For me, the name also carries a suggestion of a failed effort. You break your back trying futiley to accomplish something; that is, you are destroyed by the struggle. Brokeback was the idyllic place that Jack and Ennis could never make it back to, much as they (both!) might have wanted it, and eventually the struggle destroyed them. Does that make sense?
I agree so completely with you.Both men eventually become "broken" by the apparant initial idyll of their time on the mountain.Ennis's virginity is literally broken there.Their hearts are broken,portrayed so graphically ,by The wretching scene when Ennis leaves Jack, and so subtely by Jack and his silent pauses as he awaits confirmation that Ennis may return next year.
In the story Ennis admits that he knows what he has lost when he comes down from the mountain,so in effect they both inherently were broken by the summer.They try to recapture a fragment of what they once had in those glorious days,with their infrequent meetings,but never fully succeed.Only fragments of the carefree days are ever regained.They can never go back to what they once had,it is lost forever.
They never go "back" to broke back, and they never go "back" to those carefree times.Jack longs,in the book to go back to that time of the silent embrace,the memory of which still haunts him.When Ennis held him from behind.
In the end they like us they cannot turn back the clock.They grasp at straws in a vain attempt to salvage some vestige of what they once had,but end up broken by the whole experience.
Jack is literally physically broken,and Ennis becomes a broken shell of a man.
Maybe that is why both the film and story resonate so deeply with so many of us.We have been broken in so many different ways,and oh, how some of us wish we could rewind back the hands of the clock.
They remain forever broken by a love that will never reach its full and glorious potential, no matter how hard they try. and neither can I.mores the pity.This is I believe the genius of Proulxs' writing,there is something for all of us.That is unless you have been living in an emotional vacuum,in which case,you probably would not have either read the story,or viewed the film.
If I could have one wish,it would not be for fortune or fame,it would be to go back and change my actions,to mend my broken heart!!!!!