Edit on April 14th, 2008 for TOTWHappy new week, BetterMostians!
I had an idea for a TOTW yesterday, but when I started to write it down today, it felt strangely familiar. I went searching and indeed, I had brought up the same topic last year already
Oh well, blame it on age
.
But since the topic never hit off and got only a meager two responses, I thought I'd try again and make it a TOTW. I just added the
TOTW 13/08 to its title.
For a story of only 28 pages length, Brokeback Mountains contains a lot of references to death, dying, killing, etc. Even taking in account that it's a tragedy, it seems an awful lot of doom. Life in the rural West sure is no bed of roses, eh?
Why do you think Annie Proulx added so much death into the story? Can you think of any more examples? Did you find this number of death references striking (to be honest, it took me a while to notice it)?
On the highway 59 heading south towards Gillette, May 2007
End of Edit
The title of this thread is, as most of you surely have noticed, somehow borrowed from Annie Proulx, who talked about "The Wyoming Death Trip" in her essay Getting Movied.
Reading people's interpretations of the sunken submarine Thresher mentioned in the story, in another thread today, the idea for this thread formed in my mind.
The story Brokeback Mountain is full of death and doom from the get-go on. Just like Proulx's trip with an interested film-crew in Wyoming (hence the headline).
This topic has come up sometimes in various threads, but I think it's so significant it deserves its own thread.
I've gone through (almost) the whole story today and listed up all mentions of death or dying I found. I stopped the listing with the deceased postcad, because afterwards the rest is almost exclusively about death. It would have been too many lines to mention and, to be honest, I didn't want to read the last part.
Direct mentions of death, dying or killing in the story:- Ennis' parent's dying in the second sentence of the story (sans prolog)
- Jack's story of the killed sheep the year before, struck by a lightning storm
- Ennis shot a coyote first light; the one with balls the size a apples
- the boys talking about the submarine Thresher "and how it must have been in the last doomed minutes"
- the death of Ennis' parents is mentioned a second time
- the fire dies down (causing Ennis to freeze his a$$ off and join Jack for TS1)
- Uncle Harold was expected to die from pneunomia (though he didn't)
- Jack fucking starved that year he made only 3000 $$ rodeoin' and met Lureen
- Ennis in the Siesta: "We do that in the wrong place we'll be dead"
- Ennis tells the Earl and Rich story
- Ennis: " If he [E's father] was alive and was to put his head in that door right now you bet he'd go get his tire iron."
- Down in Texas Jack's father-in-law died
- The batteries of the transistor radio died at their last meeting
- Jack expected to get shot by Lureen or the husband (because of the thing he had going with a "rancher's wife")
- He probably deserved it, said by Ennis (ouch)
- "all them things I don't know could get you killed if should come to know them."
- Jack: "...and then tell me you'll kill me..."
- Ennis stood as if heart-shot
- Jack feared Ennis might have a heart attack
- the postcard came back stamped DECEASED
- and everything that follows from that point on (eg the spoon handle that was the kind that could be used as a tire iron)
Indirect, partly symbolic threats of death:- If the draft don't get me
- Ennis's headlong, irreversible fall (could also be interpreted far more uplifting: falling irreversibly for Jack, which he doubtlessly did, respectively had already done at that point of the story)
- Jenny had an asthmatic wheeze and Alma feared for her life
- Jack was too busted up for the army
- The boneless blue [of the sky] was so deep, said Jack, that he might drown looking up (and that's ecaxtly what happened
) - The bear seemed it was falling apart
- The brilliant charge of their infrequent couplings was darkened by the sense of time flying, never enough time, never enough.
- Stoutamire was a hell-raiser
- Ennis was trespasssing in the shoot-em zone
- The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis's pocket (the race that had begun with Aguirre tossing Ennis the watch)
- Jack as ministering angel. Angels = clearly not earthy beings
Some of these are in both, story and movie. And although I related only to the story, naming of further examples from the movie is welcomed. This thread can be about both, story and movie.
