Plus, Annie tells us that the story is about destructive rural homophobia - Jack's being murdered is more consistent with that theme.
Howdy.
Agreed, JerBear, murder seems consistent with the theme on first glance.
But the movie/short story takes us much further than that... hence, the *purposeful* ambiguities that Annie Proulx and the screenplay writers (Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry).
Remembering that this masterpiece of a movie/short story is a work of fiction we the audience can only speculate and form our own conclusions from the clues *purposefully* left in the plot line; however, as we have all seen... it still leaves lots of room as to *WHO* murdered Jack Twist.
As I have explained in an earlier post... we can, however, reach a more *serious* and more implicit conclusion to the following questions:
If Jack Twist was murdered, *WHY* did the killers kill him?
*WHAT* killed Jack Twist, the love of Ennis Del Mar's life?
*WHAT* mutilated the love between Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar?
No matter how we look at the death of Jack Twist and his relationship with Ennis Del Mar, we have known the answer all along. It is precisely why Annie Proulx wrote the short story in the first place. It is precisely why Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry kept any explicit reasons ambiguous. It is why we the audience find this event so tragic: it is as a result of homophobia.
The short story leaves us with that compelling feeling that this is wrong.
Our response then should be *HOW* do we make this right?
... and when I think of our poor tragic Jack and Ennis, as fictional as they are... I can only cry, realizing how helpless I feel for them. If I can feel for these fictional characters, then I can feel for someone real, like Matthew Sheppard, a young gay man killed in Wyoming, just because he was gay. The only hope that we can garner from this is to try and somehow help our society and ourselves from letting this happen as best we can. Even if it means starting with just remembering.
Peace,
Frank