Character Analysis of Jack Twist

[CANSTANDIT]

Thanks bjoe27 for the youtube. I'll look it over tonight!

[Desecra]

It's an older interview, but a lot of it seemed familiar.   I don't know if I've seen it or heard it, or some of the parts had been talked about in other interviews.   Jake talks about Ang Lee seeing Ennis as the Old West and Jack as the New West, Ennis staying put and Jack moving forward and so on.   It's an interesting interview.

[myrine]

They are complete opposites in the way they deal with things, aren't they? Jack was crazy to be anywhere else than Lightning Flat, so he leaves for Brokeback and bull-riding, risking poverty. Then, when he finds Lureen and gets married, his situation is also far from ideal, but he finds ways to spend Lureen's money. Ennis's method is accepting his situation, no matter how it sucks, he lives within it, while Jack gets around things. The only thing Jack can't avoid is meeting up with Ennis once in a while; even if it hurts, he can't change the situation and he can't stop, and we see how that wears him out over the years.

[CANSTANDIT]

Yes, they sort of temper each other, don't they? When Jack wants to go off half-cocked, Ennis reins him in and makes him think; and Jack tries to push Ennis forward, out of his rut. He succeeded more than once-but I see  Ennis as a horse that not only needs to be led to water-he has to be pushed to drink.

[andy]

this is a very interesting interview with jake g about brokeback and his character. he talks about whether what is masculine and feminine and how the time of brokeback, when it starts is 1963 that it juxtapositions with how everyone says that that was around the time everyone could do what they wanted and love who they wanted.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zusaIRvcezY

This interview is on the Italian copy of BBM. The lovely Paola got me a copy last year. It's a 2 disc set with a booklet containing an introduction by Dario Zonta and an essay by Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Unfortunately it's in Italian only but I'm sure Paola (freetraveller) made a translation and offered it to any who would like.

[Cally]

this is a very interesting interview with jake g about brokeback and his character. he talks about whether what is masculine and feminine and how the time of brokeback, when it starts is 1963 that it juxtapositions with how everyone says that that was around the time everyone could do what they wanted and love who they wanted.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zusaIRvcezY

This interview is on the Italian copy of BBM. The lovely Paola got me a copy last year. It's a 2 disc set with a booklet containing an introduction by Dario Zonta and an essay by Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Unfortunately it's in Italian only but I'm sure Paola (freetraveller) made a translation and offered it to any who would like.

Yes, I thought this was one of the most intelligent interviewers on BBM that I saw, and Jake spoke very well too.

[myrine]

One thing that saddens me is that Jack seems to settle for less and less each time. First, he proposes the “sweet life”; then, after the divorce, he goes to Ennis ready for everything, and gets nothing; in the movie, he tries to talk him into moving to Texas, which is a big mistake, since Ennis was expressing his fear that people seem to “know”; then, he says they should go to Mexico where it’s warm, which sets off another reaction from Ennis; and finally, he pictures the single moment of perfection and acceptance he’s ever felt with Ennis (even though Ennis wouldn’t…) and craves for that feeling. And, as we can see when Ennis discovers the shirts, it’s the most basic of Jack's needs, and he knew it from the very beginning. So there is a lot in his "Nothin never come to my hand the right way".

[CANSTANDIT]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 

{contemplates becoming an existentialist..]

[myrine]

That was a little grim, wasn't it? 

We're always thinking about Ennis's flaws, but if we're reading this story today it's because both characters should've done more, but they couldn't. They couldn't move forward. It's always Ennis's fault that they didn't move in together or go to someplace else. He wouldn't do it, but Jack kept coming back to him and hardly saying anything about it. Was he scared of Ennis's reaction? Was he ashamed? He finally speaks out in the last meeting, but he doesn't say the whole truth, apart from missing Ennis so much sometimes... He starts with the good life they could’ve had, but then goes on to protest about the sex, the few HAF a year, which is safer. I think that he bends the "rules" in his life, in his marriage, and even with Ennis, to try and get his way, but no wonder he's never satisfied.

As someone smarter than me said, "Change, when it comes, cracks everything open", and that change was his own death.

Oh, I'm sorry. Was this even more depressing?

[fofol]

That was a little grim, wasn't it? 

We're always thinking about Ennis's flaws, but if we're reading this story today it's because both characters should've done more, but they couldn't. They couldn't move forward. It's always Ennis's fault that they didn't move in together or go to someplace else. He wouldn't do it, but Jack kept coming back to him and hardly saying anything about it. Was he scared of Ennis's reaction? Was he ashamed? He finally speaks out in the last meeting, but he doesn't say the whole truth, apart from missing Ennis so much sometimes... He starts with the good life they could’ve had, but then goes on to protest about the sex, the few HAF a year, which is safer. I think that he bends the "rules" in his life, in his marriage, and even with Ennis, to try and get his way, but no wonder he's never satisfied.

As someone smarter than me said, "Change, when it comes, cracks everything open", and that change was his own death.

Oh, I'm sorry. Was this even more depressing?

   The odd thing with blaming is that it very seldom actually hits the correct source of the problem, and never solves any literary puzzle.  If anyone is to blame for Ennis's inability to move in together with Jack, wouldn't that responsibility belongs to his father and Earl's murderers?  But then, who made those people the people they are, and who is to blame for creating them as murderers?  And who created their parents and society, those attitudes, and then going further back, where's the responsibility their generational, locational beliefs?  Ennis is who he is, like all of us, he can do what he can do, and can't do what he can't do.  If you have discover whose fault it is, Jack and his parents have at least 50% of the blame - if Jack were more socially able, he'd know how to get Ennis warmed up, like Alma does, before telling him what changes would be most beneficial for both of them, and he'd be able to make them living together a reasonable prospect.  But more importantly, we need to ask why do some people seem to need to blame anyone?  Shit happens, to those who are socially inept and those who are socially reworked and presently graceful.  Screw the blaming, feel the heartbreak, make your own course corrections, and move on.  Damn, that was as good as a shower on a hot and sticky day.

[myrine]

Of course I know that we are products of our culture and we would never go back in time enough to analyze why. I was just expressing the result of that.

None of them had much information. They did what they could with what they had. Jack had expectations for "L.D"’s money, but of course he doesn’t get lost with Ennis by the time “L.D” dies, and so Lureen manages it from then on; Jack is left to spend some of it in his trips. I’m just saying that both of them are flawed; none of them moved in almost twenty years. Ennis “stood” everything, and so was unmovable, and Jack moved around, never being completely satisfied because he was living in a no-man’s-land. It’s like he moved to the sides, trying things, but not forward.

[Ministering angel]

I think AP ties this story up so tightly that neither character has room to move.  In Jack's case he is given the traumatic episode at age three which leaves him permanently scarred in a way which he can probably not see. He sees that he is different and with 3yo logic seems to associate the punishment he received with the fact that he is different. That's how the pissing scene reads to me, anyway. The beating and humiliation are passed over matter-of-factly but then he says he saw how he was different. Then he adds, almost as an afterthought, "No way to get it right with him after that." Thus "I am different" = "I cannot get it right." So punishment is the result of being different.

So on the mountain he must pretend to be like Ennis - I'm not no queer - me neither - but Ennis still ends up punching him. What is Jack to make of the punch? Whether he sees it as happening because he did wrong or because he is not the same as Ennis (or as Ennis claims to be) is maybe irrelevant. The point is that he feels separated from Ennis.

In the motel, same thing. Ennis asks if he's done it with other guys and Jack has to pretend he is like Ennis, that he hasn't. Only at the end does he say "I'm not like you". Jack always has to hide his true self because in his mind being different means being wrong and getting punished for it. This is some pretty powerful childhood conditioning, and AP makes sure it's so strong that Jack cannot overcome it. She tosses in the Dozy Embrace so Jack knows just how much he could lose if he loses Ennis. She makes him virtually incapable of overcoming the fear of stepping out of line where Ennis is concerned.



One question I've been contemplating is why Jack remained silent on the mountain, even after they are told they have to pack up and leave early. If they were having such a free and wonderful time, why could Jack not bring himself to invite Ennis up to Lightning Flat, at least for that extra month? Or to go travelling with him? Sure, Ennis is engaged but does an engaged man then spend the summer fucking his same-sex coworker? At the very least Jack ought to be thinking that Ennis has maybe had a change of mind about marriage.

I'm being a little disingenuous here. I know why I think Jack didn't say anything, and that's because he clearly felt that there were restrictions on their relationship, that despite them flying in the euphoric air, they were still not on the same page. I'd just like to hear from anyone who thinks that "nothing seemed wrong" is the same as "nothing was wrong" - if nothing was wrong, why couldn't Jack make that suggestion to Ennis? Not "Come live with me and be my love" but "Let's keep this going a while longer".

[Desecra]

I think he's just continuing to keep quiet - not a goddamn word.   They haven't even acknowledged that there IS any sex, although obviously, they both know there is, before anybody jumps on me for that.   But if they can't mention that, they can't mention the rest, I think - later, at the motel, when the sex is talked about, Jack can finally mention something more.     He also secretly steals Ennis's shirt - it suggests that he needs something of him, he doesn't think he's going to be with Ennis after the summer.   He does throw it out there when they part - Ennis could have suggested they look for work together, or even been more definite about next summer, but Ennis emphasises getting married.

I think engaged men could well spend the summer fucking their coworker if it was supposedly the expedient sex that Annnie Proulx talked about - that's not in the same category as sex with lovers, I don't think. 

[Ministering angel]

Once the punch is thrown I don't see that there's any hope of Jack asking Ennis, yet it seems to me that if he can ask four years later, when Ennis is well and truly married, that he should be able to ask while on the mountain. That he doesn't, that he feels he can't tells me clearly that all was NOT as right as the ingeniously written description insinuates it was.

If Jack can ask in the motel (after first ascertaining that Ennis is amenable to more sex), what has changed between the mountain and the motel? Why does he feel he can ask then when he couldn't (or didn't) ask before?

My answer FWIW is that there has been some major shift in their interaction - yes, the great big hug!

[Cally]

One question I've been contemplating is why Jack remained silent on the mountain, even after they are told they have to pack up and leave early. If they were having such a free and wonderful time, why could Jack not bring himself to invite Ennis up to Lightning Flat, at least for that extra month? Or to go travelling with him? Sure, Ennis is engaged but does an engaged man then spend the summer fucking his same-sex coworker? At the very least Jack ought to be thinking that Ennis has maybe had a change of mind about marriage.

I'm being a little disingenuous here. I know why I think Jack didn't say anything, and that's because he clearly felt that there were restrictions on their relationship, that despite them flying in the euphoric air, they were still not on the same page. I'd just like to hear from anyone who thinks that "nothing seemed wrong" is the same as "nothing was wrong" - if nothing was wrong, why couldn't Jack make that suggestion to Ennis? Not "Come live with me and be my love" but "Let's keep this going a while longer".

I suppose I'm an adherent of  'when they owned the world and nothing was wrong', at that time.  But when they had to leave the mountain and return to 'real life', suddenly everything was wrong - a great deal more than 'mixed' - for both of them.  And, perhaps an ingenuous answer to your disingenuous question  , Jack had been punched, he’d asked ‘You goin a do this next summer?’ and been told ‘Maybe not’ and that Ennis was still getting married.  I think he hadn’t the confidence or spirit to bounce back from this apparent rejection.  But then I feel both of them were so stunned by the sudden unexpected ending of their extraordinary experience that neither could form any coherent plan for continuing it.  Ennis couldn’t imagine not marrying Alma – it was what had been planned and what was expected, so there was no way out. [This happened to a relative of mine – I’m fairly sure he had fallen out of love before the wedding, but couldn’t face up to the consequences of calling it off.  It lasted 3 years.]

I hadn't read your last post ^^^when I wrote this - would agree with nearly all of it, but I think we see

That he doesn't, that he feels he can't tells me clearly that all was NOT as right as the ingeniously written description insinuates it was.

differently .