Uncle Harold : Who was he and how dare he end the summer a month early.

[Toast]

Uncle Harold was present in the original story, in the screenplay and in the finished movie.
Who was this man that brought Aguirre up the mountain and then caused Ennis to lose "a whole month's pay".

Was Uncle Harold special to Jack, was he a maternal or paternal uncle?
Or was he just an excuse to get that damn Aguirre up the hill with his binoculars?

This interruption has not been discussed anywhere as far as I can see.

Jack had an agenda, and probably a timeframe.
When he stepped up with his lasso that afternoon, he had a whole month to make up for.  If he had been allowed to have the next month together with Ennis on Brokeback, how would their lives have been different?

[Jeff Wrangler]

Uncle Harold didn't cause them to lose a month's pay. It was a storm moving in from the Pacific, stronger than the one that brought the snow on August 13, that caused Joe Aguirre to order them to bring the sheep down a month early.

[Pipedream]

Well, as Jack said: his uncle didn't die after all. So Harold is obviously innocent.
We don't know much about this dude. But had he really been the reason for our boys to be driven out of their Eden, he would not only have deserved pneumonia but also an itchy athlete's foot and a nasty cyst on his butt. Yeah, that would've been fair, I think.

 

[DeeDee]

   

Jack had an agenda, and probably a timeframe.
When he stepped up with his lasso that afternoon, he had a whole month to make up for.  If he had been allowed to have the next month together with Ennis on Brokeback, how would their lives have been different?

Don't know about them, but mine would have been a whole lot better...

[slayers_creek_oth]

Don't know about them, but mine would have been a whole lot better...

ROFL....no kiddin!  Then again would we even be havin this convo?  Would we even know each other?   

[TJ]

Jack's "Uncle Harold" was more than likely his mother's brother; but, he could have been his father's brother. Of course, I am guessing here.

He could have been a favorite uncle of Jack's and it was interesting that his mom must have had Aguirre's office phone number or his mailing address. When Ennis goes up to Lightning Flat, Jacks father says that he knows where Brokeback Mountain is. Makes me wonder if Mr. Twist had driven Jack to Signal himself the year before to go to work for Aguirre.

But, as other members have said. Uncle Harold's illness had no connection with their job ending a month early.

My favorite uncle was Dad's brother, Raymond, who was the youngest of 3 sons in the Doty family. Most of the news of my relatives that I read about when I was in Vietnam with the US Army came from my mother.

[Toast]

I am in total agreement that Uncle Harold was not the direct cause of the summer ending a month early.
However, I think he was used as a device to get Aguirre up the hill, observe the shenanigans, and to end them.
So Joe Aguirre came up, used his binoculars, delivered the message and came down the hill.  Next summer he stated that there was no work for Twist in his operation.  And he made it clear that it was because of the rose stemming last summer.
So Aguirre, on his way down the mountain was not a happy man.  He probably felt that the sheep's fleeces would turn pink, and that the meat would turn blue. (figuratively)
I say he immediately started looking for an early market for the flock.  Then by the time Uncle Harold was over pneumonia (a week or less, I would say), he held his nose and went back, using the snow (or anything) as an excuse to close down the Brokeback operations; and to not extend the employment of Jack and Ennis.

I think my question is still valid:

What would have happened between Jack and Ennis if Aguirre had not ended the Brokeback work as early?
If Jack and Ennis had been together for another 20 or 30 days, what might have happened?

[TJ]

According to Annie Proulx's book, it was not yet August when Aguirre rode up with the news about Jack's Uncle Harold having pneumonia.

It was the mddle of August when Aguirre said to bring the sheep down from the mountain.

So, there is absolutely no connection between Uncle Harold's illness and the sheep herding job ending in the middle of August instead of September, the "official" end of the sheep grazing season in the mountains.

It was a coming snow storm, probably a blizzard, that caused Aguirre to decide to end the boys' job a month early.

When Aguirre went back the 2nd time to tell Jack that his uncle recovered, he gave Jack a bold stare. Annie Proulx does not explain that; but, I think that he was remembering what he had seen with the binoculars when he first came up with the news of the sick uncle. Aguirre could have put a stop to them goofing off by riding up while they were having sex out in the open.

I don't think Aguirre was even bothered by his shepherds having sexual activity; but, it bother him that they goof off too much with lots of horseplay and rough-housing while letting the dogs babysit the sheep. Their acting like the immature teenagers which they were when they should have been working as responsible adults was to what Aguirre meant when he accused them of "stemming the rose." The expression comes from removing the stems from roses, leaving only the rose blossom and there being no way too keep the rose looking good. "Stemming the rose" has to do with wasting time when there is work to be done.

In regard to Toast's last two questions here:

What would have happened between Jack and Ennis if Aguirre had not ended the Brokeback work as early?
If Jack and Ennis had been together for another 20 or 30 days, what might have happened?

Oh, there are lots of unanswered questions which we as the reader of the story or the viewer of the movie can bring up.

I would say that if they had worked the full season on Brokeback Mountain and Ennis had his truck parked at Signal in Aguirre's parking lot just like Jack's was, Ennis might have changed his mind about getting married to Alma in December 1963. It certainly was not a "shot-gun" wedding because Alma did not get pregnant until January 1964.

He might have written Alma a "Dear Jane" POSTCARD, to tell her the marriage was off. In the book, Ennis's brother, K.E. lived in Signal when Ennis went to work for Aguirre. Alma might have lived in town or on a ranch there.

After the guys got paid by Aguirre, they "ate . . . at that place in Dubois" in the book. After the meal, they drove their trucks, which had been parked on the street, off in opposite directions.

Two quotes from the book related to the 1963 departure scene and how Ennis talked about it in the Motel Siesta in Riverton in 1967.

"You goin a do this next summer?" said Jack to Ennis in the street, one leg already up in his green pickup. The wind was gusting hard and cold.
  "Maybe not." A dust plume rose and hazed the air with fine grit and he squinted against it. "Like I said, Alma and me's gettin married in December. Try to get somethin on a ranch. You?" He looked away from Jack's jaw, bruised blue from the hard punch Ennis had thrown him on the last day.
   "If nothin better comes along. Thought some about going back up to my daddy's place, give him a hand over the winter, then maybe head out for Texas in the spring. If the draft don't get me."

"Well, see you around, I guess." The wind tumbled an empty feed bag down the street until it fetched up under his truck.

"Right," said Jack, and they shook hands, hit each other on the shoulder, then there was forty feet of distance between them and nothing to do but drive away in opposite directions. Within a mile Ennis felt like someone was pulling his guts out hand over hand a yard at a time. He stopped at the side of the road and, in the whirling new snow, tried to puke but nothing came up. He felt about as bad as he ever had and it took a long time for the feeling to wear off.

 

"That summer," said Ennis. "When we split up after we got paid out I had gut cramps so bad I pulled over and tried to puke, thought I ate somethin bad at that place in Dubois. Took me about a year a figure out it was that I shouldn't a let you out a my sights. Too late then by a long, long while."

[serious crayons]

I always wondered what the point was of dragging poor Uncle Harold into the story. Aguirre goes all the way up there to report to Jack that he's dying. But Aguirre and Jack agree there's nothing Jack can do about it. Later, turns out Uncle Harold is just fine after all.

I knew Uncle Harold was a pretext to get Aguirre up there to spy on them. But still, it seemed like an awkward reason. Why not just have Aguirre stop by to check on things? That would be perfectly legitimate, and would avoid the distraction of introducing an unseen and irrelevant character.

Then last night, an idea came to me. Uncle Harold is about to die, but Jack can't do a thing about it -- whether he's "up here" on the mountain, or "down there," in society. It's a foreshadowing of what Ennis realizes in the end. He tried to keep them from harm by refusing to live with Jack. But Jack gets killed anyway.

In other words, Ennis can't do anything to keep Jack from dying, whether he's living with him (metaphorically, "up here" in their mountain paradise) or living apart ("down there" in society). It's out of his control.

The parallel is underscored when Aguirre says "so here I am" (here to tell Jack about Uncle Harold) and Jack says "so here I am" (here to be with Ennis after his divorce). Jack's response to Aguirre's report about Uncle Harold is, "bad news." And of course the report of Jack's death is VERY bad news.

There's a similar foreshadowing in Jack's comment about the sheep getting killed by lightning, and Aguirre blaming him like he's supposed to control the weather. Of course Jack can't keep the sheep from dying. Nor can Ennis prevent the death of someone he's trying to protect. "The weather," i.e. fate, is out of his control.

[Front-Ranger]

Bingo, Katherine. You are quite a thinker. And thanks, Toast, for bringing up this question!