Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Would Ennis Commit Suicide?
ednbarby:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on August 04, 2006, 07:23:13 pm ---I remember "A Dying Wind" as being generally a very good story, and also very well written, though I took issue with one aspect, Ennis remembering, ahem, a certain sexual action said to have taken place before he and Jack came down off Brokeback that I found implausible, given what we know of Ennis in either the story or the film.
--- End quote ---
:thud:
{Barb runs off to find that story.}
;D
I haven't really read that one (yet), but I reckon you're right. :)
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: ednbarby on August 04, 2006, 07:35:28 pm ---:thud:
{Barb runs off to find that story.}
;D
I haven't really read that one (yet), but I reckon you're right. :)
--- End quote ---
Barb,
If you can't find "A Dying Wind," let me know. I just checked my files and I forgot I had downloaded it.
Jeff
dly64:
--- Quote from: goadra on August 07, 2006, 11:25:24 pm ---I say, “No,” to his committing suicide, not just because he’s a stander. When he faces a “crisis” moment (big or small), he tends to deal with it immediately: he confronts the bikers, figgers he can drop the kids off with Alma, punches the truck driver. If Ennis were going to kill himself over the loss of Jack, it’d be more likely to happen right after he returned home with the shirts, or even on the way home (driving off a mountain, maybe). Jack has been dead for a while and Ennis is still around, even putting numbers on a mailbox and looking darned pleased with how nice they look.
I think it’s significant that Proulx writes, “Around that time Jack began to appear in his dreams...” and not “He began seeing Jack everywhere he looked...”
--- End quote ---
I would say that Ennis deals with crises impulsively versus immediately. He has a way of stuffing his emotions until they come exploding out. It’s not the bikers or the truck driver that cause Ennis to explode. That is only the manifestation of his frustration and fear. The only time Ennis is “in tune” with his emotions is when they relate somehow to Jack. Examples of this would be when, post mountain, Ennis breaks down after Jack drives away; or when Ennis is pacing and watching the window for hours for Jack to arrive … when he (Jack) does, Ennis is infused with joy.
Although I don’t think Ennis would overtly kill himself, I do think he would have become more withdrawn and bitter. Eventually, Ennis would have allowed himself to whither away and die. Depressing to be sure, but IMO accurate. In Ennis’ world, he has nothing left … “If you don’t have nothin’ you don’t need nothin’.” What does Ennis have left? A memory of a time and place where he (Ennis) loved Jack openly and honestly and the grief and guilt over having squandered the nearly 20 years of their lives together.
--- Quote ---When Oregon was debating assisted suicide, one psychiatrist observed, “Suicide is the simultaneous inflicting and relief of pain.” Ennis is in a lot of pain at many times during his life, but would he seek to relieve (fix) it in the “ultimate” way? I don’t think so. “You’re stayin’ on your feet, cowboy” has several meanings.
--- End quote ---
I like this observation … one I have not thought about previously.
nic:
--- Quote from: sfericsf on August 04, 2006, 11:41:46 am ---
What was the name of that Fan Fiction?
--- End quote ---
Sorry, I can't recall it as it was in the early days. It was quite detailed about the plans Ennis made going up to the mountain. It wasn't Jeff's, although I do like his story :) Not sure if it was A Dying Wind as I can't find that one to compare. I'll check around a bit more and post again if I find it. Sorry to have piqued your curiosity and not following through.
Marge_Innavera:
--- Quote from: latjoreme on August 04, 2006, 01:30:23 am ---I'm not saying he'd ever completely forget about his past, or that those teachings would be easily overcome.
I guess I view people as frequently more flexible and resillient than that. Sure, those parental teachings can lead to big internal -- or external! -- conflict, particularly in adolescence. But I have friends with very strict sex-is-bad Catholic backgrounds who, upon reaching maturity, were able to look around and see that there are healthier ways of viewing sexuality. I also know, or know of, open-minded people who grew up in bigoted families, moderate drinkers whose parents were alcoholics, leftists raised by right-wingers, and so on. I know all kinds of adults whose family backgrounds are extremely different from their lives now, because they got exposed to other ways of thinking and realized they no longer agreed with their parents.
I'm not saying that kind of deep-seated change is easy or quick. Of course there's struggle. Maybe it often involves some kind of epiphany or conversion experience, or meeting someone influential -- teacher, lover, friend -- with a very different view. . . .
Now for Ennis, it would be particularly difficult. He's uneducated, he has always lived in the same area and is among the same kind of people he grew up with (those big changes often seem triggered by education or a different environment or meeting people with different outlooks). And his father's views were passed down in a particularly harsh and cruel way -- through terror -- and hit particularly close to home for Ennis because of his own sexuality. And in his case, the views he needs to reject aren't just held by his dad, but by pretty much everyone around him.
--- End quote ---
I absolutely think that Ennis could go through some big changes in the years following the end of the original story, but never get away from his problems completely. That's how it generally is when people make big changes - they come slowly, in layers, but when someone seems to just totally and quickly change that's often bad news. The reality is that there's been very little change but the person starts going to opposite extremes to "prove" to themselves otherwise.
Ennis' isolation is a major factor: he wouldn't even have much way of knowing that his own experience isn't a completely unique one. But one thing that might move him around a bit geographically is that the mobility in American life got ratcheted up considerably after the early 1980s, not that it hadn't been a marked trend since WWII. And for Ennis, that might mean his daughters would eventually move out of the area. If the alternative is being left completely alone with no contact with Junior or Francine/Jenny other than phone calls, he might very well move to be near them or even live with one of them after he's somewhat older.
In short, my guess would be that Ennis might change a lot over the years, might even find someone else but given the human psyche's resistance to change, we couldn't expect to see him at the Gay Games or becoming any kind of social butterfly. :)
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