by Annie Proulx
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"Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives"
Not your average love story, by any means. Brokeback Mountain is unquestionably a tragedy. Of course, it is tragic in regards to the fact that one of the two protagonists of the story is brutally beaten to death by a tire iron and left in the dirt to drown in his own blood; a gruesome, unwarranted death for a man with half of his life left in front of him. However -- and not to undermine the tragedy of this event at the end of the short story, by any means -- I propose that this story is tragic throughout. The very nature of the story is morose, the content depressing.
The problems in this story are issues that many people today continue to deal with. Homosexuals especially saw issues identical to this preventing man from being with his lover throughout the course of history, but this most recent century perhaps more than ever. Homophobia is a fear that has driven the vast majority to hate homosexuals and commit unforgivably cruel crimes against them.
I digress; I would now bring up one of the most prominent plays ever written as an example for comparison: Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Two star-crossed lovers, destined to be together should circumstance ever permit, but kept apart by fear of the repercussions of their actions. Romeo and Juliet and Brokeback Mountain tell virtually the same story from two very different perspectives. Both stories are told from a narrative that leads the reader to identify with the lovers and hope for their reunion, their happiness together. Both are tragedies. Both leave a sour taste in the reader's mouth after putting the story down and result in a bitterness regarding the nature of society in the time it was written.
Before reading this for class, what I had heard about the story was limited to the very judgmental summaries of my friends. There seriously is a lot more to the story than two homosexual cowboys finding comfort in each others' arms in the cold of winter. Popular speculation of the story does the piece a serious injustice -- it really contains lots of insightful, brilliant subtext about the harsh reality of love being denied by the circumstances the lovers find themselves in.
Very powerful! I particularly admire your note that "Brokeback" has become a kind of joking shorthand for gayness, when in reality, the story critiques our homophobic society.
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