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Short story - scene placement

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Shuggy:
David Indiana's discovery of the meaning of a line in the film (reported at IMDb BBM) has reminded me of something:

It's just occurred to me why the scene of Jack being abused as a boy by his father occurs where it does in the short story. Ennis remembers it as he's going up the stairs to Jack's bedroom. If he had remembered it before he went to Lightning Flat, he never would have gone.

We don't seem to have a place for discussing the short story...

fernly:
Hey Shug,
Could you tell us what meaning of which line? (I went back and looked on IMDB and couldn't figure out which post...)

I get your point about Ennis remembering the abuse then, and not sooner, but I hope that Ennis would have gone anyway.  He was certainly accustomed to abusive fathers (growing up with the one he was damned with) and his love and grief for Jack I think would've driven him to Lightning Flat regardless.

It's always broken my heart that the last quoted words we get from Jack in the story are  him telling Ennis about being abused.

Jeff Wrangler:
I'd be interested in knowing what that post said, too.

I'm not getting why Ennis wouldn't have gone to Lightning Flat if he had remembered about the abuse. The point of the trip was to offer to scatter Jack's ashes up on Brokeback, as Lureen told Ennis Jack wanted.

YaadPyar:
I think Shuggy's referring to:


He Done The Job....   
 
 by - David-Indiana 4 days ago (Sun Apr 23 2006 22:05:28 ) 
 


I was watching Brokeback Mountain this weekend, and I heard something I never noticed before.

In the flashback scene, when Ennis is telling Jack about the scene his father took him to see when he was a boy, Ennis tells Jack that "For all I know, he done the job".

All these times I have seen this movie, I always thought Ennis meant that the old man had "done the job", meaning "homosexuality".

Then it dawned on me, perhaps Ennis meant that his FATHER "had done the job" meaning his father murdered that old man.

Now I am confused. Does anyone know what Ennis meant by "done the job"?

**********************************************************************
>>He meant his father may have taken part in the murder<<


Can you believe it? All these times I have watched this movie, I had the whole thing backwards! I always thought he meant that Earl "Done the job" of homosexualtiy. I sincerely hope I am NOT the only one who didn't get that.

Now I have to watch this movie again. It puts certain things into a different perspective.

Shuggy:
Thanks yardpyaar, that's the line, and just as well you remembered because I'd forgotten. Interesting that David didn't at first get that "done the job" meant "done the murder" and thought it meant "done some homosexual things himself" but once a faulty reading gets into your head, it's hard to see an alternative.

I remember when I was small, reading in Arthur Mee's Wonderful Day and misunderstanding a lot of his syrupy stuff. There was a story about a tribal man taken to "civilisation" (and dying of 'civilised" TB, though the story didn't explain that) with a picture of him seeing a Wright-brothers-looking aeroplane, with the comment "the first time he had seen a human being fly." I read "human" as a noun and "being" as a verb, so "fly" had to mean the insect.

Which reminds me
Time flies like an arrow. [It does.]
Fruit flies like a banana. [They do.]
(my addition:) Squash flies like an elephant! [Go on!]

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