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Ethan Frome Theme Analysis

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Being isolated from one's problems can drive anyone to live a sad and depressing life. Ethan Frome started by, when the narrator questions Ethan's motive to stay in the oh so bad described town. The novel was mostly a flashback of how everything got to what it is, and what was that tragic accident that not one soul in the town wants to talk about. Ethan Frome written by Edith Wharton, revolves around Ethan, a man who was raised and lived his whole life in a poor town and never left, The most important theme is isolation. At the beginning the narrator wonders why a man like Ethan would stay in such a bad town through all this time. Harmon Gow "Guess he's been in Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart ones get away." He stays in starkfield not because he's …show more content…

Zeena is not able to love anybody else except herself, so Ethan tries to find the missing love somewhere else and finds it with Maddie. The problem is that he can't be with her because of Zeena and he can't leave Zeena because he knows she can't fend for herself so he stays with her. So he stay with his miserable life, meaning he could never be happy. He is also isolated physically from the world. HAving to take care of everyone he can't do anything for himself. There is always someone new he has to take of. After his parents died he could have gone out of the town and finally been freed but his wife Zeena is the new person he needs to take care of now. When the accident happened Maddie became a new version of Zeena and EThan was bound to be even more miserable than he was. I chose Isolation because i believe is one of the greatest themes in the book. Isolation makes the novel what it is because of isolation everything happens. “Being isolated from one's problems can drive anyone to live a sad and depressing life” and it is true. If Ethan wouldn't have been isolated from many things he would have lived a happy

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Ethan Frome Rhetorical Analysis

236 Words | 1 Pages

4. The theme of the story basically means… love is hard. It’s hard to love yourself and your family members if you don’t strive for greatness and positivity, look at Ethan, he has barely had a one to one conversation with his father without having it interrupted by his father’s work (“I couldn’t remember a single meal with my father that hadn’t been interrupted by something to do with business” 189; 6-8). Ethan also hasn’t gained respect, nor has exceeded expectations (“He (Ethan’s father) couldn’t stop talking about you (Ethan), he held you in his arms the whole flight. He just went on and on about the hopes and dreams he had for you” 38; 13-18).

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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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Ethan Frome Quotes

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.

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Ethan Frome Character Analysis Essay

492 Words | 2 Pages

Ethan Frome takes place in Starkfield, Massachusetts, in the late 1890s to the early 1900s. One of the three main characters Zenobia, better known as Zeena, is Ethan Frome’s wife. Zeena and Ethan came to be a couple when Ethan’s mother became sick and Zenobia came to assist her. After Ethan’s mother passed, Ethan felt lonely and did not want Zeena to leave. Ethan fell in love with Zeena and later married her, although she was seven years older than him.

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411 Words | 2 Pages

For Ethan Frome this is a terrible situation since he doesn’t love Zenobia and her cousin Mattie doesn’t love Ethan back. He is basically staying in a house all by himself during the cold nights of the New England weather. In this quote said by Ethan Frome "when winter shut down on Starkfield and the village lay under a sheet of snow perpetually renewed from the pale skies, I began to see what life there—or rather its negation—must have been in Ethan Frome's young manhood. " he understands his life has no meaning during the harsh winter season. Until February comes around he nothing to live for.

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1043 Words | 5 Pages

From great risk, some fortunate few are able to reap the benefits. The title character of Edith Wharton’s “Ethan Frome” often toys with this notion but reaches an inability to act. With nothing risked there is nothing gained, effectively preventing his life from moving forward or backwards. Furthermore, risk does not always yield change, as sometimes the change is the risk, a deviation from the normality of one’s life. Ethan’s inability to take risks keeps his life stagnant, immune to change like a decomposed corps in a grave.

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Ethan Frome Character Analysis

719 Words | 3 Pages

Once Ethan went back, Starkfield, Massachusetts was Ethan’s worse enemy. Many see their hometown as an enjoyable place, but for those like Ethan Frome who live in a small town with horrible weather can lead a miserable life. The town’s lonely and cold winters got him caught up in a marriage in which he never really wanted.

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What Is The Setting Of Ethan Frome

1142 Words | 5 Pages

The author says that “he had always been more sensitive than the people about him to the appeal of natural beauty...even in his unhappiest moments field and sky spoke to him with a deep and powerful persuasion”(32). This quote proves my point that Ethan did not want to be lonely and depressed all the time, it's just he had no one to talk to about his interests like nature. When Mattie, Zeena's cousin, comes into the lives of Ethan and Zeena, she was “a bit of hopeful young life... lighting of a fire on a cold hearth”. Since Ethan has been isolated from actual social life for so long, anyone that's not from Starkfield is interesting to him.

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737 Words | 3 Pages

Ethan found out his mother was going to die and instantly panicked. He saw Zeena was going to leave and with the fear of being alone in the harsh winter he asked her to

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2138 Words | 9 Pages

This common struggle is portrayed particularly in Ethan Fromes desire to leave his miserable marriage to Zeena in order to run away with his passionate affair with Mattie. Zeena recognizes Ethan's interest in Mattie, ordering that Mattie leave immediately, this causes Ethan to consider running off. While writing a letter to Zeena of his departure, he quickly realize that "[hes] been in a dream, and this is the only evening that [he and Mattie] will ever have together"(56) ultimately because running away would be a hopeless endeavor. Although, Ethan is unhappy, noticeable by his silence that "does not reflect emptiness, but, instead, mirrors veery present but muted morals"(Wendt 158), he chooses that his moral obligation to Zeena is more important. Yet "the facts of poverty and his marital obligation act like prison guards"(Carrol) causing eternal imprisonement in the soul of Ethan.

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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.

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1327 Words | 6 Pages

Ethan should’ve chosen happiness instead of sticking around with Zeena and being sad and depressed in their relationship “ Must he wear out all his years at the side of a bitter querulous woman?” (Wharton 67). Mattie was his chance at freedom from Zeena and becoming happy but he was too worried about all of the consequences that would come if he had pursued his happiness. Happiness wasn’t Ethan’s first priority when it should’ve been, instead he chose to be unselfish which on most occasions is good, but in this case should’ve been avoided. Later on Ethan began to regret this decision he had made and soon it was very clear to him that he should’ve chosen happiness instead of staying with Zeena and being unhappy in his “unfulfilling marriage”.

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