Brokeback Mountain Summary & Analysis

Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist are both born poor and raised on small ranches on opposite sides of Wyoming, sometime in the midst of the Second World War. Ennis’s parents die when he’s young, so his older brother and sister raise him. He wanted to finish high school, but when his pick-up truck breaks down and there’s no money to fix it, he has no way to make it to school and has to drop out. Jack, too, drops out of school when he’s young to work on his parents’ ranch in Lightning Flat, Wyoming.

Jack and Ennis meet for the first time in the summer of 1963, before either of them has reached the age of 20. They have both signed up with Farm and Ranch Employment to work as herders and camp tenders on Brokeback Mountain. Jack worked on the mountain the summer prior; this summer is Ennis’s first. When they meet, Ennis has recently been engaged to Alma Beers.

They are introduced in the presence of their boss, Joe Aguirre, who instructs Ennis to be the camp tender and Jack to be the herder. He tells Jack to go and sleep with the sheep to protect them from wolves and thieves at night. This is against the rules of the Forest Service, so he’s not allowed to leave any trace of his presence, including remnants of any campfire. Joe is unimpressed with the two men, thinking to himself that they are a “pair of deuces going nowhere.”

Jack and Ennis head to a bar, where they get to know each other. Jack tells Ennis about a lightning storm the summer prior that killed forty-two sheep. Jack is described as a small man with curly hair and buckteeth, who loved bull riding and was desperate to get away from his hometown of Lightning Flat. Ennis is described a tall, muscular man with a narrow face who has quick reflexes and is farsighted.

Jack provides Ennis with more tips for surviving the mountain, such as how to pack the mules, and to never order the soup. They collect their horses, dogs, and supplies and head out to the camps. Ordered by Aguirre to set up their camps in different locations to protect the sheep, Jack and Ennis watch each other as small, colorful dots from across the mountain.

One day Jack complains about his four-hour commute to and from his campsite out with the sheep. Ennis offers to switch jobs with him, but Jack insists it’s more about the principle—they both should be allowed to sleep at the main camp. Still, he allows Ennis to take his place that night.

The next day, the two men stay up late by the fire, drinking and getting to know one another—sharing stories about their families, ranches they’ve worked on, dogs they’ve owned, and experiences with the military. When Ennis finally rides out to the sheep, he realizes he’s probably never had such a good time with someone else.

As the summer wears on, the men continue to spend time together late into the night, sharing a fire, songs, a flask of whiskey. One night, when they’re both drunk, Jack says it’s too late for Ennis to ride back out to sleep with the sheep. Ennis falls asleep on the floor, and Jack wakes up to his snoring, insisting he’ll be quieter on the bedroll, which is big enough for the two of them. Almost as soon as the two men get into the bedroll together, they begin to have sex. Ennis wakes in the morning with his pants around his ankles, Jack sleeping up against him. Without exchanging any words, both men know that their emotional and sexual intimacy will continue through the rest of the summer.

The men commence their summer relationship. They feel safe in the solitude of the mountain. They never discuss their relationship, except for one brief exchange in which they both insist that they aren’t “queers.” One day, Joe Aguirre watches them have sex through binoculars. He subsequently treats Jack coldly when he delivers the news that Jack’s uncle is dying.

One night in August, Ennis spends the night with Jack in the main camp. A hailstorm sets the sheep off course and they get mixed up with another herd, and prove very difficult to separate. Snow arrives early on the mountain in mid-August, and Aguirre calls for them to bring the herd down. Aguirre pays the men for their summer work, noticing that some of the sheep are different.

When Jack and Ennis part ways after coming down from the mountain, they do not make plans to see each other again. Ennis is going off to marry Alma, and Jack may be pulled into the military draft. Ennis finds it hard to look at the bruise Jack has on his face from a punch he threw. When they say goodbye, Ennis is overcome with stomach pain so strong he thinks it is food poisoning. Soon he realizes that his agony is due to his sudden separation from Jack.

Ennis marries Alma in December, and she is pregnant by January. They name their daughter Alma Jr. Ennis works a series of ranch jobs, frequently moving his wife and daughter. After four summers away from the mountain, Ennis receives a telegram from Jack, postmarked from Texas. Jack says he has heard Ennis is in Riverton, and that he would be passing through and wanted to come say hello. Ennis replies, “you bet.”

When Jack comes into town, Ennis is nervous and puts on his best clothes. When Jack arrives, the men embrace, and before they know what is happening, they are kissing passionately. Alma, standing in the doorway, sees the whole encounter. When Ennis finally turns to see her there, he makes no explanation, simply introducing her to Jack. Within twenty minutes, the two men find themselves in a local motel, where they spend the night together.

The men catch up regarding the last four years. Jack had moved to Texas and married a wealthy woman, Lureen, whose father owned a farm machinery business. He competed in some rodeos, but had to quit due to injuries. Jack wants to find a way for them to see each other more often, but Ennis points out that he has responsibilities: to his work, to his daughter, to Alma. Further, he’s scared that if the wrong people find out about their homosexual relationship, they’ll be beaten, or even murdered. Jack declines to tell Ennis that Joe Aguirre revealed to him that he knew about their relationship, and refused to hire him for the following summer on Brokeback Mountain.

Jack proposes that the men start a ranch together. Ennis refuses, telling him the story of Earl and Rich. They were two men who lived on a ranch together near where Ennis grew up. Ennis’s father often made disparaging comments about them, insinuating that it was presumed they were gay. One day, Earl was brutally murdered with a tire iron and mutilated, and Ennis’s father took his young son to see the body as a way of teaching him a lesson. This memory has traumatized Ennis, and he doesn’t want the same thing to happen to him and Jack. The men are left at a loss with what to do for their desire for each other, which stands in direct contrast to what society and their families expect of them. Jack finally convinces Ennis to take a few days away from home to spend time with him.

As the years wear on, Alma and Ennis have another daughter. The couple begins to grow apart, as Ennis steals away for weeks at a time to be with Jack, while Alma is left wondering why he doesn’t take her and the girls on vacation. She tires of his predilection to take work with long hours and low pay, and gets a job at the grocery store. Eventually, she divorces Ennis and marries the owner of the grocery store.

At a Thanksgiving at the grocer’s house, Ennis does his best to show that he isn’t upset by the divorce or that his daughters live with Alma. But when he and Alma are alone and she accuses him of being in a relationship with Jack, he grabs her out of anger. He doesn’t see Alma or his daughters for several years after that, though he continues to pay child support.

Jack and Ennis continue to see each other over the years. They age, but their desire for each other is stronger than ever. In May 1983, 20 years after they first met on Brokeback Mountain, they spend a few days by a lake. They speak about women they are sleeping with and their concerns about their children. They both feel that they never have enough time together.

They fight over when they will see each other next; Jack had thought they would next be together in August, but Ennis says he can’t get off work until November. Jack tries to convince Ennis to elope to Mexico with him, but Ennis cites his responsibilities towards work and child support. They are left without a resolution as to how to make their relationship work better. They hold each other through the night.

Months later, Ennis sends a postcard to Jack, and it is returned marked “DECEASED.” Unable to believe it, Ennis calls Jack’s wife, Lureen, who confirms that Jack was changing a tire when it blew up and hit him in the face. He drowned in his own blood before help arrived. Based on the tone of her voice, Ennis surmises that there is more to his death, and that it is likely he was murdered in a similar manner to Earl, with a tire iron. Lureen tells Ennis that Jack had always wanted his ashes to be scattered on Brokeback Mountain. When he died, she kept half of his ashes and gave the other half to his parents.

Ennis goes to visit Jack’s parents in Lightning Flat, Wyoming. Jack’s mother is kind to him, but his father is cruel, insinuating that he knew Ennis and Jack were lovers. He refuses to give Ennis the other half of the ashes, saying that they will be buried in an ancestral burial ground. Ennis recalls an anecdote Jack told him about his father. Once, when Jack was three or four, he didn’t make it to the toilet in time, and Jack’s father urinated on him in an attempt to both humiliate the little boy and teach him a lesson. Ennis looks around Jack’s childhood bedroom, where he finds two shirts that Jack wore on Brokeback Mountain. One of these shirts has blood on it, from the last day on the mountain when Ennis hit Jack on the nose. Nested inside this shirt is another shirt: Ennis’s. Ennis had lost the shirt long ago, and he now realizes Jack had taken it. Ennis takes both of the shirts home with him.

Ennis buys a postcard of Brokeback Mountain and pins it up in his trailer. He hangs the shirts up alongside the postcard. He frequently dreams about Jack, and resigns himself to mourning what could have been.