Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Jack's adolescence is a blank page...
Penthesilea:
--- Quote from: atz75 on March 06, 2008, 12:42:04 pm ---The visual clues from his bedroom seem a litte odd to me in regards to the question of his adolescence, because his Lightning Flat bedroom really looks like a small child's room more than a teenage room.
--- End quote ---
Mrs Twist even describes it as such: "I kept his room like it was when he was a boy and I think he appreciated that."
Now it's agruable that a woman of her age could just as easily describe a teenager still as a boy, especially if it was her (only) son. I think in this case it was meant both, literally and figuratively.
But what would the difference have been? What would have been different in a room inhabited by a teenager in that specific time and place?
One thing that comes to my mind are posters. We know from the story that there was a poster of a dark-haired movie star, the skin tone had gone magenta.
When I think back to my own childhood room, posters were pretty much the most remarkable difference between me being a child and being a teenager. And the room got more and more crammed full of stuff. All the childhood things stayed, and the teenager stuff was added.
Now what chance did Jack have to hoard teenager stuff? He lived very isolated, he was a highschool dropout (and I bet this was OMT's doing "He's old enough to earn his keep") and money was sparse.
I wonder where he did have his car from? Did he buy it with the money he had earned on Brokeback the summer before? How did he get to Aguirre's office then? Did OMT drive him? Somehow I think Jack's truck was an old farm truck his father didn't need anymore and it was in a too bad condition to be worth any money.
On the question of being run off: I think there are several levels of being run off. You can throw out your child with it's meager belongings for once and all (and threaten it to never come back). You can treat your child in a way that it runs as soon as it's halfways old enough. And there are many nuances in between.
For Jack and OMT I figure it was something in between. OMT didn't throw Jack out for once and all. Jack returned to LF after Brokeback 63, and also probably in 62. And he continued to return his whole life.
But I guess OMT made it clear to Jack that he wasn't able to earn his keep with helping on the ranch (he could never do anything that pleased OMT) and OMT didn't want to feed him forever.
I guess they were both happy when Jack went to Brokeback respectively went to the rodeo circus.
Brown Eyes:
Thanks Chrissi! In terms of his boyhood room... everything in the room just feels way too small for a teenage boy. And, the prominence of the toy cowboy and toy gun all just make the room feel like it's really set up for quite a young child. Maybe the Twists were so poor that they couldn't update Jack's room when he got older/bigger. But, still, to me the room just visually appears too young.
And, when Jack asks if Ennis's folks ran him off... it sounds to me like Jack is implying the idea of parents actively kicking kids out. I agree that there could be different "degrees" of running off... and both the child and the parent could be involved somewhat. I think this particular issue with Jack goes to how severe we believe the abuse was from OMT (and how long it lasted) and how rebellious we believe Jack was as a teenager.
Penthesilea:
--- Quote from: atz75 on March 06, 2008, 04:47:35 pm ---I think this particular issue with Jack goes to how severe we believe the abuse was from OMT (and how long it lasted) and how rebellious we believe Jack was as a teenager.
--- End quote ---
And how common it was to run kids off. Thinking back on my teenager years, I knew several people who were run off respectively were abandoned by their parents. One classmate came home from a school trip and found two plastic bags with his clothes in front of the door. His mother told him that her lover had moved in while he was away and there was no more room for him. And this was in so-called modern times, in urban settings and with plenty of laws to protect children/teenagers.
I think it would not have been more rare in a tough, unforgiving sourrounding like rural Wyoming in 1963. Maybe Jack had heard a similar story many times before.
Artiste:
Wow!
--- Quote --- I knew several people who were run off respectively were abandoned by their parents. One classmate came home from a school trip and found two plastic bags with his clothes in front of the door. His mother told him that her lover had moved in while he was away and there was no more room for him. And this was in so-called modern times, in urban settings and with plenty of laws to protect children/teenagers.
--- End quote ---
......
Is this why that I felt that Jack was maybe an orphan or something like that??
I think that Jack is from his mother's sister!! ?? Is that making sense?
Hugs!
Mandy21:
I'm not sure "run off" would be the right term. He was 18 in '62, and we don't know how many years of high school he completed. Maybe his dad made him drop out at 15, expecting / needing him to be a help on the farm, continued to give him food and shelter, etc., and Jack turns out to not have his heart in it at all. I would think he would just want to get the heck out of that place the minute he could. We don't know if Jack had any other jobs prior to Brokeback '62 to earn some cash to buy that truck, but I'm leaning towards the idea above that it was just an old clunker of a truck, and his dad let him have it, on the hope that he'd get out of town in it, and maybe stay gone since he wasn't any help to him on the farm. We also don't know if Jack came back home for the winter '62 / spring '63 period before heading back to Brokeback. I'm guessing he must have cause he probably couldn't have made it to warmer climes to work the Rodeo circuit in that thing.
On the earlier topic of his "initiation" (what a nice word for it:)), I agree that he surely seems like a young man who has had some experience in the arena of sex with a man. Let's face it, he was the one reaching for Ennis's right hand in the tent, and he didn't seem too confused by the act itself, in terms of who goes where and what goes where (hope I'm not offending anybody). I think by the way Aguirre gives the instructions to Jack and Ennis on day one, that those were the standard set of instructions, followed year after year -- that there was always one man staying at the camp and one man staying with the sheep. Remember, he says don't leave no signs that you were there to Jack, that the Forest Service can't know that you were there. One person couldn't survive in just what he could carry on the back of one horse through those conditions. So I think there had to always be two up there. Having said that, I'm not sold on the idea that Jack had his initiation at Brokeback in '62 for this reason (bear with me, it's kind of scattered): Jack seems to me as a very romantic, sensual man -- the kind that could fall in love and get his heart broken easily. If he'd had sex with his Brokeback partner in '62, I suppose it could have just been casual sex, but how casual can sex be when it goes on for 6 months (April - Sept). And if it went on for that long, Jack seems to me the type who would have fallen in love with that guy. If that was the case, and Jack never saw that guy again, he'd have had a broken heart, he'd have been gun-shy about jumping in again. The Jack that pulls up in front of that trailer in April '63 and gets out, kicks his truck, turns and lays his eyes on Ennis one time and then oh-so-seductively poses against his truck with those come-and-get-me-cowboy eyes (sorry, I'm getting hot and bothered now) -- to me, that is NOT a man who's ever had a broken heart or been the least bit hesitant to jump in with both feet when he sees something he wants. So, IMHO, I don't think Jack was a virgin, but I also don't think he lost it on Brokeback.
Any of that make any sense to anybody?
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