Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx - Essay Example

It would be easy to read Brokeback Mountain as the story of gay men, situated in a time and place that had yet to come to terms with homosexuality. They are right, if possibly for the wrong reasons. Proulx does not idealize rural Wyoming; on the contrary she presents a textured picture of its beauty and its cruelty, its contradictions. Brokeback Mountain completes Proulx's emotional journey into the psyche of the macho Wyoming male by ripping away the masque of masculinity and revealing a sense of tenderness and longing to love that comes as a surprise even to the men who experience it.

Male psyche is the central theme that focuses “Brokeback Mountain.” It is a very real and compassionate tale of two cowboys who unexpectedly found love in each other. The pain experienced by every character is believable as is the anger. Proulx is the narrator of “Brokeback Mountain”. The point of view of the story is third person omniscient. The narration is real in tone and employs description and dialogue to examine the actions, emotions and thoughts of the characters. Sentimental and Nostalgic Sides of Outwardly Tough Characters Male psyche is a predominant and recurrent theme of “Brokeback Mountain.

” It nevertheless registers as a touching illumination of the sentimental and nostalgic sides of outwardly tough characters. In the story of a man whom she called “large, white, stumbling along, going nowhere,” she forged an endearingly sweet love story between unlikely partners, and against a backdrop of sudden violent deaths, insanity, and incest. She refines this ability to mix a poignant and unexpected romance with her trademark rough-mannered characters and unglamorous settings in the best story “Brokeback Mountain.

” They part at the end of the summer, and both marry and start families soon thereafter, but over the next twenty years they rekindle their fierce erotic bond with increasing affection and emotional longing on infrequent “fishing trips.” Emotional journey of male psyche can be traceable everywhere in this short story. When Jack meets Alma, he announces that he too is married and has a baby boy. They talk of how they missed each other and Jack suggests that he married his wife, Lureen, because she came from a wealthy family.

After a while, Ennis and Alma begin to grow apart and she starts to resent him for not finding a steady job, and always going with Jack on fishing trips. Eventually, they divorce and Alma remarries but stays in touch with Ennis and lets him visit their children. Proulx passes male characters through an emotional journey throughout the story. The protagonists of the story are Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar. Proulx gives a good description of both stating “They were raised on small, poor ranches in opposite corners of the state, Jack Twist in Lightning Flat, up on the Montana border, Ennis del Mar from around Sage, near the Utah line, both high school drop out country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough mannered, rough spoken, inured to the stoic life"(Proulx 74.) The antagonist of the story would be the locals and society for killing Jack because they didn’t find it acceptable for a man to be living with another man.

Both Ennis and Jack changed because they were both very masculine,