Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum

Did Ennis change his attitude toward his sexuality after Jack´s death?

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Dagi:
Do you think Ennis moved on, or came out, or started a relationship with another man some time after Jack's death?

I'll come back later and add my own opinion, have to feed the starving pack downstairs now.

delalluvia:
No.

If you believe Jack was murdered, then that would have vindicated Ennis' belief in how risky coming out would be, so he wouldn't even try again.  And if you believe Jack wasn't murdered - and I'm not a fan of the movie's ending so I stick with the story's ending - Ennis doesn't change.  He 'stands' things, so he ends up alone.

Clyde-B:
Hi Dagi,

  I don't believe Ennis changed his idea about his sexuality after Jack died, but I think he admitted to himself that he loved Jack.  Which is, to me, what was really important. 

  I think that's what Annie Proulx means by the line:  "There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe..."  That line means to me, he knew he loved Jack, but he still tried to believe he was straight.

   I give it this interpretation because I was once in this exact same position of loving someone of the same sex and trying to assure myself that I was straight.  (I have since moved to the position that I don't care what you call it, all I really care about is who I love.   ;D)

I don't think Ennis would have taken another male lover on his own, but if he had run into another man that saw him for what he was, really valued him, really cared, and gently pursued him, I think something might have developed.

Dagi:
Thanks Delalluvia and Clyde-B for your opinions.

I believe Jack was murdered, and I think Ennis never really doubted it, although he never knew for sure. That can only have comfirmed, IMHO, his notion that being homosexual/living openly with a guy is dangerous in the given environment.

But I want to believe what you said in your last line, that since he finally seemed to have accepted that he was truly in love with Jack, and because he couldn't save Jack from his fate by making this big sacrifice of not living with him, that these two facts together could possibly have made him open for another man, if the right one came along.

Dagi:
Thanks for your thoughts, Gary. Yeah, it was pretty courageous that he came out to some extent, and we can only hope that he'd find love. In fact the sceneries we've made up in so many fanfics are too comforting to not be true. And it doesn't matter whether he thought of himself as gay or what ever, but that he admitted to loving Jack and being loved by him.

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