Structure
The short story “Brokeback Mountain” by Annie Proulx is structured following a backstory plot. The narrative starts and ends in the present, but the main events take place in the past over the course …
...
Title
The title, “Brokeback Mountain”, refers to part of the short story’s setting, a fictional place in the US where the main characters meet and begin their secret, closeted love affair. The title is symbolic of the author’s exploration of contexts…
...
Beginning
The short story begins with a prologue (p. 32, ll. 1-20) introducing readers to one of the main characters, Ennis Del Mar, and announcing part of the plot of the story, his relationship with Jack Twist: “…yet he is suffused with a sense of pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream.” (p. 32, ll. 12-13).
The prologue foreshadows the resolution of the story, by describing the wind in association with the idea of death: “The wind strikes the trailer …
...
Middle
The rising action is long and detailed, presenting the development of the characters’ relationship over the years.
First, the narrator describes in vivid detail the characters’ life on Brokeback Mountain and the way they get to know each other better. As well as doing their duties, the two men spend their time talking, singing, and getting drunk. Here—but also throughout the whole story—the author uses pathetic fallacy, a narrative technique by which the environment reflects the characters’ feelings: “The cold air sweetened, banded pebbles and crumbs of soil cast sudden pencil-long shadows, and the rearing lodgepole pines below them massed in slabs of somber malachite.” (p. 35, ll. 4-7)
A key tension point is introduced when Ennis spends a night at the camp rather than going to look after the sheep. It is cold, and the two men share the bed. They end up having se…
...
Ending
The falling action reveals that Jack dies shortly after their encounter. When Ennis finds out he does not want to believe it and calls Jack’s wife, who claims Jack was killed when a tire exploded. Ennis cannot help but suspect that Jack could have been killed by someone because he was gay (recalling the man he saw as a child who had been…
