Bokeback Mountain
Annie Proulx
"There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand."
This quote from Brokeback Mountain talks a lot about the characters struggle between knowledge and feelings. I think it is important to see how this quote relates to a couple of the stories we have read this far.
Immediately when I read this quote, I thought about Everything that Rises much Converge and hoe Julain was in a similar conundrum. He too was fighting with himself on how to hand people of other races. He doesn't know if he should handle things the way he grow up, the way his mother taught him, or what he was taught in school.
It also made me think about the Voorman Problem. The lawyer struggled between the space of what he knew and what he thought be believed. There was no way that Voorman was gd. Intellectually, he knew that. However once Belgium disappeared, he had to battle between what he thought he knew and what he was feeling.
I think my favorite thing about this story is the universality of it. In class we tried to define love and a lot of what was brought up was also brought up when we read the love stories in Unit 2. We also spent a lot of time analyzing relationships. I remember this playing a big part in our discussion when we read "What it means to say Phoenix in Arizona." Not everyone looked at the characters in that story as having a romantic relationship. I felt Brokeback Mountain had that same element of romantic curiosity. I could very easily see both sides. I am not sure whether they were in love or not but I think it is interesting to think about it as going both ways and how similar it is is to other stories. I think a lot of people can recall a time they had a crush on someone or thought someone had a crush on them and weren't entirely sure as to where they stood. It maybe the same way here. Maybe we can;t figure out how these two characters feel about each other because they aren't sure either.
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