Character Analysis of Ennis Del Mar

[fofol]

I've never noticed those marks before. Thanks for providing the pic, Chuck.

I think they're Ennis's marks, not Heath's. If they were Heath's, they would probably have concealed them with make up.

Good call, Sason.

[CellarDweller115]

I think they're Ennis's marks, not Heath's. If they were Heath's, they would probably have concealed them with make up.

Maybe not.  Remember, Ennis was a ranch hand who worked with his hands.  They would be far from perfect, so if Heath had marks on his hands, and the film makers felt it would be consistent for Heath's character that they remain there, they wouldn't cover them.

[Sason]

On this very day, I've come to realise a new and interesting interpretation of our beloved movie. I've gained insight in areas that have been hitherto unknown to us.
I will now reveal to you what has been revealed to me.


Ennis is the son of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. There are so many hidden proofs of this fact.
As we all know, she escaped the Bolsheviks when the rest of her royal family were killed in 1918. There were lots of rumours at the time that she, in fact, escaped to America. What would be more natural than her hiding way the hell out in the middle of nowhere Wyoming and marrying a local? Of course she would do anything to protect herself and her children from being found by the Bolsheviks.

So, how do we know that Ennis is her son?
Well, the most obvious proof is the nosebleed Ennis gets from the mild punch Jack gives him. The Tsar family were bleeders, and the nosebleed is Ang's way of pointing our attention to that fact. Why else would Ennis bleed from such a mild and friendly punch?
There's also the fact that only when Ennis sees his own blood does he get really angry and strikes Jack a really hard punch in return. Why? Because blood is red, and the red colour of his blood reminds Ennis of the horror stories his mother would tell him about the Communists that killed all her family.

One more proof is Ennis' name. Just think of it. Wyoming has no coast. Why would his parents give him a name that means 'island of the sea', if it wasn't for the fact that the name Ennis is so similar to her own name, Anastasia? She wanted him to know his roots, but couldn't name him Nicholas or anything else too obvious, in case the Bolsheviks would track him down.

There is also the fact that we actually get to see Ennis' father in the movie, but not his mother. That is Ang's subtle hint that her lineage is non-existing, i.e. killed just like Earl.

Also, when Ennis tells Jack about how his parents were killed in "one curve in the road in 42 miles", it's a reference to the Russian Revolution that was like a curve in the road of the glorious era of the Imperial Russia.

Finally, the DE, when Ennis tells Jack that he's sleeping on his feet like a horse, like his mama used to say. We know that Anastasia loved horses, so what would be more natural to her than using a horse analogy when talking with her son?  And when I listen closely to Ennis when he hums his childhood tune into Jack's ear, I'm quite sure I can hear a certain Russian minor melancholy in his voice.

[andy/Claude]

Very clever, Sonja.

[Sason]

 

[fofol]

Thank you, Sonja. 

[Sara B]

On this very day, I've come to realise a new and interesting interpretation of our beloved movie. I've gained insight in areas that have been hitherto unknown to us.
I will now reveal to you what has been revealed to me.


Ennis is the son of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. There are so many hidden proofs of this fact.
As we all know, she escaped the Bolsheviks when the rest of her royal family were killed in 1918. There were lots of rumours at the time that she, in fact, escaped to America. What would be more natural than her hiding way the hell out in the middle of nowhere Wyoming and marrying a local? Of course she would do anything to protect herself and her children from being found by the Bolsheviks.

So, how do we know that Ennis is her son?
Well, the most obvious proof is the nosebleed Ennis gets from the mild punch Jack gives him. The Tsar family were bleeders, and the nosebleed is Ang's way of pointing our attention to that fact. Why else would Ennis bleed from such a mild and friendly punch?
There's also the fact that only when Ennis sees his own blood does he get really angry and strikes Jack a really hard punch in return. Why? Because blood is red, and the red colour of his blood reminds Ennis of the horror stories his mother would tell him about the Communists that killed all her family.

One more proof is Ennis' name. Just think of it. Wyoming has no coast. Why would his parents give him a name that means 'island of the sea', if it wasn't for the fact that the name Ennis is so similar to her own name, Anastasia? She wanted him to know his roots, but couldn't name him Nicholas or anything else too obvious, in case the Bolsheviks would track him down.

There is also the fact that we actually get to see Ennis' father in the movie, but not his mother. That is Ang's subtle hint that her lineage is non-existing, i.e. killed just like Earl.

Also, when Ennis tells Jack about how his parents were killed in "one curve in the road in 42 miles", it's a reference to the Russian Revolution that was like a curve in the road of the glorious era of the Imperial Russia.

Finally, the DE, when Ennis tells Jack that he's sleeping on his feet like a horse, like his mama used to say. We know that Anastasia loved horses, so what would be more natural to her than using a horse analogy when talking with her son?  And when I listen closely to Ennis when he hums his childhood tune into Jack's ear, I'm quite sure I can hear a certain Russian minor melancholy in his voice.

So that's why the French title is "Le Secret de Brokeback Mountain".....  (Very good, Sonja! )

[Marge_Innavera]

Those 'marks' look extraordinarily like the ordinary mini-wounds that accrue on anyone who uses his or her hands working a rough livelihood.  Not many wage paid ranch hands need to abuse themselves, given the usual conditions of their lives, but maybe they do.  Please tell me how wrong I am if you're an emo cowboy ranch hand.

I'm thinking that they were some kind of minor dings on Heath Ledger's hand and weren't covered up.  If they were covered with makeup, that would need to match the rest of his visible skin, which would add precious minutes to the production time to a film with a limited budget.  And as others have pointed out here, Ennis having minor cuts or blisters on his hands wouldn't be inconsistent with his work.

Amazing how much we still notice about this film 8 years later!

[Sason]

So that's why the French title is "Le Secret de Brokeback Mountain".....  (Very good, Sonja! )

Yep, the French figured it out long ago. 

[Paul029]

^^^
Paul, I'm sure there was physical pleasure out of creating his kids, sufficient to bring him to orgasm, after all, but "a lot of pleasure"?

I was only responding to your point that Ennis may not get a lot of pleasure from the physical acts but he does it because, in his own eyes, he is straight and those activities "prove" he is.

It sounded to me as if the amount of pleasure he received didn’t matter, that “pleasure ... sufficient [only] to bring him to orgasm” was enough. We just don’t just know for certain how much pleasure he received, but there are hints in the story which provide clues that he found heterosexual intercourse with Alma to be an enjoyable experience.

When I said that I suspect that he might have received “a lot of pleasure” with Alma I was keeping in mind that we’ve already been told that he’d fathered two children. Alma was pregnant within a month of their marriage and, when his first child was born, “their bedroom was full of the smell of old blood and milk and baby shit, and the sounds were of squalling and sucking and Alma’s sleepy groans, all reassuring of fecundity and life’s continuance to one who worked with livestock.”

I suspect that there’s nothing very unusual, in a heterosexual marriage, about any of this, but Proulx’s subtle reference to “reassurance” tips the scales, I feel, towards an acceptance by her readers that Ennis had a positive attitude to married life and children, and what, perhaps apart from financial support, that involved.

That he fathered a second child almost immediately adds another dip to the scales, that he actually enjoyed sex with Alma, rather than treating it as a duty. If, as you suggested, that Ennis was (perhaps reluctantly) doing his duty because he wanted to convince himself he was heterosexual, why would he bother with fathering a second child?

The only time he ever refers to how he feels about heterosexual intercourse is when he tells Jack that he “likes doin it with women.” If this is accepted as fact, and not as an intentional misdirection on his part (as you suggested when you said that what he really meant was heterosexual anal intercourse, and so giving him possibly far too much credit for guile) then it’s clear that his enjoyment of sex with women wasn’t solely, as you said above, to do with achieving orgasm.

Admittedly, while there’s no evidence in the story that Ennis received “a lot” of pleasure impregnating Alma neither is there any indication that he didn’t enjoy it, nor that the pleasure he received was sufficient only to bring him to orgasm, and no different than the mechanical pleasure he received when masturbating.

I feel that an interpretation of his character as being wholly homosexual is rather restrictive, as if he has to fit a pre-ordained behavioural/personality template. Many things in the story are either ambiguous, simply hinted at or not stated at all and so can be read in differing ways, but from these I think that it’s possible to see Ennis as not having to prove that he’s heterosexual but, rather, that he must disprove, both to himself and to the world at large, that he’s “queer.”

There are consistently relevant examples, both in his speech and behaviour, of how he goes about this.

[Paul029]

We are told he has three kinds of sexual interaction with Alma:
vaginal sex
anal sex
rolling to the wall and falling asleep
He produces two children in short order then no more, yet he seems to have a dislike of using condoms ...

Ennis refused to wear a condom only when Alma asked him to wear one in order to avoid a (dreaded) further pregnancy, and that doesn’t mean that he disliked them per se.
When he refused he told her that “he would be happy to leave her alone if she didn’t want any more of his kids.”

My reading of this is not that he disliked condoms, but that he wanted to father more children (preferably one of which was a boy, as he mentions later to Jack), which rather undercuts the idea that he was “proving” that he was heterosexual—there was surely no need, after fathering two daughters, to provide any additional “proof.”

It also suggests, and is supported by Alma’s reference to “rubbers,” rather than “a rubber,” that their heterosexual (non-anal) intercourse occurred frequently (perhaps not regularly, but often enough to warrant her choice of the plural noun) as well as that Ennis enjoyed what they did, (hetero-)sexually, together.

Ennis’s response, that he’d “leave her alone if she didn’t want his kids,” could also be said to indicate that at other times, in which he’d not worn “rubbers,” he’d similarly wanted to father more children.

However, because of their financial situation (which Ennis did little to improve) and because her job as a grocery-store clerk (taken on to pay the bills) required her to be away from their apartment, she eventually decided that even two children were enough to feed and care for as she’d have liked; a third child would have worsened an already unsatisfactory situation.
In other words, while Ennis was prepared to father another child, Alma wasn’t prepared to conceive one.

As for his “propensity to roll to the wall and sleep as soon as he hit the bed,” that’s what a disgruntled and bitter wife would say about a husband who was “disinclined to step out (with her) and have any fun,” who did little to earn a better salary and who failed “to look for a decent! permanent job,” while completely overlooking the fact that the jobs in which he did work, and for “long hours,” were physically arduous. (As we’re told, he was “ brought up to hard work” when young.)

If Ennis also had to put up with Alma’s nagging “misery” voice whenever he got home I’m unsurprised that he’d roll to the wall and sleep as soon as he hit the bed, and not only because he’d have to get up early for another long-houred day’s ranch work.

[Paul029]

... and Alma raises the issue of a further pregnancy only after about nine years of marriage, it seems.

She “asked Ennis to use rubbers because she dreaded another pregnancy” at some unspecified time after the birth of Francine in 1966.
So somewhere between 1966 and the divorce of 1973, say six years of married life, rather than nine, but whatever it was it had to be  enough time for the “slow corrosion” to occur, and for her resentment to “open out a little every year.”

Maybe it was an ongoing discussion but my guess is that his later initiation of vaginal sex was an unusual event, hence Alma's concern. Alma's thought indicates that what he likes is anal sex, and the narrator indicates that what he mostly does is roll to the wall and fall asleep. Vaginal sex comes a poor third in his list of activities.

It wasn’t a “later initiation of vaginal sex” and it’d be hardly an unusual event if it had been occurring since the birth of Francine, as suggested by Alma’s reference to “rubbers.” If anything was unusual it was the anal intercourse which Alma “hated,” and not only because it was less frequent. Alma’s concern was that she didn’t want another pregnancy, not because Ennis had initiated vaginal sex out of the blue but because it’s what they usually did.
 
Her opinion of what Ennis “liked to do” only arose after the “slow corrosion” started, when she’s decided that her marriage was a bit of a flop.
“Her resentment [of Ennis] opened out a little every year: the embrace she had glimpsed, Ennis’s fishing trips once or twice a year with Jack Twist.”

Rather than put any of the blame onto herself (naturally, of course, because of her expectations) she put it wholly onto Ennis, who was only partly to blame, and his “failure” as a husband, she would have realised had she opened her eyes, had little to do with his friendship with Jack Twist.

As for Ennis's declaration that he likes doing it with women (and bearing in mind that a lot of his "doing it" consists of anal sex, i.e. substituting Alma for Jack), I'd be extremely surprised if he didn't say that.

There’s no evidence that he engages in anal intercourse with other women.

Considering the context in which he says what he says, and in which it’s understood to mean by Jack, his statement refers to accepted definitions of what heterosexual intercourse involves. Ennis is straightforward and candid when he speaks. That he’s as duplicitous, or as disingenuous, as you suggest would be, for him, wholly out of character.

[Paul029]

A straight man is supposed to enjoy sex with women; Ennis is a straight man in his own eyes; therefore Ennis enjoys sex with "women" (read "Alma").

• Heterosexual men do enjoy sex with women.
• Had Ennis meant Alma he would have restricted his statement to only his wife.
• He tells Jack he was “putting the blocks to” (i.e. copulating with) a woman at the Wolf’s Head bar.
• Therefore Ennis is heterosexual and enjoys sex with women, as well as his wife.

Just nowhere near as much as sex with Jack.

• Nowhere near as much as the type of sex he has with Jack.
• The type of sex he usually has with his wife, and with other women, is non-anal heterosexual intercourse.

And not enough to sustain a passably active sex life for even a decade of married life.

• It’s disputable that he had only a “passably active sex life” during his marriage to Alma.

[Ministering angel]

As I said elsewhere, I read each passage in the context of the overarching storyline, as I see it. While each passage can be argued about, I prefer to ask myself what it informs me about that storyline. But for the record, I don't think Ennis was being entirely honest with himself or Jack when he said he enjoyed doing it with women, plus there's no reason to suppose he's telling the truth about the waitress, any more than that Jack is sneaking out to see a woman. Later "evidence" indicates that Jack was lying to keep up the straight front. Truths and lies, as AP comments.

[CANSTANDIT]

Hi Gang!

I only have two points to make and ill be brief:
AP actually referred to Jack and Ennis  as being in a homosexual relationship So theories about Ennis being a hetero man who happens to fall in love with a man  doesn't really fly in light of the authors intent. If she referred to him as being in a one time sam sex relationship that would isolate it alot more than calling it "homosexusl" which defines their sexuality as people.

The other thing is he tells Jack he "likes" doin it with " women". Not a woman-not his wife,   He totally depersonalizes it. Theres no reference to love there. Very odd for a man married under 5 years that presumably would be attracted to his young wife.That makes it sounds like a cover- hes trying to minimize the gayness if you will of what he says next.