. I can't make it on a couple a highaltitude 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" (117). What Jack is really saying here,
in his own cowboy fashion, is that he loves Ennis, and wants more. He's not willing to
live a buttoned up lifestyle when he has the chance to be with the person he loves.
Who Can't Help But Share His Feelings
In some ways, that makes him just as tormented as Ennis, and we can see that most
when he says things like, "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" (117). See, unlike Ennis, Jack knows just how good they had it up on the
mountain, and he feels the loss of that all the more.
Of course, we don't see much of his life away from Ennis. So much of what we know
about Jack is inferred from his brief moments with Ennis and what Ennis learns about
him at the end of the story. But what Ennis learns does tell us a lot. We can suspect
that he's not as careful about his gayness as Ennis is. Why? Ennis hears it in Jack's
dad's voice when he tells him, "So now he knew it had been the tire iron" (143). It
seems like Jack's unwillingness to repress his love for Ennis led to an inability to keep
his sexual orientation under wraps in general. Jack just isn't willing to live his life by
society's rules. His feelings are too strong.
The big question, then, is who's better off? Ennis, who keeps his love buttoned up and
lives, or Jack, who lets it all hang out and dies? They're both sad, and it's neither of
their faults. Maybe it's just a way of seeing the different ways prejudice can tear
people apart, whether they're a live-wire Jack or a Silent Sammy Ennis.
Alma Beers
Character Analysis
Alma is an easy face to put on the kind of disapproval that Jack and Ennis face (and oh
yeah, the kind that gets Jack killed). But we also have to remember that she's Ennis's
wife and has two little girls with him while they're married. So that means she's got
more at stake than just her social scruples.
After all, it's not like Alma's got the life every girl dreams of. She's got kids to worry
about, and she's married to a man who'll never love her the way she wants him to. It's
a lonely life, so it's no surprise when she says things like, "Ennis, please, no more
damn lonesome ranches for us, [] Let's get a place here in town?" (40-41). It can't

be easy to be married to such a passive man, so it makes sense that Alma's a bit
passive aggressive herself. When she catches Ennis and Jack in a steamy embrace,
she doesn't hit the roof the way we might expect (and, as his wife, she probably has a
right to). Instead she uses her "misery voice" (57) to try and get Ennis's attention.
Which, um, doesn't work.
Things Fall Apart
Small wonder, then, that they drift apart and she eventually shacks up with the grocer.
Like Ennis, she has a way of holding in her emotions until they explode. So instead of
talking about Ennis's duplicity, she holds it in until she cracks, saying, "Don't lie, don't
try to fool me, Ennis. I know what it means. Jack Twist? Jack Nasty. You and him "
(89). All this after they're divorced and he's off on his own. So yeah bit of a slow fuse
on Alma.
As Ennis says though, "Alma? It ain't her fault." (70). She marries Ennis with certain
natural assumptions about him, only to have those assumptions overturned in a single
moment, right outside her front door. She's upset and hurt butlike Ennisdoesn't
quite know how to put it into words. And really, the girl doesn't have a ton of options
either. She's married to the man, after all.
Her bitterness grows over the years until their entire relationship is poisoned. That
may be Proulx's way of suggesting that prejudice stems from a lack of understanding
and communication, instead of just jerky jerks being jerky. We never get the sense
that Alma's an intolerant person at her core. But she does say some rather cruel
things when he marriage and family are destroyed by the relationship between Jack
and her husband, Ennis.
Lureen
Character Analysis
If we don't see much of Alma, we see even less of Lureen. Basically, she's just a "little
voice" (133) on the other end of the phone. The suspicion, however, is that she's in the
same boat as Alma about the boys' little tryst, since her voice is "as cold as snow"
(133) when Ennis talks to her after Jack's death.
We know she inherited a business from her father, which gives her and Jack some
stability, and that "Lureen had the money and called the shots" (104). That gives her a
little more leverage over Jack than Alma may have over Ennis, which might explain
why her marriage to Jack has more staying power. Otherwise, she's basically Alma 2.0,
there to quietly disapprove of their relationship, and silently twist society's screws
tighter and tighter against our two boys.
Joe Aguirre
Character Analysis
Joe is Jack and Ennis's boss on Brokeback Mountain. Like most of the other supporting
characters, he seems to represent society's prejudice in a very passive way.
He spots Jack and Ennis cavorting on the mountain: "They believed themselves
invisible, not knowing Joe Aguirre had watched them through his 10x42 binoculars for
ten minutes one day" (30). And while he doesn't say anything at the time, he clearly
disapproves of what they do, which Jack learns when he comes back to see about

more work: "Twist, you guys wasn't gettin paid to leave the dogs baby-sit the sheep
while you stemmed the rose," and declined to rehire him (71). Joe has good reasons
for itthe boys didn't do a very good jobbut his tone suggests that he connects their
poor performance to their homosexual relationship, which seems more than a little
unfair.
Again, he never flat out cops to prejudice, but he makes his feelings clear. That kind of
thinly veiled toxicity seems to plague Jack and Ennis a lot, and probably plays a huge
role in making them so unhappy. Prejudice has a way of doing that.
Jack's Mother and Father
Character Analysis
Ennis meets Jack's mom and dad at the end of the story, when he comes to ask them
if he can have their half of Jack's ashes. Jack's dad possesses "the hard need to be the
stud duck in the pond" (137), while his mom "stout and careful in her movements as
though recovering from an operation" (135) tries to make everything better with
dessert. It's an awkward encounter, to say the least.
Dad seems to be running the show, and he makes it pretty clear that he knows what
Jack and Ennis were up to, saying, "I know where Brokeback Mountain is. He thought
he was too goddamn special to be buried in the family plot" (140). Like Alma and
Aguirre, his homophobia comes out as something seemingly innocuousand justified
only to hide darker, hateful things behind it. Ennis reads between the lines of what
Jack's dad is saying and "now he knew it had been the tire iron" (143). If you're looking
for nurturing families, this clearly isn't the right story.
Brokeback Mountain
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
It's where Jack and Ennis meet, the "summer range" (4) for a herd of sheep that they
spend several months in 1963 tending. It's basically just the two of them all summer,
and the love that dare not speak its name comes into full bloom under Brokeback's
lofty peaks.
In that sense, Brokeback is the most obvious symbol is of their love together: an
idealized space full of campfire food, beautiful landscapes and steamy nights in the
tent. Both men use "Brokeback" as a shorthand to describe the intensity of their
feelings, and Ennis even says "Old Brokeback got us good and it sure ain't over" (67).
You could just as easily sub in "love" for "Brokeback" and the sentence would make
perfect sense.
And it's a telling phrase there: "got us." They can't stopthey're too much in love
and yet what happened in Brokeback was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. They're stuck in
that memory because they can't have a life together and they can't express
themselves publicly. All they can do is sneak off on the occasional fishing trip (that
involves things other than fishing).
To quote Jack, "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." (120) So Brokeback
doesn't only represent their love, but the way they can't resurrect it because it's
something that's in the rearview mirror permanently. They will only ever have that

memory. It's a tough breakone might even say a backbreaking break (see what we
did there?)and one suspects that that's the whole point.
Jack's Shirts
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
When you're writing a story about a gay couple who can't express their love for each
other, anything in the closet takes on a special significance. And that's just where we
find Jack's two bloody shirts: in a hidden section of the closet. As symbolism goes, it's
a trifle on the nose.
There's actually two shirts: one of Jack's with blood on it, and one of Ennis's that he
thought he'd lost (of course, Jack had just stolen it as a memento). Jack put "the pair
like two skins, one inside the other, two in one" (146). Pardon us while we reach for
the tissues.
Since Jack's dad won't let Ennis have the ashes, these shirts are the only remaining
link Ennis has to Brokeback Mountain. In that sense, they become kind of portable
versions of Brokeback Mountain and all the forbidden emotions and enduring love that
it represents. The shirts are intertwined, like Jack and Ennis. They're bloodied like Jack
and Ennis. And they're part of the past, not the present: a past that Ennis can't return
to now that Jack is gone.
And poor Ennis can't quit the shirts; "he drove a nail and on the nail he hung the wire
hanger and the two old shirts suspended from it. He stepped back and looked at the
ensemble through a few stinging tears." (156) They'll always remind him of what he
had and what he can never have again, a nasty double-edged sword in fitted flannel.
Jack's Ashes
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
The last section of the story details Ennis's efforts to reclaim Jack's ashes from his
parents. Or at least half of them, since the other half is interred with his wife. As
Lureen informs Ennis, "He use to say he wanted to be cremated, ashes scattered on
Brokeback Mountain" (128). Of course Ennis wants to honor that request and heads to
Jack's parents for the other ashes.
But he just can't get it done: "In the end the stud duck refused to let Jack's ashes go.
'Tell you what, we got a family plot and he's goin in it'" (147). Ennis can't get him to
budge. Oof. If that isn't a symbol for Jack and Ennis's doomed love, we don't know
what is.
So what does it mean? Well, we suspect that it's a sign of the futility of their
relationship: they have so little control over their life and their love that they can't
even get buried the way they want to. It also highlights just how much other people
(i.e., society) get to dictate their behavior and actionseven after they're gone. It's a
hard-knock life for a gay cowboy, even when that life is over.
Brokeback Mountain Setting
Where It All Goes Down

Wyoming
Proulx sets many of her stories in Wyoming, and "Brokeback Mountain" is no
exception. She ranges far and wide with her characters, but there's always an intense
combination of beauty and loneliness where they go. Brokeback itself is defined by
"the great flowery Meadows and the coursing, endless wind" (9), while the "lavender
sky emptied of color and the chill air drained down" (23). This is a place without a lot
of people, and even seems fairly indifferent to the presence of people.
That combinationnatural beauty and a lack of folks messing it upmatches the key
themes in the story pretty well. Jack and Ennis's love is very beautiful: intense, long
lasting, and passionate in a way few of us ever get a chance to experience. But it's
also lonely. They can't share it with anyonethey can't even tell anyoneand once
Jack dies, Ennis gets to deal with it all by his lonesome. Tough break, but then again,
this is a land full of tough breaks: "Stones rolling at their heels, purple cloud crowding
in from the west and the metal smell of coming snow pressing them on" (32). It's not
exactly a beachy paradise.
The funny thing is, that stunning yet bleak landscape actually starts to seep into the
souls of the two men plopped down in the middle of it. Take this passage, for example:
"Like vast clouds of steam from thermal springs in winter the years of things unsaid
and now unsayableadmissions, declarations, shames, guilts, fearsrose around
them" (118). Proulx describes the characters' emotions using the language of the land
itself. And the land itself begins to represent those emotions: when Jack dies Ennis
feels "the huge sadness of the northern plains rolled down on him" (126). The
characters start to reflect the world around them, making the setting as much a part
of their internal life as their external life. This story doesn't just take place in
Wyoming, the state itself becomes a part of the very fabric of the story.
Brokeback Mountain Narrator:
Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her
or him?
Third-Person Omniscient
Proulx sticks to the basics here. Her author's voice can see all and know all. All the
better to let us soar through the Wyoming skies to zero in on whatever she needs us
to, right? Most of the time, she sticks with Ennis, who has the advantage of being the
only member of the central couple still alive at the end. If this were always true, we'd
call this third-person limited.
Occasionally she shifts the view, though, as when Joe Aguirre "watched them through
his 10x42 binoculars for ten minutes one day, waiting until they'd buttoned up their
jeans," (30) or when Jack "neglected to add that the foreman had leaned back in his
squeaky wooden tilt chair, said, Twist, you guys wasn't gettin paid to leave the dogs
baby-sit the sheep while you stemmed the rose, and declined to rehire him" (71).
These moments deliver key information that Ennis can't possibly be privy to. They
move the story forward, without introducing too broad a perspective.
But just as often, she'll deliberately limit her point of view to Ennis, to better stun us
with her skillful dramatic effect. For instance, we never see Jack getting killed, only
getting his postcard "back stamped DECEASED" (123). It preserves a sense of mystery
and lets us connect more deeply with Ennis in the last few paragraphs, as he gets to
the bottom of Jack's accident-that-really-wasn't-an-accident-at-all. That's the benefit of

an omniscient narrator: it lets you change the rules and direct the reader's inner eye
to wherever you darn well please.
Brokeback Mountain Genre
Realism
Proulx keeps the story in the realm of realism, even though it's fiction. Everything
adheres to the tenets of reality, nothing happens that we wouldn't expect in the
natural world, and we could very easily see this scenario taking place in the actual
world (unlike, say, Harry Potter, where as much as we would like to believe the
Hogwarts is out there somewhere, it just isn't. Trust us. We looked.)
Romanticism
Proulx tinges the realism with shades of Romanticism with a capital R, referring to an
18th-century movement that tried to understand the natural universe through human
perception. You can see shades of it in the descriptions of the landscape, in Ennis's
heartbreaking emotions, and in the way the two seem to twist back on each other
more than once.
Brokeback Mountain Tone
Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky?
Playful?
Tragic and Emotional
"Brokeback Mountain" is best defined by two things: (1) these guys really, really love
each other, and (2) ain't nobody ever gonna understand. We see signs of the first one
in the way they react to each other: "Jack took the stairs two and two. They seized
each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out of each other,
saying, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, then, and easily as the right key turns the lock
tumblers, their mouths came together []" (47).That continues pretty much every
time they see each other, even when they're angry. Proulx makes us feel how
fundamental those emotions are to their being: going right down to the core without
looking back.
As for the second one, we get it in the veiled comments of everyone except Jack and
Ennis, from wee Lureen whose "little voice was cold as snow" (133) to Joe Aguirre who
says "you guys wasn't gettin paid to leave the dogs baby-sit the sheep while you
stemmed the rose" (71). That all comes on top of, you know, Jack getting beaten to
death on the side of the road, so we're going to say that society isn't down with these
two and their wild love.
Put them together, and you have a tone of aching, deep-set feeling tinged with a
whole lot of sadness. It's grim, but so, so pretty.
Brokeback Mountain Writing Style
Sparse, but Sometimes Rambling
We say "rambling" out of love, of course, because this story's got some of the best
darn rambling you're ever going to see. That said, you won't read many authors this
side of Henry James who are as quite adverse to the period as Proulx. Just take a look:

They seized each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out of
each other, saying, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, then, and easily as the right key
turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together, and hard, Jack's big teeth
bringing blood [] (47)
And it goes on like that for another five or six lines.
Why? We suspect it's in keeping with the characters' overall lack of control over their
lives (and in this moment, a particular lack of control over their feelings). Just like their
love careens this way and that with no sign of halting or slowing down, so does Proulx
structure her sentences to convey how they might feel at the time. Go back and read
that sentence we cited in paragraph 47 and see how it ends. You'll get what we mean.
On the other handor perhaps because of the rambling styleProulx tends to get
right to the point without a whole lot of embellishment. She doesn't use a lot of
descriptions and skips through anything she doesn't feel is absolutely necessary, say,
for instance when Jack dies and she tells us with a simple "Ennis didn't know about the
accident for months" (123). That, too, is in keeping with the characterization in the
story, since both Ennis and Jack are men of two worlds.
Whats Up With the Title?
Brokeback is where it's at. For reals.
"Brokeback Mountain" is where Ennis and Jack fall in love, and as such, it becomes
much more than a setting for the first part of the narrative. It's more a symbol for the
story itselfan ill-fated love that could never be what these characters wanted it to
be. It's so symbolic, in fact, we did a whole analysis of it in our "Symbols, Imagery and
Allegory" section, so click on over there to read more.
Whats Up With the Ending?
We start out with love, we finish with pain and loss; that's the deal. Ennis ends up with
Jack's shirts hanging under a postcard of Brokeback Mountain, and all he can do is
step back and look "at the ensemble through a few stinging tears" (156). A lifetime of
love reduced to a makeshift sharing in a horse trailer? That's pretty sad for a love that
deep and abiding.
And that's really the point. If they were guy-and-girl, they could have gotten together
and lived their lives in peace. Probably had a few kids to boot. But as it is, Jack's gone
and Ennis is scarred for life with loneliness and grief all because they're both men.
Despite that overwhelming sadness, though, Proulx still wants to remind us of how
special their love was. Ennis dreams about Jack, "and he would wake sometimes in
grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and release" (158). This wasn't just an affair
this was love. Why else would it have stuck with Ennis for so long? The ending helps
remind us that what they had was very real, which makes it all the sadder.
But before we get all mopey and reach for the tissues, maybe we should remember
Ennis's advice: "if you can't fix it you've got to stand it" (159).
Brokeback Mountain Plot Analysis
Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation,
conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers
sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.

Exposition (Initial Situation)

One Crazy Summer
Things begin pretty innocuously, with Jack and Ennis both heading up to Brokeback to
tend sheep. We get a little on their background, watch them do the cowboy thing up
on the trail, and don't suspect that anything notable is about to take place.
Rising Action (Conflict, Complication)
The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name
And thenboom. The two are engaged in a steamy affair. This causes a number of
problems for the story to ponder. Ennis is engaged (to a woman) for starters, and their
boss Joe Aguirre watches them through his binoculars for another. Neither of them
approves, and though Jack and Ennis continue to get together occasionally over the
next twenty years, the fact that they have to keep their love a secret really starts to
eat at them after a while.
Climax (Crisis, Turning Point)
The Big Fight
Finally, they have it out, with Jack playing the idealist with dreams of running away
together and Ennis staying quiet with his unpleasant facts about the reality in which
they live. It's bitter and angry and no fun, but hey, sometimes that's love. Couples
fight, especially when they're backed into a corner, and Jack and Ennis are no
different. It's a good thing they get this out to because
Falling Action
Jack's Dead
A few months later, Jack has an unfortunate accident. Or alleged accident. We'd call it
the climax, except it happens off-screen, and we just hear about it from Ennis's point
of view. Ennis now has to face a life free of romantic fishing trips with the man he
loves, and grapples with the impact on his emotional state.
Resolution (Denouement)
Ennis Has to Live With What's Left
The end finds one dead and one wounded as Ennis comes to terms with a Jack-free
world. His more cautious nature has allowed him to survive, but it sounds like a rough
road ahead, and not even Jack's bloodstained shirt is going to see our lonely cowboy
through it. But hey, that's life for our man Ennis, and there's nothing he can do for it.