The summer finishes, and Jack and Ennis go their separate ways: Ennis to marry Alma Beers, and Jack back home to Lightning Flat. Ennis is unable to accurately pick them apart. There is a hailstorm, and the sheep from the Brokeback herd get mixed up with another. However, Joe Aguirre watches them have sex through binoculars, and treats Jack coldly when he delivers the news that his uncle is dying. In the wilderness and solitude of the mountain, Ennis and Jack feel free and alone in their intimacy. Soon they begin to have sex, an encounter that neither of them speak about but implicitly know will repeat itself through the rest of the summer. One night, after Ennis and Jack have been up late drinking and talking, Jack declares that it’s too late for Ennis to go back out to the sheep, and that Ennis should stay with him. Jack complains that he hates being so far away from the main camp, and Ennis offers to switch roles with him.

The two boys get to work, occasionally noticing each other across the natural beauty of the mountain.Īs the summer wears on, they get to know each other well, exchanging stories about their families and backgrounds. Jack has worked at the mountain before, and he gives Ennis advice about working there. Ennis is assigned the job of tender, and Jack is given the role of herder, for which Joe commands him to sleep far out in the wilderness to watch the sheep at night. Their boss is Joe Aguirre, a cold man who doesn’t think much of the two boys when he meets them.

Both boys dropped of out of school in order to work, and meet for the first time in the summer of 1963 as ranch hands on Brokeback Mountain, before either of them is 20.

Ennis’ parents died when he was young, so his older brother and sister raised him. Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist are two poor boys born on small ranches in Wyoming around the time of the Second World War.

Brokeback mountain proulx