Love
Love is the major theme in the novel. The two characters that are in love are Ennis and Jack, two men who denied their feelings from one another in the beginning. But the love presented here is not a conventional one because it is between two men in a time when gay relationships were frowned upon and those who were open about their relationship in grave danger. Despite this, Jack and Ennis always seem to find a way to be close to one another. They are both willing to make sacrifices to be with the person they love and live a double life just to be close to the other person. Even when Alma tells Ennis that she knows about the two of them, Ennis never blames Jack for the situation and never badmouths him just to get out of an uncomfortable situation. Ennis’s love for Jack becomes more obvious after Jack dies because it is then when Ennis fully realizes what he lost. The picture he has in his closet with Brokeback Mountain and the bloodied shirt Ennis took from Jack’s parents point towards his unyielding devotion for his dead lover.
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is another theme in the film; more exactly, it presents the struggles a homosexual couple has to go through in a time when homosexuals were treated with violence and hate. Apart from presenting the love story between Ennis and Jack, the film and depicts accurately how society was in the middle of the 20th century and what values and ideas it had about what is acceptable and what is not when it comes to a romantic relationship between two people.
Masculinity
Emphasis is put on the idea of masculinity in the film and what makes a person be a man. The society in the middle of the 20th century had a fixed idea about what it was masculine and what wasn’t and while certain behaviors were encouraged, others were discouraged and seen as being deviant. Being homosexual was not a characteristic associated with masculinity and thus society punished this type of behavior.
