Katherine asked this question ages ago, when we were discussing the brief reference to Jack's post-divorce drive ("twelve hundred miles for nothing"):
Tell me, though, why did that particular line devastate you for a week? You mean because you were haunted by the image of Jack driving all that way, full of hope, for nothing?
And I know this sounds like a book-club question, but: What do you suppose Annie's reasoning was, from a storytelling perspective, for mentioning things like the phone call and the punch in such a SEEMINGLY offhand way, long after their actual occurence?
I know it's taken me a long time to answer the question. Not four f'ing years, but long enough.
My first response is: you know, that isn't the only time in the story that important information, particularly important emotional information, comes out in an off-hand kind of way, at the end of a sentence or a paragraph that, at first glance, appears to be about something else.
The first example is in the prologue, in the first paragraph:
"...Again the ranch is on the market and they've shipped out the last of the horses, paid everybody off the day before, the owner saying, "Give em to the real estate shark, I'm out a here," dropping the keys in Ennis's hand. He might have to stay with his married daughter until he picks up another job,
yet he is suffused with a sense of pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream."
Here's this entire paragraph that's about -- what? Rural poverty, the loss of Western land to developers, and the lifestyle of a guy who's more than a little rough around the edges, peeing in the sink, hanging his clothes from a nail or something? It's not just unromantic -- it's
anti-romantic.
And then, at the end of the paragraph, there's that little half-sentence.
...he is suffused with a sense of pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream. And there, almost hidden at the end of run-on sentences and bleak descriptions, is the most important detail in the entire prologue.
It's... well, it's a surprise, I guess. Here I, the reader, have been lulled into thinking that I understand this character and his situation, and then suddenly, in half a sentence, everything I understood is turned on its head. It's not the way I would structure, say, a scientific argument, but I think there's something powerful about forcing a sudden change in perception. It's like... I don't know, like a Zen koan, or like suddenly waking up. It draws attention to the detail that's out of place.
And it's a particularly appropriate structure for characterizing Ennis. I mean, if you didn't pay that close attention to Ennis, you might see a guy who works hard, has earned enough respect to be responsible for the keys to the ranch, but who hasn't earned enough money to own a ranch himself. And a guy who... well, he doesn't quite seem the cocktail party type, does he? But the surface appearances don't even begin to tell the story of Ennis del Mar, and the real story slips out only at the end, only if you're paying attention.
And that's not the only time that the end of a sentence or paragraph contains something unexpected, something apparently unrelated, a kind of revelation:
"They never talked about the sex, let it happen, at first only in the tent at night, then in the full daylight with the hot sun striking down, and at evening in the fire glow, quick, rough, laughing and snorting, no lack of noises, but saying not a goddamn word
except once Ennis said, 'I'm not no queer,' and Jack jumped in with 'Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody's business but ours.'"
"Years on years they worked their way through the high meadows and mountain drainages...[snip]...
but never returning to Brokeback."
The whole paragraph in which Ennis and Jack talk about other affairs, but which ends with:
"Ennis laughed a little and said he probably deserved it. Jack said he was doing all right
but he missed Ennis bad enough sometimes to make him whip babies."
"Ennis didn't know about the accident for months until his postcard to Jack saying that November still looked like the first chance
came back marked DECEASED."
And the sentence I was thinking about, right after it:
"He called Jack's number in Childress, something he had done only once before when Alma divorced him and Jack had misunderstood the reason for the call,
had driven twelve hundred miles north for nothing."
I guess the structure of the whole story also hides the main point until the end. Lots of people have pointed out that, after the reunion at least, Jack and Ennis seem to talk about their attraction to each other a lot:
"'Christ, it got a be all that time a yours ahorseback that makes it so goddamn good.'"
"'Sure as hell seem in one piece to me...'"
"'...I sure wrang it out a hunderd times thinkin about you.'"
"'That's one a the two things I need right now...'"
But you know what? All that time, they're talking about sex. So they seem to accept the sex, and unlike on the mountain, they even talk about it.
But the emotional depth of the relationship isn't apparent... until the flashback to the dozy embrace.
And then the offhand mention of the twelve hundred drive for nothing.
And then learning that Jack wanted his ashes spread on Brokeback Mountain, that it was "his place."
And then Old Man Twist's revelation that Jack had talked about bringing Ennis up to Lightning Flat, at least until that last visit.
And then the description of the punch, mixed together with the discovery of the shirts.
It's like being slammed, over and over, with the realization that these weren't just two guys who enjoyed having sex with one another -- this was an incredibly profound love. And we don't learn the depth of it until Jack's dead.
I know enough about the short story form to know about O. Henry's stories, and about the way the plot always goes off in an unexpected direction at the end. I guess, in a way, Brokeback Mountain follows that form. But it isn't Jack's death that's the surprise, or at least, it isn't the biggest surprise. It's the discovery of the love we had missed noticing all along. Love, not just sex -- that's the twist.
And I think the whole story structure is part of the characterization of Ennis, as well. We're never allowed too deeply into Ennis's mind. We're allowed to see some of the events, and we're allowed to see the sex. But the love... the details that point to it are mentioned in offhand comments, as if they are pushed out of mind, until Jack's dead and the realization all comes together.
And then, going back and reading the story again, all those details that add up to the love start to stand out. Pawing the white out of the moon. The headlong, irreversible fall. Trying to puke in the whirling snow. "Little darlin." "This ain't no little thing that's happenin here." Reading the story for a second time is like dreaming with Ennis.
And those shirts were there, all along, in the second sentence of the story.
