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Ethan Frome Naturalism Analysis

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A. Ethan Frome is considered a work of naturalism. Naturalism is a literary style of writing that tries to portray realistic situations of society. Edith Wharton expressed the feeling of naturalism through each character’s problems. First, Ethan is married to his cousin Zeena but he is in love with his wife’s cousin Mattie. Ethan and Zeena married because of loneliness, so the love is not that strong between them. Ethan is stuck between eloping with a woman he loves but he shouldn’t be with and being a good husband to the wife he already has. His wife Zeena is sickly and sometimes uses that to her advantage in her marriage. Mattie knows that she shouldn’t be Ethan. All these different problems within these characters are realistic situations …show more content…

Tradition is the continuation of customs or belief systems or cultures from generation to generation. Many people follow tradition but, in some ways, tradition holds society back. Just because something works doesn’t mean that it can’t be improved or changed for the better. Three works that show this are Girl by Jamaica Kincaid, Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. They all express that tradition can be changed for the better and sometimes following traditions isn’t what is best in society. Superman and Me talks about his life as a poor Indian boy who loves to read. He grew up in an Indian reservation and many of the people there are uneducated and or don’t know how to read. Many of the kids there didn’t know how to read and many of the adults were so focused on taking care of their families by working that they overlooked the value of education. Those adults looked at him funny because he enjoyed reading so much. The tradition of the reservation was just feeding your family and taking care of yourself but Alexie was smart. He seen past that and looked at reading as a way to escape the reservation. His reading gave him knowledge and he grew up escaped the conditions of the reservation and became a writer. Girl is about what a mother tells her daughter what a girl or woman is supposed to be. Mom tries to tell her many things to do and what not to do that are traditionally not lady like or lady like. Tradition helps her to become a proper

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308 Words | 2 Pages

A long time resident of Starkfield, the protagonist Ethan Frome shows he is considerate by caring for and helping others. He first shows this trait when he gives up his desire to live in a city to support his ill mother. Though he has a strong wish to leave Starkfield, he respects his duty and cares for his mother. Ethan also shows this attribute to Zeena, by looking after her and contributing to her medicine while she also falls ill. Zeena is again thought of by Ethan when the pickle dish breaks.

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149 Words | 1 Pages

In the novel Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton the narrator tells the readers how he met the main character,Frome, in Massachusetts. Edith Wharton takes the reader twenty-four years into the past and there we see that Frome is a young man,who chased after an education in science, but when his father dies he is forced to return back to the farm. After that his mother becomes ill and his cousin Zeena comes to take care of her,but when his mother dies, Frome marries Zeena out of loneliness. As time passes by Zeena becomes more sick, due to this their marriage is without love and Frome feels very lonely and has no one to talk to. Then Mattie silver,Zeena’s cousin,comes to take care of her,and Frome falls in love with her and can not imagine life without

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984 Words | 4 Pages

”(Wharton 3). Because of his loneliness, he asked Zeena to marry him without thinking it through. He had no feelings for her and desperately hoped it would make him feel better. While being married to Zeena, his unhappiness peaked and caused him to fall in love with another girl who was the Fromes’ maid, Mattie Silver. Romance was in the air and most definitely not between Zeena and Ethan.

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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

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823 Words | 4 Pages

Passing traditions on is a practice that is important to many cultures and it effectively connects generations of people through experiences and stories. A quote from the book that demonstrates the theme, shows a character 's viewpoint of passing traditions on. “‘These are the beliefs of our Ojibway people. We sustain the beliefs, and the beliefs sustain us.

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1427 Words | 6 Pages

In fact, the only reason Ethan and Zeena married each other was for the desperate demand for money due to sickness, first with the poor health of Ethan’s mother and then the sickness of Zeena. They were stuck in a cycle of finding money just to take care of each other, especially since all the debt that accumulated from the farm was now stuck to their name. While some people were constrained by money, others went out to look for ways out, such as in the story, “A Wagner Matinee,” which illustrates Aunt Georgiana, a young Boston music teacher, who decides to marry a younger man named Howard Carpenter. The author explains, “Carpenter, who of course had no money, took a homestead in Red Willow County, fifty miles from the railroad... They built a dugout in the red hillside, one of those cave dwellings whose inmates usually reverted to the conditions of primitive savagery.

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1441 Words | 6 Pages

She just turns into a sickly and nagging wife, a complete disaster for Ethan who expected her to be youthful and

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165 Words | 1 Pages

In Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie, Alexie’s father’s love for books grew to make his self-love books ending up in Alexie teaching himself how to read. Alexie describes the stereotypes and what is expected of Indian children and how Indian children were expected to basically have no knowledge Many lived up to those expectations inside the classroom but invalidated them on the outside. While other children were doing this, Alexie’s father was one of the few Indians on the reservation who went to Catholic School on purpose and was also an devoted reader. Alexie grew up around books. His father had a strong love for books as he bought them by the pound from pawn shops, goodwill and the salvation army.

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285 Words | 2 Pages

Summary: “Superman an Me” In this short story, “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me”, by Sherman Alexie, the author explains to his audience the life of a young Indian boy who valued knowledge and education, even though growing up poor in an American society, it was stereotypically accepted for all Indians to be uneducated failures in the non-Indian world. Alexie, believing knowledge will save his life, began to teach himself how to read at a young age, using the cheap books brought by his father. He introduced his essay by stating how he learned to read with a Superman comic, making up his own dialogue followed by each image. He would read whatever he could find to gain any sort of knowledge, refusing to agree that all Indians

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550 Words | 3 Pages

Ethan’s bad choices of leaving school, feeling lonely and marrying Zeena and then also being avoidant when he wants to leave her. Obviously, Ethan Frome’s tragedy is all caused by his personal decisions. One of many ignorant choices Ethan makes is when his mother gets ill, somewhere in the beginning of the story. During this time, Ethan dropped out of college.

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763 Words | 4 Pages

Forcing Mattie to leave is Zeena’s desperate attempt at solving the love triangle. Zeena hoped that Mattie leaving would guide Ethan and Zeena back to their original relationship without distractions. However, Zeena could not have anticipated that the lovers’ prospective separation is needed for them to confess their feelings for each other and the culmination of the painful saga. The story comes to a climax when Mattie says “we’d never have to leave each other any more” referring to their suicide and unity in death (Wharton 63). Ethan agrees to her solution and the problem of their living apart is solved.

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734 Words | 3 Pages

The novel contains multiple attributes of Naturalism. Ethan Frome contains the following characteristics of Naturalism: Survival of the fittest, determinism (natural forces), and taboo topics. Survival of the fittest was one of the main characteristics of Naturalism found in the novel Ethan

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626 Words | 3 Pages

In the essay “Superman and Me”, the author, Sherman Alexie recalls the time he first learned to read. He talks about his Indian culture and the perception of people like himself. He also discusses his childhood and the outcome of learning to read. The reoccurring theme of the essay is the love of reading. The author used various literacy devices to express the feelings of empowerment, happiness and the necessity that came with learning to read.

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1055 Words | 5 Pages

Much like most logical arguments and narratives, Alexie guides the audience in a structured manner through his life, showcasing only the memorable moments. In fact, he introduces his entire narrative with an anecdote about the time he “learned to read with a Superman comic book” (Alexie 175). However, there was some aspect of conflict in the story. Alexie laments about how “a smart Indian [was] a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike” (Alexie 177). Although, instead of developing this idea, Alexie fought it, and showed how he was able to overcome this ideological barrier by harnessing the power of reading.

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738 Words | 3 Pages

Both Zeena and Ethan have varying responses, however both showing some commitment to repair their union. In Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton utilizes a broken pickle dish, to represent the views of espousement, and the representation of their varied human actions. Ethan and Zeena Frome’s marriage represents a union based on obligation rather that love. Throughout the story, Ethan is a weak and submissive husband under the control of a domineering wife.

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