ipl-logo

Ethan Frome Character Analysis Essay

835 Words4 Pages

Edith Wharton’s novel, Ethan Frome, is based through a realistic genre that displays a tragic romance between the main characters, Ethan Frome and Mattie Silver. Forced to subdue to their circumstances, Ethan and Mattie live in a paralyzed situation in which “they are passionate or imaginative spirits, hungry for emotional and intellectual experience”, but, “find themselves locked into a small closed system” and “suffer a living death”, accordingly to the views of Edmund Wilson. Wilson’s perspective is accurately exemplified as Ethan depresses his desires to fulfill his longings in order to adhere to his circumstance, and through Mattie bowing to her duties to replace her youthful and vivacious spirit. Ethan Frome goes under several situations …show more content…

Mattie is broke and homeless after her father’s death, but Zeena offers her a place to live in return for aid in her illness. However, this job and her financial situation holds Mattie back from living her young and curious life abroad, as she can barely maintain pressure of working for Zeena in her additional service incompetence. Zeena constantly brings Mattie down, commenting on her poor housework harshly. To demonstrate, Wharton writes, “ …but of late she (Zeena) had grumbled increasingly over the house-work and found oblique ways of attracting attention to the girl's inefficiency,” (Wharton 43). This allows Mattie to feel locked in a system suffering, but she has to adhere to her obligation to Zeena given her life circumstances, and no matter what her aspirations in youth are. As well as her job, Mattie’s desire to pursue her emotions ultimately hold her back in mental imprisonment and a life of everlasting agony. Her developed feelings for Ethan become unavoidable as she yearns to start a relationship with him, but is yet again restrained because she cannot fully and freely express her emotions. Displaying this love for each other, Wharton describes Ethan and Mattie when, “They clung to each other's hands like children, and her body shook with desperate sobs,” (Wharton

Show More
Related
468 Words | 2 Pages

Callarman provides a strong analysis in which I disagree on many aspects. He gives his own opinion in which Chris McCandless lives his life after he graduates and travels around the United States. He leaves everything and even burns his money because he wanted to live just how he is and enjoy what nature brought to him. His final destination was Alaska in which he wanted to go to get away from everything and that’s where he lived his last days of his life. I was saying I disagreed with Shaun Callarman because I believe he did have common sense and was a bright man.

Read More
116 Words | 1 Pages

Ethan Frome, who has to face multiple conflicts throughout the book with his nonstop dream to be an engineer which is crushed due to the illness of, Zeena, his cousin, but who also happens to be his wife. Also a love begins to grow mid way through the book between a girl named Mattie and Ethan, even though he is still married to Zeena which ultimately leads to the distance between their love. In the book Ethan Frome, the feeling of isolation in Ethan and Zeena becomes more prominent, while anger grows between Ethan and Mattie from having denying their love, which contributes to the many mistakes and downfalls Ethan has to face throughout the book.

Read More
447 Words | 2 Pages

In the book Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton multiple objects are used to represent big moments in the book and is heavily used. There are many objects that clearly relate to people and relationships between people. The first emblem that represents love between Mattie and Ethan is Mattie's red scarf and ribbon in her hair. The first symbol is the pickle dish representing Ethans and Zeena’s relationship. The final commodity is the cat which represents Zeena.

Read More
984 Words | 4 Pages

“Is fate getting what you deserve, or deserving what you get?” (Jodi Picoult). Ethan Frome, written by Edith Wharton in 1911, embodies this quote. In Ethan Frome, all three main characters, Ethan, Mattie and Zeena have made decisions that will affect the rest of their lives. Ethan and Mattie had an inappropriate relationship behind Ethans significant other, Zeena 's, back which caused each of them to be emotionally distraught.

Read More
361 Words | 2 Pages

In a final scene from Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton draws a timeline leading up to the main character, Ethan Frome, and his love interest, Mattie Silver deciding to take their lives rather than letting the rules implied by the society of Starkfield force them to part, their decision in turn contributing to the theme that confinement from pressure from society can drive citizens to their torment. Contributing to the novel as a whole, this scene also highlights Ethan’s built up misery by displaying his willingness to die in order to escape his unwanted marriage to his ailing wife, Zeena. To begin with, as a resident in Starkfield, a town whose residents, obviously unadjusted divorce, consider seven year of marriage as “not so long”, Ethan feels

Read More
640 Words | 3 Pages

Zenobia Frome, wife of the titular character of Edith Wharton’s novel Ethan Frome, is not a pleasant woman. In a passionless marriage, Zeena attempts to maintain control over her husband even when not present, while Ethan explores a budding relationship between himself and their hired girl, Zeena's cousin, Mattie Silver. Wharton explores the consequences of an unhealthy relationship lacking in love and passion though the symbolism of the Fromes’ cat and the red glass pickle dish. “The cat, unbidden, jumped up between them into Zeena’s empty chair” (34). Although not directly a result of Zeena’s distrustful demeanor, the cat acts on her behalf while she is away seeing a doctor in the next town over.

Read More
1441 Words | 6 Pages

As a result, his relationships with Mattie and Zeena worsen with him being the one getting the full brunt of the negative effects all because of his decision to try and end both his and Mattie’s lives. The plight of Ethan evokes pity in the audience because even with his strength, intelligence, and affinity towards nature, he remains thoroughly unsatisfied in both of his relationships because of him showing genuine care for everyone. Ethan is a tragic hero because Wharton exhibits his fatal flaw of selflessness as the cause for fixating him in tragic circumstances, and making them go downhill, all the while generating sympathy for him. Through his desire to keep everyone away from unnecessary pain, Ethan evolves as a tragic hero by involving himself in situations that make it hard for him to escape such as his relationships. First of all, he chooses to take care of his parents himself which prevents him from pursuing an education and keeps him socially isolated.

Read More
650 Words | 3 Pages

While everyone has a right to their own happiness, the truth of the matter is that it is not always easy to reach. While a person can struggle their entire life searching for happiness, some may never find what they’re looking for or may never be satisfied with what they have in front of them. The character Ethan, in Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is a story of full of unlucky love and fate. Ethan stumbles upon a gravestone with his name on it, except this man had a wife, Endurance. This leaves Ethan wondering what his own gravestone with his wife, Zeena, will one day say.

Read More
609 Words | 3 Pages

In everyday life, people are put under many pressures and are expected to be perfect to society. In Edith Wharton’s, best-known and most popular novel, Ethan Frome, this idea is highlighted, showing the protagonist’s breakdown. Ethan Frome struggles against the rules of society and his duty to his family, fighting a battle within himself between what he wants in order to be happy and what he feels he must do to satisfy his family and society. Frome struggles between his desire for his wife’s cousin, Mattie, and his sense of duty toward Zeena, his wife. The pressures that come from the responsibilities in the Frome household lead to Ethan Frome’s emotional breakdown, showing how societal pressures can lead to harmful self-doubt.

Read More
550 Words | 3 Pages

In Edith Wharton's famous book Ethan Frome, main character, Ethan Frome’s story is a personal tragedy. His own decisions he makes are his own fault. But what is his tragedy? Well, to a certain understanding, his tragedy is that in the present day, he is always dreary and not as happy as he could have turned out; in other words, one could say that his tragedy is that he is unsuccessful in happiness. Although one may argue that the tragedy wasn’t all Ethans fault, and that the weather of new england caused it, that certainly isn’t true.

Read More
937 Words | 4 Pages

Stories have been told and retold passed down to the next generation in order to preserve culture or history. Stories with overall lessons learned from challenges that need to be overcome by the main character(s), normally on a journey, have an everlasting moral effect that allows for the same story to be retold in a completely different style or setting but still carry the same key essential elements that give the story it's true inner meaning. The film “Oh Brother Where Art Thou?” is the perfect example of a well told reinterpretation of the ancient and classic tales from the greek poet Homer, Homer’s Odyssey by changing the settings and characters names but keeping all the essential elements from the challenges faced and lessons learned by Homer’s original protagonist Odysseus.

Read More
895 Words | 4 Pages

“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell is a story about a man, Sanger Rainsford, whose ideals and overall character change throughout the story, specifically about hunting, due to his encounter with General Zaroff. At the beginning of the story Rainsford is a stuck up man. He could not care less about any other living things other than humans. He believes all living wildlife are expendable and only there for his pleasure of hunting. During the story Rainsford has to make many quick and overall difficult decisions during his encounters with the ocean, General Zaroff, and the island wilderness to survive, that change how he thinks about animals.

Read More
940 Words | 4 Pages

In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” demonstrates the personal growth of the dynamic protagonist Louise Mallard, after hearing news of her husband’s death. The third-person narrator telling the story uses deep insight into Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts and emotions as she sorts through her feelings after her sister informs her of her husband’s death. During a Character analysis of Louise Mallard, a reader will understand that the delicate Mrs. Mallard transforms her grief into excitement over her newly discovered freedom that leads to her death. As Mrs. Mallard sorts through her grief she realizes the importance of this freedom and the strength that she will be able to do it alone.

Read More
1136 Words | 5 Pages

The play, Antigone written by Sophocles, presents a tragedy that fits the classical definition, but it is the story of Creon, the king of the main character. Creon starts out as the king of Thebes , Creon’s tragic flaw is his pride and his arrogance which caused him reflecting upon his mistakes making him a broken man, recognizing what he did to his niece, he is a character within Antigone, even though he was portrayed as an antagonist he was the main character since he was. Creon’s tragic flaw, hubris, causes his downfall. Creon will not listen to anyone.

Read More
713 Words | 3 Pages

Stephanie Plum, Morelli, and Ranger are three main characters in the book, One for the Money, by Janet Evanovich. Stephanie is a young woman struggling to get by in the city of Trenton, New Jersey. After losing her job, she goes against her family’s request and gets the dangerous job of a bounty hunter. She gets assigned Joe Morelli, who was accused of murder and who happened to be a childhood enemy. Stephanie is very inexperienced and receives help from a professional bounty hunter, Ranger.

Read More

More about Ethan Frome Character Analysis Essay

Related Topics

Open Document