Author Topic: TOTW 01/08: Do you think Jack was murdered or was it an accident?  (Read 86310 times)

Offline Penthesilea

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Howdy BetterMostians!  :D


Our first TOTW in 2008, and therefore we start counting anew. We now have TOTW 01/08. Next week will be 02/08 and so on.

The topic this week is truly a classic. Souxi suggested to talk about it again. Many thanks to Souxi for her suggestion!  :)

Heavy stuff this week... This topic used to be a can of worms long ago with people getting very emotional about it (over on IMDB, back in the old days...). I hope time did some healing for us, or at least we've gained some distance from those emotionally agitaded times following the our first experiences with BBM.

I combined the TOTW with a poll. So if you don't want to get into the debate, you have the opportunity to make your opinon known with a simple click. We'd love to get as many votes as possible, to have a broad base for an overview of the BetterMost Brokies' take on the question.


Edit to add: We'd also be interested in whether your perception regarding the question has changed over time. So tell us about it, if you want  :).

And some additional info about the poll: you may select two possibilities, because some aren't contradictory with each other.



Do you think Jack was murdered or was it an accident as Lureen described it to Ennis?





Photo courtesy of Eric. Thanks Bud!
« Last Edit: January 07, 2008, 04:03:36 pm by Penthesilea »

moremojo

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Re: TOTW 01/08: Do you think Jack was murdered or was it an accident?
« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2008, 02:44:41 pm »
I tend to think Jack was murdered, but cannot know this for sure. In fact, both film and (especially) original story are deliberately ambiguous on this point. This becomes part of Ennis's tragedy, in that he will forever be haunted not only by Jack's death, but by an unresolved (and perhaps unresolvable) uncertainty as to how it was encompassed.

I do find it striking that, whether an accident or homicide, a tire iron was the agent of death.

Offline Wayne

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Re: TOTW 01/08: Do you think Jack was murdered or was it an accident?
« Reply #2 on: January 07, 2008, 03:46:36 pm »
 :o  Congrats on your 3,oooth post Moremo!    :D

Yeah I think we are not supposed to know... Proulx wrote it to be deliberately ambiguous, in the same way it was and would always be for Ennis. This is part of the pain he has to deal with.

I tend to think it was the tire iron, but I hope it was the tire. I don't know ...   :-\ :'(
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Offline souxi

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Re: TOTW 01/08: Do you think Jack was murdered or was it an accident?
« Reply #3 on: January 07, 2008, 04:11:42 pm »
Well I voted..."we are not supposed to know", in other words, I think we have to make up our own minds. I think the flashback we had in the film of Jack being beaten with tire irons, could have been one of two things. It could have been what really did happen to him, OR, it could just have been Ennis believing his own worst fears had been confirmed. IF it was tire irons, I,d be inclined to think LD had something to do with it. I wonder if he ever knew that Jack had been seeing men. He always hated Jack right from the start. No rodeo fuck up was ever going to be good enough for his precious daughter was he? So if it was that, I,d say he had something to do with it. Whatever did happen to Jack, the film didn,t so much upset me as make me mad. Sure the ending was very sad, but it made me mad, because two people, who happened to be men, couldn,t be together simply because they knew the rest of the world wouldn,t be able to mind their own damn buisness, and leave them in peace to live their lives.  :'( :'(
That my two pence worth anyway.

Offline louisev

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Re: TOTW 01/08: Do you think Jack was murdered or was it an accident?
« Reply #4 on: January 07, 2008, 04:29:20 pm »
Accident.  All references to Jack's death are either from the narrator "Ennis didn't find out about the accident until months later" or from Ennis's point of view, which is referred to in a hallucinatory way.  Ennis had absolutely no way to "know for certain" that it was a tire iron.  However, he was certain that living openly with another man would lead to his and/or Jack's certain death and the comment by Jack's father about Jack planning to leave his wife and move in with "this other fella" fit  his paranoid conviction.  It was a measure of Ennis's paranoia that he so wilfully believed in Jack's murder.
“Mr. Coyote always gets me good, boy,”  Ellery said, winking.  “Almost forgot what life was like before I got me my own personal coyote.”


moremojo

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Re: TOTW 01/08: Do you think Jack was murdered or was it an accident?
« Reply #5 on: January 07, 2008, 04:31:55 pm »
:o  Congrats on your 3,oooth post Moremo!    :D
Merci beaucoup! :D

Offline Katie77

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Re: TOTW 01/08: Do you think Jack was murdered or was it an accident?
« Reply #6 on: January 07, 2008, 05:23:28 pm »
I voted, I think it was an accidentand also we aren't supposed to know

I agree the scene in the movie, is showing us what Ennis is thinking, and because of his paranoia, that is exactly what he would have assumed....all his worst fears had come true, in his mind....maybe he even justified himself, believing he had made the right decison not to go with Jack....a little bit like, "I told you so"...

I think though, that Jack's injuries would have shown whether it was a tire iron or a tire blowing up in his face....it was the 80's, and its hard to believe that there was a cover up by investigators.

It does put some doubt in our mind, of course.....maybe it was used to give some credibility to Ennis's paranoia......all through the movie, we are thinkng, "go with him, you wll be ok"....but once we are given the tire iron thought, we could now be thinking...."Well, maybe Ennis was right all along"......

Another twist to the story, that makes us make up our own mind about what really happened.

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Offline serious crayons

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Re: TOTW 01/08: Do you think Jack was murdered or was it an accident?
« Reply #7 on: January 07, 2008, 05:45:46 pm »
Accident.  All references to Jack's death are either from the narrator "Ennis didn't find out about the accident until months later" or from Ennis's point of view, which is referred to in a hallucinatory way.  Ennis had absolutely no way to "know for certain" that it was a tire iron.  However, he was certain that living openly with another man would lead to his and/or Jack's certain death and the comment by Jack's father about Jack planning to leave his wife and move in with "this other fella" fit  his paranoid conviction.  It was a measure of Ennis's paranoia that he so wilfully believed in Jack's murder.

I agree with this interpretation, for just those reasons. Also, there was foreshadowing in the story that Ennis would respond that way. When he and Jack were in the motel, he said that if his dad saw them "you bet he'd go get his tire iron."

Some people say, what are the chances of Jack being killed in such a freak tire accident? Well, slim. But that kind of explosion does happen. Are they any smaller than the chances that Jack would be killed the exact same way that Ennis had always feared?

Plus, wouldn't Jack's body have been examined by someone who could tell the difference from the effects of an accident as Lureen describes and the effects of what Ennis imagines?

Ennis has a good reason to suspect murder -- he'd been fearing it all his life. But what is OUR reason, as readers, for suspecting it? All we know is that Ennis suspects it. If Ennis had said, "Oh, OK," in response to Lureen's account and never considered the idea of murder, we'd have no reason to suspect murder, either. But again, we know Ennis is paranoid, so why are his fears a good basis for ours?

The story works better for me as literature if Jack's death is accidental. It's much more ironic and sad to think that Ennis' paranoia is so strong that it leaves him eternally uncertain.

I used to be in the "we aren't meant to know" club, but more recently I've come around to this view.




Offline Brokeback_Dev

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Re: TOTW 01/08: Do you think Jack was murdered or was it an accident?
« Reply #8 on: January 07, 2008, 07:23:44 pm »
I know in Ennis' mind it was the men with the tire irons, and that could very well be true.  Also, l think that Jack got reckless with his attraction to men, and the people of the town were talking.  Some of them very homophobic.  Plus, from Ennis and Lureen's dialogue on the phone after he read the deceased postcard, I tend to have the thought that Lureen knew something was up with Jack.  She was so cold to ennis and matter of fact with her story of the flat.  I teetered between we are not supposed to know, and yes it was murder, so I split the difference with my answer.  This is a good TOTW.

Offline Artiste

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Re: TOTW 01/08: Do you think Jack was murdered or was it an accident?
« Reply #9 on: January 07, 2008, 07:35:50 pm »
Murdered!

Since I was beaten and left for dead, because I am a gay man. And I know about many gay men who were murdered and (some if not all) police do nothing!!

Murder was then and still is such danger, unfortunately for gay men!!

Hugs!! May gay men be safe!!