Language
The language of the short story “Brokeback Mountain” by Annie Proulx is quite complex and detailed. The narrative passages are clearly different from the dialogue ones, establishing a border between narrator and characters. The narrator uses figurative, descriptive language, while the dialogue passages convey colloquial oral English, written in a way that captures the characters’ southern US accents: “The wind strikes the trailer like a load of dirt coming off a dump truck, eases, dies, leaves a…
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Imagery
Imagery is constantly used in the narrative passages, particularly in connection with the setting, which is meant to reflect the characters’ mood. Here are only two examples of the many that are available in the text:
Dawn came glassy-orange, stained from below by a gelatinous band of pale green. The sooty bulk of the mountain pale…
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Similes
As the story is rather long, in what follows, we will only outline some of the similes that we found most relevant.
In the prologue of the story, the wind is described as follows: “The wind strikes the trailer like a load of dirt coming off a dump truck, eases, dies, leaves a temporary silence.” (p. 32, ll. 18-19)
The simile used in this description suggests the idea of a powerful, dirty wind, which sets the atmosphere of the story and foreshadows the events of the plot. This description becomes a symbol of the characters’ relationship and its tragic end.
The simile “flowed up the trail like dirty water through the timber” (p. 33, ll. 33-34) is used to describe the caravan going to Brokeback Mountain and suggests again the idea of something tainted, dirty, and unnatural, fores…
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Metaphors
Out of the metaphors that you can find in the text, we have chosen to focus on those we consider most relevant for the narrative.
The “coursing, endless wind” (p. 34, l. 35) is a personifying, hyperbolic metaphor that associates the wind with an eternal being, conveying the bad luck of the protagonists of the story.
The green plain of the mountain is described as “a gelatinous band of pale green” (p. 35, ll. 2-3), a metaphor that conveys the idea that t…
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Repetition
Repetitions are used in the text to emphasize certain ideas. For example, in the beginning of the text repetition is meant to reinforce the idea that the protagonists are similar: “…both…
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Symbols
The most important symbol in the text is that of the wind. Throughout the text, there are numerous references to the wind which turn it into a symbolic motif of the characters’ relationship. The wind symbolizes the unstable, unofficial nature of the rel…
