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Reader Response Literary Analysis Of Ethan Frome By Edith Wharton

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Reader Response Literary Analysis of Ethan Frome The novel Ethan Frome written by Edith Wharton is a classic novel of the early 1900’s. Wharton created a novel that is only fully comprehended in the cold winter months with snow swirling outside your home as you read with a cup of hot tea to warm you. It is an icy writing, with many different thoughts to extract from it. A main theme in this novel is society and morality are obstacles to the fulfillment of desire(“Ethan Frome”) I agree with this yet I argue the main theme is that your circumstances determine your contentment. Through the stifling force of winter, Ethan’s alternating moods based mainly off of Mattie, and Zeena’s disappearing illnesses, it will be proven that their circumstances determined their contentment. …show more content…

Winter was a hardening season, and toughened anyone who lived there. An elderly man declares Ethan has “..been in Starkfield too many winters (Wharton 2),” for he is a tough man that seems to belligerently fight through anything that tests his endurance. Zeena nurses his mother as she was dying, Zeena falling ill after they got married, his true lover Mattie always just out of his reach, not enough money to live a comfortable life, and the crash in which him and Mattie were forever torn apart; proving that even if they could find a way to be together they would be torn away in the end. All of these things occurred and yet Ethan Frome pushes on, at war with his own life. Ethan was miserable because his life was miserable. When his only source of happiness dissipates, he forever separates himself from contentment because of all of his unfortunate

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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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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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833 Words | 4 Pages

This dread was caused because he didn’t want to endure the characteristic loneliness of winter in Starkfield again(environment) and because earlier, he had been isolated at

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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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839 Words | 4 Pages

Ethan chooses his duty to Zeena over his dream with mattie he would receive when proposed with the option of moving to the West, he decides against it because of what he owes to Zeena. He doesn 't knows if she would not be able to support herself and that clouded future is why he doesn 't agreed to leave. Again, Ethan chooses between duty to Zeena and seeking his personal dream when he and Mattie were going to take their lives so they would not have to live without each other. Throughout his time with Zeena, he was forced to choose between duty to his family and his dreams. He could have left and continued his dream of being an engineer but instead he married her do to a sense of payment for what she had done for his mother.

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2099 Words | 9 Pages

Strong feelings and real delemias are presented throughout the entire book; like in this quote, Ethan feels hopeless when his wife throws out their maid who he happened to love romantically. Leaving the reader with some personal connections and new struggles to ponder.

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1441 Words | 6 Pages

In Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton depicts Ethan as a tragic hero who gets downtrodden by his circumstances and mainly, his personality. He has the tragic flaw of not being willing to put anyone in pain even if he benefits from it. Through this, he gets blocked from pursuing an education when he must care for his ill parents. Consequently, he also doesn’t get to socialize with other people of his age, making him feel awfully lonely. To further his tragic predicament, he marries Zeena, his cousin who arrives to take care of his mother and unfortunately, she prevents him from pursuing his love for nature and engineering by wanting to stay in Starkfield forever for her own ego.

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1025 Words | 5 Pages

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton Edith Wharton’s naturalist novel, Ethan Frome, is written using the point of view from an omniscient narrator. The details included about the narrator, such as the fact that he is an engineer who is not from Starkfield, allows for Wharton to control which aspects of the characters are explicitly revealed and what is left to the interpretation of the reader as they learn about Mattie, Ethan, and Zeena. This inclusion of an omniscient narrator, who has no personal ties to the characters, allows for the development of the relationship between Mattie, Ethan, and Zeena to play out with an increased sense of realism as Wharton builds a frame narrative, irony, and gaps of knowledge within the novel. Frame narrative plays

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334 Words | 2 Pages

During her life, Edith Wharton had an affair with Morton Fullerton, a journalist for the London Times, while in a dysfunctional marriage, so she uses Ethan Frome as a “sympathetic” character to justify her actions. She uses him to parallel her life experiences of loneliness and regret; “Confused motions of rebellion stormed in him. He was too young, too strong, too full of sap of living, to submit so easily to the destruction of his hopes.” (Wharton 72). In order to have her audience feel more sympathetic toward this character, she makes him a male figure but makes him more feminine to correlate with herself; dependant on Zeena to provide for him, clinging on to a relationship he doesn’t have, can’t live alone, etc: “The mere fact of obeying

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550 Words | 3 Pages

In the story, the setting is in Starkfield, Massachusetts in the winter. Yes, the winter is usually metaphorically thought as depressing, sad and lonely, but Ethan has been around the winter of New England for a while, so he should be able to look past the stereotypical ideas, he could look at the better parts of winter as in the beautiful surroundings, and spending holidays with family. Unfortunately, Ethan cannot. He sees everything as dull and gloomy.

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1751 Words | 8 Pages

When Wharton published her writing, it always became controversial amongst the people because of the topics she chose to write about. Ethan Frome, the main character in this book, struggles in life for many reasons. He struggles because he was pulled from college and forced to take care of a run-down farm, and his parents during the end of their

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763 Words | 4 Pages

That looks on tempests and is never shaken” (Lines 1-7). In Edith Wharton’s classic, Ethan Frome, this theme is present for protagonist Ethan Frome, who falls in love with his maid, Mattie, and forsakes his wife, Zeena. Ethan and Mattie’s flirtation with infidelity sets a catastrophic series of events into play: Zeena is jilted by the lovers’ betrayal, Mattie asks for the irrational way out of her situation, and all three characters make destructive decisions. Ethan’s indifference toward his wife and lack of compassion for her illnesses clearly demonstrates Ethan and Zeena’s loveless relationship.

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819 Words | 4 Pages

In Ethan Frome, the people of Starkfield endure the darkest and coldest of winters. Ethan Frome himself has been “in Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart ones get away” (12). Everything is “snowed under”(16) and the “winter night itself [descends] layer by layer” (19). The weight of the snow bends the trees and covers the town in white -- compared the darkness that lies below.

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1006 Words | 5 Pages

Melissa Palacios English 3A Feb. 21 2017 The novel Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is about a tragic hero, Ethan who is not in love with his wife, but another person named Mattie. An important symbol in this novel is a pickle dish. This dish symbolizes Ethan’s relationship with his wife. The pickle dish first appears in chapter 4 of the novel.

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738 Words | 3 Pages

The tragic novella of Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton focuses on adultery in rural New England. Stressing the importance of relationships, the narrator tells the story of Ethan Frome, a man searching for love. Despite being married to his cousin Zeena, he only views this civil union as a moral obligation. Then, he ventures into an adulterous relationship with Mattie Silver, and begins to understand what love is really about. The author often focuses on a red pickle dish, a treasured wedding gift, which unexpectedly shatters.

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