Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
what's the point of the job switch?
serious crayons:
Jeff, you're a tough poster! You won't let anything slip past unchallenged. I'll have to admit I got the idea from somebody else here (I hate not being able to credit the right person, but worse to credit the wrong person, who might not even agree -- for what it's worth, it was a man). Anyway, the interpretation made so much sense that I adopted it as my own.
Here's the idea: Ennis is essentially presenting himself to Jack's parents as Jack's boyfriend. ("I'm the queer who loved your son," is how the other poster put it.) True, he doesn't come right out and say so, but both parents in fact do realize it, and it's not farfetched to think that Ennis anticipated that they might "suspect." Disposing of someone's ashes is a pretty big deal, disposing them on ground that Ennis and Jack had occupied together 20 years earlier is suggestive. Lureen got it, and in that light I think her suggestion was kind. (More motivated by wanting to offer Ennis some slight consolation than because she was concerned that Jack's wishes be carried out. Bout the ashes, I mean.) Yes, Ennis can pretend they was just good friends, but the nature of their relationship is such a subtext of the whole scene ("Tell you what, I know where Brokeback Mountain is" -- i.e., "I know Jack was gay") that I think we have to credit Ennis with recognizing and even expecting it.
It appears to me, from the way Mrs. Twist steps onto the porch with coffee already brewed, that they knew he was coming. Why the disposition of the ashes wasn't already discussed, I don't know. Maybe he just sent a card. Maybe he talked to Mrs. Twist and she didn't discourage him from coming. We're probably not meant to investigate that question closely.
The point is, going there in the first place was an uncharacteristically bold move on Ennis' part. It's the first time he has acknowledged, however implicitly, the nature of his relationship with Jack to others. He's pretty openly (albeit subtly) emotional -- with Mrs. Twist, anyway. There is eye contact between them, even before the shirts, suggesting that she gets it and that he knows she gets it. He doesn't appear to worry much about that.
So all of these things suggest that he has accepted his sexuality by then, or at least reached a heretofore unknown level of acceptance. My interpretation of the closet scene is that it has more to do a realization about love, rather than sexuality.
Jeff Wrangler:
Thanks, Katherine, I appreciate the elaboration. Very well put, too. As for not letting things slip by, I guess that comes from being an editor and proofreader--it's my job to watch for non sequiturs.
I have to think and study more on that scene. I do agree that Jack's folks knew exactly who Ennis was when he showed up, and I'll go so far as to say that I think Jack's mother was expecting him--meaning, that the guy her son had been talking about for twenty years would show up eventually--but as to whether he was expected to show up on that day, I'm not yet decided.
Again going on my own life experience, I can't, for example, personally assign too much significance to the fact that Jack's mother had a pot of coffee brewed and a cherry cake baked--only because in that respect she reminds me of a late great-aunt of mine, my grandmother's sister, also a person of a rural background. No matter when you showed up, expected or unexpected, Aunt Esther always had a pot of coffee on the stove and a recently baked cake or pie ready.
On the other hand, it also seems likely that as cranky a cuss as Jack's father was, they didn't get many visitors.
So I need to study this one some more!
serious crayons:
Thanks, Jeff! I'm glad you liked the elaboration. Oh, and for the record I'll throw in one more little thing that I was reminded of by your post:
Ennis doesn't know that Jack has mentioned the ranching plans to his folks until Mr. Twist brings it up. But Ennis doesn't look the least bit uncomfortable about it -- even though everybody in the room knows what it implies, and Ennis knows they know, and also to him it's the worst taboo because of its association with Earl and Rich.
Instead of running out to beat someone up or reacting in any kind of homophobic way, Ennis actually smiles -- very faintly, because he also looks sad -- at the thought. And then his expression darkens when Mr. Twist baits him with the news of the other fella. After 39 years of concealing his emotions, he is able to reveal them.
Front-Ranger:
I'm missing Katherine while she's out on her road trip, so I'm rereading some of her great posts and thought U would like to too.
Meryl:
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