Month: March 2021

I always had the inkling that Gene and Finny’s relationship in John Knowles’s A Separate Peace stretched beyond friendship, but it wasn’t until I read Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx, which is explicitly a story of two gay men, that I was able to see how many implications of homoeroticism there are in A Separate Peace. Despite living in different eras, classes, and age categories, the doomed love story of Ennis and Jack in Brokeback Mountain mirrors, and consequently exposes, that of Gene and Finny in many ways.

It is never outwardly stated that Gene and Finny are attracted to one another sexually or romantically, instead it is cleverly hinted at. Finny, while on a beach away from the socially constructed confines of their strict boarding school, admits to Gene: “’You can’t come to the shore with just anybody and you can’t come by yourself, and at this teen-age period in life the proper person is your best pal.’ He hesitated and then added, ‘which is what you are,’ and there was silence on the dune” (Knowles 48). Here, Finny is struggling to explain his want for an exclusive relationship between himself and Gene. Gene admits that he wants to express these feelings back but is unable to. Following this, there is the incident on the tree, which has been a place for reckless abandonment and fun within the confines of their school’s campus for Finny and Gene as there is the branch they can jump off of into the river below. One night, Finny suggests him and Gene jump together, which could be read as a metaphorical suggestion of sex, but once up there, Gene “jounces the limb” (60), and Finny hits the ground, shattering his leg and leaving him crippled for the rest of his life. This shows that when Finny tried to breach society’s unspoken laws that forbid homosexuality, he was punished for it. Gene wasn’t because he didn’t respond that day on the beach and wasn’t the one to suggest they jump together.

This brought to mind Ennis’s fear that Jack having sex with men outside of their rendezvouses could be a threat to his life. Ennis warns him in no uncertain terms that he could get himself into some serious trouble doing this (Proulx 41). Finny’s warning to not push societies’ boundaries was represented in his fall from the tree, but Ennis explicitly tells Jack that he is on a dangerous path. Ennis and Gene, while also partaking in homoerotic behavior/thoughts aren’t punished because they maintain a sense of “normality.” Ennis is married and has a family (at least for a little while) and never has sex with a man other than Jack, and after Finny falls, Gene jumps into the river, like he was supposed to (Knowles 60).

As they were doomed from the start, Finny dies in surgery after rebreaking his leg on a marble staircase (Knowles 177, 193), and Jack dies after a tire explodes in his face while he’s pumping gas (Proulx 45). Finny falls down the marble staircase because he learns the “truth” that Gene purposefully jounced the limb from some school bullies, a metaphor for society taking Finny and Gene’s sexual moment and using it against him (Knowles 176-177) and Jack, Ennis knows, is just as likely to have been hit by a tire as it is that he was murdered in an act of homophobic violence (Proulx 45). They may have been wounded by their lovers’ panic at their own feelings, suffered broken limbs and bloody noses, but they were killed by their situations in life and society’s inability to accept them for who they are. This is never stated outwardly in A Separate Peace and is presented through metaphors and symbolism, but Brokeback Mountain never tries to hide the fact that it would be a tragic story of two gay lovers. Consequently, one exposed the other.

“Complicit brutes, dumb brutes. I sit at my computer and imagine
you, my reader. You have never seen a clearcut, or if you have, you
were a tourist. Regardless of what you think about the timber industry, you believe loggers are butchers, maybe even murderers. Perhaps I’m oversimplifying. Maybe your people are coal miners or oil drillers. Maybe you’re a logger or fisherman. Or maybe, like me, you grew up among them. If so, you will understand my
need to talk about complicity and stupidity, although our understandings may differ dramatically.” (Clare 55)

I really loved this passage from Eli Clare’s Exile and Prejudice. One of my key takeaways from Clare’s writings is how well he breaks down different perspectives, especially that of perception of peoples and the “clearcut: brutes and bumper stickers chapter” is a great example of his ability to see things alternatively.

The chapter begins with Clare recounting the story of loggers who felt threatened by environmental activists, particularly the radical activist group Earth First!, where an article describe the loggers as “Neanderthal thugs” and no better than the Ku Klux Klan. Clare’s response to this is as follows:

“To clearly and accurately report unjust, excessive, and frightening violence is one thing; to portray a group of
people as dumb brutes is another” (Clare 52). Clare makes a powerful statement here on how we understand class structure in society. The general assumption being made are that the loggers are uneducated folk, who are actively harming the environment by their profession and being, and their retaliation of feeling threatened is blown up to a point where it is described as violence by a group fundamentally opposed to them. Clare however, in the original quote that I’ve brought in continues to further ponder what this dichotomy implies. He emphasizes the word ‘oversimplifying’, claiming there is more to what meets the eye. Clare goes on to recount a few stories to prove this, including one about Jim the timber cruiser turned environmentalist, and this passage accurately presents how nuanced identities can be:

“Is Jim the dumb brute you expect a logger to be? Probably not, but you don’t like the ambiguity. Or maybe you’re feeling tricked. Did you expect a story about a working-class redneck, a faller or choker setter, a bucker or truck driver, or maybe the man who pulls green chain — pulling the fresh-cut lumber off the saw — at the mill?” (Clare 56)

Clare is not afraid to embrace the nuanced complex worldview, and is not afraid to take a stance here some might find controversial. He is humanitarian in that aspect, willing to give benefit of doubt to people who might be seen as wrong to others. Some of these included people in his own hometown, and his ability to show compassion and empathy makes him a strong person, and it drives a larger theme in the book of acceptance and how complex identity can be.

PS. Here is a link to an archive of Earth First! journals, if you want to see what they were like and the kind of writings they used to publish

Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain is chock full of natural simile and metaphor, but perhaps the most consistent natural metaphor is fire, as it represents Jack and Ennis’ romance. At the beginning of the novella, Jack viewed Ennis as “night fire, a red spark on the huge black mass of mountain” (Proulx 9). This is meant to symbolize that Jack is beginning to feel desire for specifically Ennis, and no one else. When their relationship deepens further than friendship, the bed is described as “deep enough, warm enough, and in a little while their intimacy deepened considerably… Jack seized [Ennis’] left hand and brought it to his cock. Ennis jerked away as if he’d touched fire…” (Proulx 14). It is important to notice that the bed is described as deep and warm, which are the same conditions needed to kindle a fire. Yet fire itself is only described when Ennis touches Jack, meaning that the “fire” is something that happens specifically between them.

After the first time Ennis and Jack have sex, fire imagery and metaphor broadens itself to Brokeback mountain’s environment. “They never talked about sex, let it happen, at first only in the tent at night, then in full daylight with the hot sun striking down, and at evening in the fire glow…” (Proulx 15). At this point, Proulx is describing a fire metaphor that exists in natural imagery, which is somewhat broader than Jack and Ennis’s relationship. Yet even with natural imagery’s involvement, Proulx only draws comparisons to fire when Jack and Ennis have sex, meaning that Jack and Ennis are now immersed in this personal, romantic, and passionate world they had the freedom to create on Brokeback mountain.   

Natural metaphor has appeared frequently in our assigned readings but each element is used to describe the queer community through a different lens. Adrienne Rich uses water metaphor in her poem Study of History, as the river she writes about represents both the individual queer body and queer community (see my first blog post for a deeper analysis). However, Study of History never focuses on relationships or interactions between queer people. Fire metaphor in Brokeback Mountain seemingly fills in the gaps that water metaphor leaves behind; it acknowledges the beauty of queer connections, queer relationships, and queer romances. Bodies of water, such as rivers, seem to last as long as time; they erode and divert channels to freely flow into horizons we cannot see the end of. Yet fires are kindled in very intimate, specific conditions, and burn brightly before fizzling out. While it is important to study queerness as an individual or communal body, acknowledging the brightly burning, unique relationships that queer bodies create adds a new level of depth and beauty to analyzing what it means to be queer.

Often, contemporary conceptions of the word “queer” connote an intersectional identity without a clear definition. In fact, “queer” is unique in that it seemingly resists definition. However, in the essay Queer Theory Revisited Michael Hames-Garcia highlights one of the problems with this understanding, “if my heterosexual friend begins to call herself queer, many people… will have many questions for her about what she means by that… the kind of identities that she [as a heterosexual woman] and I [as a gay man] already have determined differently the possibilities for our inhabiting a socially intelligible queer identity” (35). In short, established ideas of ‘queerness’ affect what we come to expect from queer identified people, specifically in that queer connotes a type of gay, white man. Yet, in Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist desperately avoid labels. In turn, this develops into a theme of silence which ironically comments on this problem in “queer.”

Proulx remarks how early in their relationship, “[t]hey never talked about the sex, let it happen… but not saying a goddamn word except once Ennis said ‘I’m not no queer,’ and Jack jumped in with ‘Me neither” (15). The use of double negatives, while common in southern and rural dialects, becomes a positive statement in formal English. Thus, in masking their affection, Ennis inadvertently declares himself “queer” with Jack also sharing in the declaration. And yet, neither party would likely identify openly as “queer.”

Whether their secrecy is entirely due to the hostile culture around them or arising from internalized homophobia, neither situation really gives room for readers to see Ennis nor Jack as queer individuals. Somehow, they evade the label, while still alluding back to queer culture and identity. Paradoxically, this exemplifies both everything we expect and what Hames-Garcia finds problematic with “queer”—gay men who simply aren’t gay men.

In Eli Clare’s Exile & Pride, he discussed many deep and emotional topics. In between all of the heaviness, there was also happiness. One of the moments he discussed at the end of the book was his experience with gender. He describes getting a caricature done by a woman at a carnival and then his mom having a conversation with the artist a few days later. Speaking about their conversation and his reaction to it he writes, “Finally after much confusion, she asked, ‘Didn’t I draw your son?’ I remember the complete joy I felt when my mother came home with this story. I looked again at the portrait, thinking, ‘right here, right now, I am a boy.’ It made me smile secretly for weeks, reach down into my pockets to squeeze a stone tight in each fist. I felt as if I were looking in a mirror and finally seeing myself, rather than some distorted fun-house image” (Clare 146). Even after finishing this book, I couldn’t stop thinking about this quote. It is such an important scene because it’s one of the first times Clare felt seen for who he truly is.

This quote and the feeling of being seen for the first time reminded me of another book I read. In the book Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas, the main character Yadriel is a trans boy trying to prove to his magical Latinx family that he is a real boy. Throughout the book Yadriel gets misgendered many times by his family members who don’t understand him and his gender. This causes Yadriel a great deal of sadness because all he wants is to be accepted by his family. However, by the end of the book he is able to prove himself to his father and Yadriel experiences a moment of being seen for the first time just like Clare did. In this scene in Cemetery Boys, Yadriel’s dad is giving a speech and tells him “You will be a great brujo, and a great man, and we honor the sacrifice you made…You are here because you have already proven you are exactly what you were meant to be” (Thomas 340). Just like the part in Eli Clare’s book, this scene made me tear up. The amount of pain both Clare and Yadriel had to go through in their lives, not only for their transness but for other things as well, is heartbreaking, but having moments of acceptance like these make it just a little bit better.

To be seen for who you truly are is a wonderful thing and it’s so important for people like Eli Clare to share their positive experiences along with the negative because that way others in the trans community can have a beacon of hope. This is why it’s also important for books featuring trans main characters like Yadriel to be published and become part of mainstream media. Representation, now more than ever, is vital so that people in the trans community can see characters similar to them and so that non-trans or people can become more accepting so that there is less hatred and discrimination in the world.

Here’s a link for more info about Cemetery Boys and the author: https://www.aiden-thomas.com/

       The mountain as a metaphor describes an end goal, it is a point in one’s life when we can truly say we have made it. It implies that you can only experience the accomplishment of life once you reach the summit. However, as Eli Clare points out, this metaphor was created for and by a heteronormative ableist society. It disregards the people that they label as ‘others’ and blames them for their failure to get to the top. For Clare, the mountain metaphor describes more than an end goal, it describes an accomplishment that society has made impossible for him to achieve. 

       “We hear from the summit that the world is grand from up there, that we live down here at the bottom because we are lazy, stupid, weak, and ugly…. We speak the wrong language, with the wrong accents, wear the wrong clothes, carry our bodies the wrong ways, ask the wrong questions, love the wrong people” (Clare 1).

As he describes, this metaphor blames them in their failure to reach the top. Implying that by being who are, for having been born a certain way or loving certain people, we are the ones who choose to stay at the bottom.

       This metaphor is what drew me to the metaphor of Brokeback Mountain. For Brokeback Mountain this location is more than just a place, it represents a time and a series of memories. For Jack and Ennis, Brokeback Mountain was a place filled with passion, affection, and love. It was the one place where they could spend months together without people questioning their relationship. In a way, Brokeback Mountain is the summit. It is the place where they were free to indulge in the pleasures of mundane affection – where “Ennis [could] come up behind [Jack] and [pull] him close” (Proulx 43). Emphasizing that while this was a place where they could be sexual, it was also a place where they can just be. This moment, where Ennis can “pull him close,” is a moment full of love – a moment of affection beyond the pleasures of sex. A moment that would otherwise have been rejected by their heteronormative society. In Brokeback Mountain, they could freely love.

       Connecting Jack and Ennis’ experience in Brokeback Mountain to Clare’s mountain metaphor makes it easier to understand why they could not return to Brokeback Mountain. Just as the mountain metaphor describes an impossible goal for Clare – as it was constructed to be impossible for him – so too is Brokeback Mountain a love that Jack and Ennis could not experience. In a society that values heteronormativity and disregards disability, the mountain metaphor makes it impossible for people who do not fit the ideal to partake in it. For Clare, society has made the summit impossible to reach. For Jack and Ennis, society has made the summit impossible to return to. For all of them, the summit represents a desire that they cannot have.

The “copperheaded waitress,” Ella, lives her common life withstanding the struggles as a woman in a society that actively works against her (63). In Judy Grahn’s collected poetry, The Work of a Common Woman, she can speak on topics of the vengeful feminist narrative that dictates resentment against women who speak up or act out of the innocent, soft-spoken bubble placed upon women. In the poem, “Ella, in a square apron, along Highway 80,” the title indicates the story of a common working woman as a “copperheaded waitress, / tired and sharp-worded” (63). Women who work in the foodservice industry often are harassed through catcalling or unwarranted sexual advances that they feel they must endure in order to keep their jobs. Being described as sharp-worded may be seen in a negative connotation as rude or impudent for speaking their mind, their truth. This can grow to be a defense mechanism since the word ‘tired’ implies she has endured much of this harassment for a while.

As the poem goes along it becomes evident that she is not foreign to these advances and often responds back to not feel as though she needs to bite her tongue. Ella “flicks her ass / out of habit, to fend off the pass / that passes for affection” (63). The catcalling women endure as harassment are a common, everyday occurrence yet women are told to accept them as compliments. In a society that actively works against women and establish an inert gender hierarchy will go at lengths to pit women down even through menial remarks or gestures. By using her body, specifically her bottom, she can reclaim what is hers and use it to her advantage to fend off men quickly enough to not endure any feelings of remorse. Those feelings of remorse or guilt come from the idea instituted through society that women should be grateful for these “compliments” and thus at the very least give men the time of day and make small talk out of obligation.

Even so, Ella is human and has her own struggles, and it is exhausting having to constantly dismiss these advances. The struggles that haunt women leave her to understand “the necessity for pain, turns away / the smaller tips, out of pride, and / keeps a flask under the counter” (63). These unhealthy coping mechanisms of abusing alcohol has its faults, yet it is her way of coping, enduring a not only laborious but also menial job with everyday annoyances from customers. By deflecting the tips, she can keep her pride, a seemingly menial task that keeps her going as an independent woman. Another struggle imposed by society is the faulty government system of handling domestic and sexual cases. She is sorrowful of losing her child after “she shot [her] lover who misused her child,” hinting at rape or sexual abuse. Yet, “before she got out of jail, the courts had pounced / and given the child away” alluding to how the system that should have helped her gain justice after being wronged as a mother was further let down.

Although all of Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain is beautiful, the following passage, on page 39, speaks to me unlike any other. The passage begins with, “without getting up he threw deadwood on the fire, the sparks flying up with their truths and lies”. I interpreted this section as Proulx using sparks from a fire as a metaphor for the individual and specific yet fleeting moments in time. The words “truths” and “lies” seem to embody the sparks, illustrating these burningly specific realities we disclose and leave unsaid. Furthermore, the “sparks flying up” implies that, although these moments are important at the moment, they do not matter in the larger picture of one’s life because they will eventually disappear, evaporating into the air.

The passage continues with, “a few hot points of fire landing on their hands and faces” which I interpreted as the attachment truths and lies, and more generally interpersonal conflicts with one’s identities, have with an individual in an overwhelming yet also subconscious way. Sparks flying towards you can startle someone while at the same time failing to be noticed by someone when they land on them in increments that are few and far between. The points may be hot at the moment, but they are quickly ignored because of their fleeting nature. Similarly, the identities one has may cast quick doubts and questions in their minds but they ultimately choose not to pay attention to them because of their fleeting nature and their seeming insignificance in the moment.

The passage continues with, “not for the first time”, implying that these ‘sparks’ are experienced so frequently by the two boys that they have become routine and therefore are quickly disregarded. The flashes of identity questions and concerns they experience are brief as they are too caught up in the moment with each other to think about who they really are. The passage ends with, “and they rolled down into the dirt” which further illustrates the boys’ concentration on one another in the moment and subsequent disregard of themselves on an individual basis. These final words illustrate their choice of choosing the (literal) action of rolling as opposed to noticing the “sparks” of the truths and lies they tell themselves and thinking deeper about these things. This stanza ties into the book’s broader theme of choosing to simply live and love in the moment as opposed to understanding the why and how of one’s desires.

In conclusion, this matters because it illustrates the beauty individuals have of simply existing in the moment and getting lost in the “fire”, or passion. Life can, and usually does, get hard and complicated and, as Ennis and Jack show us, we can always step back and let ourselves exist in relation to one another; love for another person can sometimes be the greatest escape of all.

Jack and Ennis’ love story in Brokeback Mountain is a story of gay men yearning for a place within their extremely masculine and exclusionary community. Jack and Ennis were both born in very poor and rural areas in Wyoming. Their occupations require backbreaking and terrifying hard labor- leading sheep through the ridges of Brokeback mountain. The culture they belong to celebrates individualism, hard work, and masculinity- while completely rejecting homosexuality. Both men were apprehensive when realizing their attraction, fearing what this development would mean for their future and safety. The only time they feel safe enough to be intimate is totally secluded from their community and in nature, never able to share their sexuality with those they love.

This interaction between homosexuality and hyper-masculine culture reminds of Eli Clare’s connection to his home in Exile and Pride. Clare describes an environment strongly connected to the land, cushioned between the pacific ocean and Siskiyou mountains. While Clare feels a strong sense of pride in his homeland, he also recounts the rampant homophobia and bigotry that caused him to seek out a more accepting environment. While it is true that Clare faced oppression and violence in his home of rural Oregan, he urges the reader to avoid generalization. Rural America is stereotyped as being firmly anti-queer and conservative, restricting existence for anyone with an identity that isn’t white, cis, and straight. While some Americans may certainly behave in this way, Clare reminds us that queer people were born and exist in these communities. Despite their oppression, queer people from rural America form the same bonds with their environment and culture that straight people do. An appreciation for nature and a tightly knit community will always be a part of them, even if homophobia drives them away.

“In writing about the backwoods and the rural, white, working-class culture found there, I am not being nostalgic, reaching backward toward a re-creation of the past. Rather I am reaching towards my bones”(Clare, 12).

This quote perfectly describes Clare’s dichotomy of resistance and pride. Resistance to the bigotry and trauma he experienced in his hometown and pride in the environment that birthed him. This idea connects to Ennis and Jack relationship’s with their communities and each other. When their relationship first began, both men knew that they had to keep their time together a secret. In their “real” lives they had to work, be married to women, and produce children. Attempting to build a life together was almost out of the question, two men living together could lead to death and violence. Since they could not be together in their community, Ennis and Jack connect through their environment. Their most intimate and happiest times together were spent in tents on Brokeback mountain- totally isolated in the environment that bonds them together in shared connectivity. When ostracized from the communities they were born into, Clare, Ennis, and Jack reach for the embrace of nature, one that would never reject them for their identities. Queer people exist in rural areas and deserve support and representation without being lumped into the stereotype of “bigots” or being excluded from their communities.

We live in a society that loves to put people into boxes based off of specific characteristics. Gender is one of those boxes that is used to classify every aspect of who a person is and their role in society. It is part of our identity as people. But what happens when the gender constructs do not work for every person? How does that shape one’s identity and sense of self? Eli Clare looks at gender and disabled individuals in his chapter “Reading Across the Grain.” Clare states that “To be female and disabled is to be seen as not quite a woman; to be male and disabled, as not quite a man… The construct of gender depends not only one the male body and female body, but also upon the nondisabled body” (Clare 130). He looks at how gender and disability are so tightly interwound in shaping the identity of those with disabilities. Clare opens the chapter with descriptions of different advertisements/ articles featuring people with disabilities. The first is just an empty wheelchair and the second a woman dressed in a sexual manner draped over a wheelchair.

“A manual wheelchair sits half in shadow, it’s large right wheel in a pool of light. The chair is empty, turned 20 degrees away from the camera. The footrests tilt out” (Clare 119).

This first image does not even include a person, yet it says so much about those with disabilities. By not having a person, the image is reducing disabled people to just their disability. They are not seen as people, but a condition. What’s more, by placing the wheelchair in semidarkness the image is emphasizing that disabilities should be hidden from society’s eyes and not talked about.

“A white woman dressed in black–lace bustier, fishnet stockings, stiletto heels–looks straight at the camera. She gives us a red lipstick smile, blond hair piled on top of her head, diamond earrings dangling from both ears. She sits sideways across the left wheel of a manual wheelchair, which is turned so its back faces us” (Clare 119).

As Clare states “To be female and disabled is to be seen as not quite a woman,” which is to say that those with disabilities are almost genderless. This image makes the effort to portray a disabled woman not as such but as the most feminine woman they possibly can, to the point of over sexualizing. By not having her seated in her chair normally and having it face away while she faces towards the camera, there is an effort to erase her disability in an attempt to make her fit the “normal” construct of femininity.

By taking advertisements and breaking them down to their bare bones, Clare is able to show how society attempts to erase disability to make those individuals fit into the traditional genders. If that is not possible, disabled people are just reduced to their disability, no longer worthy of a gender. This mentality shapes how disabled people see themselves and their identity in society. Yes, disability is part of identity, but there is more to a person then their condition.