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

If Jack had "moved on" it was pretty quick. considering his great love for Ennis

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optom3:
This part in both the film and story has always puzzled me. After their last meting which I asume is early spring,/late winter
it says in the story,Nothing ended,nothing begun,nothing resolved.
We then have the reminisce of the dozy embrace scene,which finishes with Jack thinking,let be,let be.

If nothing ended then presumably Jack does not want to quit Ennis.Also does let be mean just let things continue as they are. i.e. thry cant resolve anything so Jack just has to continue with the way things are,not to try and push for anymore that Ennis can give,just let be as it is.

If he was realy giving up on Ennis would he not have said let go,let go instead of let be.

This leads onto my final problem,If jack was really moving on with Randall,then it must have moved at a fair old pace.Assuming the last meeting was late winter/early spring,he then must have almost immediately gone to tell his folks of the plan for a new man to come help run the place.Old man twist mentions that it  was spring when Jack told him of this other one.

Would Jack really have moved on from Ennis so quickly after 20 years?
Did let be, mean let go?
Had it really ended,(ie jack and ennis) considering the words "nothing ended"
Jack did not need Randal for casual sex,and I just can't get my head round him replacing the love of his life.so quickly and also with someone who he does not seem to feel any love for.

Sorry for so many queries it just doesn't seem to pan in my head.

If all this has been answered else where.please feel free to kick me in the right direction!!!!!

Artiste:
Thanks optom!

You do question much. .. may I say.

Like I do too.

Guess we have to regard that... much more? Hope we can and find out maybe... how?

Hugs!

forsythia12:
i know.  it always puzzled me too........but i can't get over jack saying "you have no idea how bad it gets sometimes", and goes on to talk about sex, or lack there of....so, my guess, it was just the sex.  maybe he would've been with randall, and kept going with ennis?  was he ever going to tell ennis about randall because he lied about it on that last camping trip, saying it was the foreman's wife.

i really don't know......but i think jack always loved ennis.  maybe he just couldn't stand it anymore, or maybe that was jacks' answer to how to quit ennis.
if i think of anything else, i'll re-post.

Katie77:
Maybe it was a "knee jerk" reaction by Jack, still angry and pissed at Ennis for changing the next fishing trip from August to Novemeber, he probably talked himself into thinking he could have something special with Randall, and by telling his father he was gonna bring him up to the ranch,was his way of  making it more of a reality, and not just something going through his mind.

I think the suggestion to his father, was merely words Jack used to console himself, and not necessarily something that he had discussed with Randall beforehand.

What has always amazed me, is that Jack actually had conversations with his father about either bringing Ennis or Randall up to the ranch, and what amazes me even more is that his father obviously accepted that Jack had these idea to move to the ranch, and live with one of these men.

When OMT was telling Ennis about Jacks "ideas" about bringing him up to the ranch, and then "some rancher" up to the ranch, he didnt seem at all perturbed about the fact that Jack wanted to bring a MAN up there with him, he was more synical about the fact that they were just more of Jack's "crazy ideas", that never seemed to happen. The way he said it, was like he would have been happier with Jack if the ideas had eventuated.

I often wonder whether the mention of the "other rancher" to Ennis was meant to be cruel, or whether OMT really did not have any idea that those words would be so painful to Ennis.  

When he blurted out those words at the table, I felt so sad for Ennis....it was like OMT was indicating to him, that HE was just another one of Jack's friends, another one of Jack's ideas, nothing special.......and I wondered whether Ennis maybe thought that was the case too, until he found the shirts, and that certainly showed him, that HE was someone more special than any of the others.

I have always thought, that was the reason Mrs Twist asked Ennis if he wanted to see Jack's room, because I think she had probably seen the shirts and wanted Ennis to find them. The nod she gave Ennis when he bought them down, indicates that she was pleased that he had found them, and knew that he would realize the significance of them.

BlissC:

--- Quote ---Would Jack really have moved on from Ennis so quickly after 20 years?
Did let be, mean let go?
--- End quote ---

My .02...

I don't think Jack had moved on from Ennis, and I don't think he meant let it go. Jack was angry, and he was frustrated, but like the story says, Nothing ended,nothing begun,nothing resolved. He doesn't want to continue with the way things are, he wants that "sweet life" that he's dreamt of right since their first reunion at Pine Creek, but he knows he can't push Ennis any more.

From the argument:

--- Quote ---So what we got now is Brokeback Mountain! Everything's built on that! That's all we got, boy, fuckin' all.
--- End quote ---

I think they both know that Brokeback, the dreamtime of Brokeback was their only time, and possibly the only time when things could have taken a different turn - if they hadn't parted as they did. But then Jack ends with the immortal line, "I wish I knew how to quit you." Even if he wanted to (but I really do feel their love's too strong for that), he doesn't know how to. He knows it's Ennis - always has been and always will be, and I think that John Twist's line to Ennis about Jack going back to Lightening Flat with "some ranch neighbor" was Twist Snr's cruel way of trying to get to Ennis, because I suspect, from how Jack's mother is with Ennis in the film (can't remember how the book handles it - a while since I've read it) that Jack's parents maybe suspected Jack and Ennis's relationship.

The tragedy of it is that so far as we know (IIRC neither the story or the movie hint that they ever spoke again after that last row), those were their last words to each other. It was that, as much as Jack's death, that tore me up, because after all they'd been through, and the love they shared, that it "ended" like that, was the final memory that would haunt Ennis.

Sorry, I haven't really answered the question, and maybe that's the way I see it because I don't want to believe that Jack would casually "replace" Ennis like that, but I think if he had Annie's story wouldn't have been told (if that makes any sense), and I don't feel in my heart that she would have ended it that way.

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