Brokeback Mountain

by

Annie Proulx

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Alma Beers Character Analysis

Alma marries Ennis del Mar during the fall of 1963. She gives birth to their first daughter, Alma Jr., and a few years later, to Francine. She dislikes Ennis’s predilection for low-paying ranch work with long hours, and wants to settle down somewhere to raise her family. She eventually gets a job at a grocery store in Riverton. Jack’s reunion with Ennis is the beginning of a gradual distancing between Alma and Ennis that eventually culminates in divorce. After Ennis’s weekend in a hotel room with Jack, he shows little interest in being intimate with Alma, and often takes time away from work and his family to go on “fishing trips” with Jack, which Alma knows are much more than just time spent by a lake. Alma eventually realizes her life with Ennis is going nowhere, which leads her to get a divorce. She then marries the Riverton grocer, taking her two daughters with her, and is soon pregnant with a third child.

Alma Beers Quotes in Brokeback Mountain

The Brokeback Mountain quotes below are all either spoken by Alma Beers or refer to Alma Beers. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Desire, Repression, and Regret  Theme Icon
).
Brokeback Mountain Quotes

In 1963, when he met Jack Twist, Ennis was engaged to Alma Beers. Both Jack and Ennis claimed to be saving money for a small spread; in Ennis’s case that meant a tobacco can with two five-dollar bills inside. That spring, hungry for any job, each had signed up with Farm and Ranch Employment—they came together on paper as herder and camp tender for the same sheep operation north of Signal.

Related Characters: Ennis del Mar, Jack Twist, Alma Beers
Related Symbols: Brokeback Mountain
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:

“Ennis, please, no more damn lonesome ranches for us,” she said, sitting on his lap, wrapping her thin, freckled arms around him. “Let’s get a place here in town.”

“I guess,” said Ennis… They stayed in the little apartment, which he favored because it could be left at any time.

Related Characters: Ennis del Mar (speaker), Alma Beers (speaker)
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:

They seized each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out of each other, saying son of a bitch, son of a bitch; then, and as easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together, and hard, Jack’s big teeth bringing blood, his hat falling to the floor, stubble rasping, wet saliva welling, and the door opening and Alma looking out for a few seconds at Ennis’s straining shoulders and shutting the door again and still they clinched, pressing chest and groin and thigh and leg together, treading on each other’s toes until they pulled apart to breathe and Ennis, not big on endearments, said what he said to his horses and daughters, “Little darlin.”

Related Characters: Ennis del Mar (speaker), Jack Twist, Alma Beers
Page Number: 21
Explanation and Analysis:

“Friend,” said Jack. “We got us a fuckin situation here. Got a figure out what to do.”

“I doubt there’s nothin now we can do,” said Ennis. “What I’m sayin, Jack, I built a life up in them years. Love my little girls. Alma? It ain’t her fault. You got your baby and wife, that place in Texas. You and me can’t hardly be decent together if what happened back there”—he jerked his head in the direction of the apartment—“grabs” on us like that. We do that in the wrong place we’ll be dead. There’s no reins on this one. It scares the piss out a me.”

Related Characters: Ennis del Mar (speaker), Jack Twist (speaker), Alma Beers, Alma Jr. and Francine
Page Number: 26-27
Explanation and Analysis:

Her resentment opened out a little every year: the embrace she had glimpsed, Ennis’s fishing trips once or twice a year with Jack Twist and never a vacation with her and the girls, his disinclination to step out and have any fun, his yearning for low-paid, long-houred ranch work, his propensity to roll to the wall and sleep as soon as he hit the bed, his failure to look for a decent permanent job with the county or the power company put her in a long, slow dive, and when Alma, Jr., was nine and Francine seven she said, What am I doin, hangin around with him, divorced Ennis, and married the Riverton grocer.

Related Characters: Ennis del Mar, Jack Twist, Alma Beers
Page Number: 31-32
Explanation and Analysis:

“Don’t lie, don’t try to fool me, Ennis. I know what it means. Jack Twist? Jack Nasty. You and him—”

She’d overstepped his line. He seized her wrist and twisted; tears sprang and rolled, a dish clattered.

“Shut up,” he said. “Mind your own business. You don’t know nothin about it.”

Related Characters: Ennis del Mar (speaker), Alma Beers (speaker), Jack Twist
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Brokeback Mountain LitChart as a printable PDF.
Brokeback Mountain PDF

Alma Beers Quotes in Brokeback Mountain

The Brokeback Mountain quotes below are all either spoken by Alma Beers or refer to Alma Beers. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Desire, Repression, and Regret  Theme Icon
).
Brokeback Mountain Quotes

In 1963, when he met Jack Twist, Ennis was engaged to Alma Beers. Both Jack and Ennis claimed to be saving money for a small spread; in Ennis’s case that meant a tobacco can with two five-dollar bills inside. That spring, hungry for any job, each had signed up with Farm and Ranch Employment—they came together on paper as herder and camp tender for the same sheep operation north of Signal.

Related Characters: Ennis del Mar, Jack Twist, Alma Beers
Related Symbols: Brokeback Mountain
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:

“Ennis, please, no more damn lonesome ranches for us,” she said, sitting on his lap, wrapping her thin, freckled arms around him. “Let’s get a place here in town.”

“I guess,” said Ennis… They stayed in the little apartment, which he favored because it could be left at any time.

Related Characters: Ennis del Mar (speaker), Alma Beers (speaker)
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:

They seized each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out of each other, saying son of a bitch, son of a bitch; then, and as easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together, and hard, Jack’s big teeth bringing blood, his hat falling to the floor, stubble rasping, wet saliva welling, and the door opening and Alma looking out for a few seconds at Ennis’s straining shoulders and shutting the door again and still they clinched, pressing chest and groin and thigh and leg together, treading on each other’s toes until they pulled apart to breathe and Ennis, not big on endearments, said what he said to his horses and daughters, “Little darlin.”

Related Characters: Ennis del Mar (speaker), Jack Twist, Alma Beers
Page Number: 21
Explanation and Analysis:

“Friend,” said Jack. “We got us a fuckin situation here. Got a figure out what to do.”

“I doubt there’s nothin now we can do,” said Ennis. “What I’m sayin, Jack, I built a life up in them years. Love my little girls. Alma? It ain’t her fault. You got your baby and wife, that place in Texas. You and me can’t hardly be decent together if what happened back there”—he jerked his head in the direction of the apartment—“grabs” on us like that. We do that in the wrong place we’ll be dead. There’s no reins on this one. It scares the piss out a me.”

Related Characters: Ennis del Mar (speaker), Jack Twist (speaker), Alma Beers, Alma Jr. and Francine
Page Number: 26-27
Explanation and Analysis:

Her resentment opened out a little every year: the embrace she had glimpsed, Ennis’s fishing trips once or twice a year with Jack Twist and never a vacation with her and the girls, his disinclination to step out and have any fun, his yearning for low-paid, long-houred ranch work, his propensity to roll to the wall and sleep as soon as he hit the bed, his failure to look for a decent permanent job with the county or the power company put her in a long, slow dive, and when Alma, Jr., was nine and Francine seven she said, What am I doin, hangin around with him, divorced Ennis, and married the Riverton grocer.

Related Characters: Ennis del Mar, Jack Twist, Alma Beers
Page Number: 31-32
Explanation and Analysis:

“Don’t lie, don’t try to fool me, Ennis. I know what it means. Jack Twist? Jack Nasty. You and him—”

She’d overstepped his line. He seized her wrist and twisted; tears sprang and rolled, a dish clattered.

“Shut up,” he said. “Mind your own business. You don’t know nothin about it.”

Related Characters: Ennis del Mar (speaker), Alma Beers (speaker), Jack Twist
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis: