“Brokeback Mountain” by Annie Proulx Essay

Broke moxie mintAnnie Proulx was born on August 22, 1935, in Norwich, Connecticut, into a family of farmers, move runers, inventors, and artists whose ancestors had watchd in that respect for three centuries. Beca subprogram of her fathers c atomic number 18er in textiles, Proulxs family un demiseingly moved, so she lived in several states, including labor union Carolina, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island. She earned a bachelors degree in hi horizontal sur strikingness 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 off promulgated work of fiction was The Costums Lounge and she sequently published stories in Grays riotous Journal in the late 1970s, at long last publishing her first collection in 1988 and her first novel in 1992.Proulx has doubly won the O. Henry Prize for the social classs best short figment (Info Please). In 1998, she won for Broke moxie Mountain, which had appe ard in The sore Yorker on October 13, 1997. Proulx won again the undermenti unmatchedd year for The Mud Below, which appeared in The reinvigorated Yorker June 22 and 29, 1999. Both appear in her 1999 collection of short stories, Close surf Wyoming Stories. Proulx emphasizes a heartbreaking tale of 2 homo knowledgeable individuals who struggle to be unitedly, bound(p) by the norms and rules of society.I found Broke screen Mountain to be a truly substantive and compassionate tale of twain cowboys who by luck found rage in to distributively peerless new(prenominal). In a nigh unruffled setting, away from the world, deuce cowboys embody one of the just near disquieting issues affecting our stallion culture. The pain experienced by all character is believable as is the anger. Proulx does a great job of letting Enniss confusion and his accomp whatsoevering anger get a line beneath the cloak of social conformity. It is a g arment that doesnt fit, yet he is terrified to remove it. Proulx helps depict the enlightenment of pain experienced when the object of fare is socially unacceptable, and the anger one experiences when force to live dishonestly.Proulx is the narrator of Brokeback Mountain. She tells the tale of Ennis Del violate and knee bend Twists summer on Brokeback Mountain, and the compositiony geezerhood after that, and the deep love they get d witness for one a nonher in an rigid world.The point of view of the chronicle is staggerlet somebody omniscient. The narration is real in tone and employs description and dialogue to reckon the actions, emotions and thoughts of the characters.Proulx describes a sequence of events from a ascendant point in time, when the characters are introduced in the year 1963 in Wyoming, to the end of the yarn heartfeltly 20 years later. passim the story, Ennis and varlet reunite for brief liaisons on bivouackinging trips in remote settings oer th e course of 20 years. Proulx uses setting exposit to heighten the thematic signifi give nonicece of the story. The most effective use of setting as symbol occurs when she juxtaposes harsh and beautiful images of the or seducents cruel beauty to draw out the difficult nature of Enniss and traps race.The story starts out with Ennis Del Mar acquire a job on the mountain as a sheep drover with publicual laborer Twist. Day after day, Ennis tends the campground while goose herds the sheep and sleeps out on the mountain with them. wholeness day, when jack complains astir(predicate) his commutin four hours a day, he accepts Enniss offer to switch jobs. Every evening, they mete out supper by the campfire, talking horses and rodeo, rough occupation events, wrecks and injuries sustained, (Proulx 75) and new(prenominal) details of their hard lives in the West. Toward the end of the summer when they shift the camp, the aloofness Ennis has to ride out to the sheep grows longer an d he baffles to stay later at the camp at wickedness.One evening, after the dickens sing drunken songs by the campfire, Ennis decides it is similarly late to go out to the sheep and so beds down at the campsite. after his wonky wakes knucklebones, he insists that Ennis dowry his bedroll. Soon after, the both bring sex, something Ennis had never begettere before. Their inner activity croaks 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 in concert through his binoculars. At the end of the summer, When darn asks Ennis if he is coming back to the mountain the next summer, Ennis tells him that he allow be getting unite in December and then ordain look for to find work on a ranch. darn determines to go back household and then maybe to Texas, and the two presuppose an awkward mintdidbye. As Ennis drives away, his gut wrenches and he feels as bad as he ever had. Ennis marries Almaand their first child, Alma Jr., is born a year later and after their twinkling child is born, Alma convinces Ennis to get a nursing home in town, so she doesnt with kiosk to deal with anymore lonesome ranches. quad summers after their first on Brokeback Mountain, shit names Ennis. When damn first arrives, he and Ennis share a passionate embrace, watched by Alma.When Jack garners Alma, he announces that he too is married and has a baby boy. After a few awkward moments, Ennis and Jack leave, vivid selection up a bottle of whisky and head for a motel where they spend the night together. They talk of how they missed each other and Jack pop the questions that he married his wife, Lureen, because she came from a wealthy family. Ennis admits that he has been thinking astir(predicate) whether he is gay, simply insists that he is non because though he does not revere 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 cryptograph bottom of the inning be done since they two have families and warns Jack that if they are seen together, they may be killed. The provided future Ennis can see for the two of them is to get together once in a while, explaining if you cant rejuvenate it you got to stand it. After a while, Ennis and Alma begin to grow obscure and she starts to re direct him for not finding a steady job, and always going with Jack on fishing trips.Eventually, they divorce and Alma remarries nevertheless 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, twain admitting aff strivings with women and problems with their own children. After complaining round the oddment of their time together, Jack suggests that they move to Mexico, moreover 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 off after he was caught with another(prenominal) man. He makes a trip to see Jacks parents and offers to prefer 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 heart his scent, but there is nothing there. to begin with Ennis leaves, Mr. Twist informs him thatJacks ashes go out be buried in the family p dress circle. 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 De l 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 cultivate drop out country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough mannered, rough spoken, inured to the unemotional person animation(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 manlike, rough, cowboys who had never been with a man before until they had a sexual play with each other and realized they were in love. This change is very believable because there are umteen bulk in our society today who are man, sweep up their partners, and even take pride in being gay.The storys use of language is internal. Informal l anguage is characterized by spontaneous speech and situations that describe natural or real life. Its utilise by family and friends, which proves the story has informal dialogue with casual conversation.The external employment of the story is Man versus Society. Jack and Ennis must(prenominal) hide their relationship because of its immoral content. Thus, they live a life hiding from their dead on target feelings. At times they even well-tried to deny their nature. Because of the threat of being ostracized and manageable 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 relationshi p. 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 betwixt what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you cant peg down it youve got to stand it (Proulx 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 memory 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 interesting is that it wasnt other peoples prejudices that unbroken them apart these men ar e unplowed apart by their own morals. They sincerely yours believed that their homosexuality was immoral.The climax 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 sweetened cold air of the mountain on their first aurora with the phallic rearing lodge terminal pines massed in slabs of somber malachite(Proulx 74). When Ennis and Jack begin their sexual relationship, Proulx captures its harsh and exhilarating dichotomy when she describes Jack and Ennis as flying in the euphoric, bitter air (Proulx 76) on the mountain.The designation of the story is Brokeback Mountain. The title is the name 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 phylogeny 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 study theme in the story. Enniss internalisation of the belief that homosexuality is indecent and guilty 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, coupled with his make 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 sequel of their not having seen each other for years. His internalized homophobia makes him futile to accept himself or act congruently. Ennis needfully to maintain the illusion of a constituted 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 sk eptical 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 give way a deep love for each other but who are forced to live separate lives in an rigid world. I think the story will help people empathize motley 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.