Ethan Frome Theme Essay

It was a dish hardly used, that was only brought down in the spring time for cleaning. The dish was a wedding gift, which has significant meaning in the story. The fact that it was red and that it was a pickle dish adds to the sexual meaning that it possess as a symbolic object. The red pickle dish shows Mattie as an intruder who would reintroduce sexuality into Ethan's life. The color of the dish is a representation of Mattie and meaning of red in the story. Her red scarf, lips, and ribbon all connected her to the symbolic object, the pickle dish. The pickle dish is first showed as Zeena's and Ethan's physical meaning of their marriage. Once Mattie comes into Ethan's sight of love, her presence destroys it. The way it happens in the story is that as Ethan and Mattie prepare for dinner the cat jumps onto the table and breaks the red pickle

Edith Wharton’s uses Mattie Silver as a literary foil to Zeena Frome in ways which help highlight the differences between these two characters. As shown, Edith portrays Mattie as a warmer and brighter character, while Zeena is portrayed as a sick and cold character. For instance, Edith Wharton stated “All the way down to the village he continued to think of his return to Mattie. The kitchen was a poor place, not “spruce” and shining as his mother had kept it in his boyhood; but it was surprising what a home-like look the mere fact of Zeena's absence gave it.” This quote shows that Zeena’s presence in the house gives the setting a dark sense and when she’s not present and Mattie is the only one in the house, Ethan Frome sees the home as a

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

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. Ethan, who knows how much the dish means to her, attempts to glue it back together to please her, unsuccessfully.

In the story " The Scarlet Ibis" James Hurst shows images of red and expresses that every choice we make has a consequence and its either good or bad. The first place he shows images of red is when doodle and brother went up to the barn loft and saw the coffin. "Daddy had Mr. Heath, the carpenter, build a little mahogany coffin for him". Mahogany is a shade of reddish brown. It shows how death can change the mood of the story. Another spot he shows images of red is when Brother is working Doodle too hard and he stopped on the ground and curled up. "He had been bleeding from the mouth, and his neck and the front of his shirt were stained brilliant red". This image express how doodle was dying and suffering. In conclusion, Hurst explains how

In a person’s life, many situations transpire and make them feel pride over one’s self. Readers can see this in the short story,” The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst. “In his spare time Hurst wrote short stories and plays, but The Scarlet Ibis was the only work of his that become famous “(gradesaver.com)”. In the short story, “The Scarlet Ibis” James Hurst uses red to symbolize warning, death, and guilt to show the change the older brother goes through, as he takes care of Doodle.

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. In the story, Ethan Frome, by, Edith Wharton, Ethan and Zeena Frome’s broken pickle dish is a symbol of their dysfunctional relationship, of the unusual setting under which it is destroyed, and the ideas of matrimony.

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. As Ethan and Mattie are eating, the cat interferes by causing the dish to fall. The plate breaks into multiple pieces. The dish mainly represents the broken relationship of Ethan and his wife, Zeena, after Mattie arrives. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton uses a pickle dish to symbolize Ethan and Zeena’s relationship in the past, and future.

In his essay about self-reliance, Emerson writes, “Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day.” (Pg. 5) In this quotation, Emerson clarifies a misconception that he believes is generally accepted among people. He explains that a person’s contradicting her/his previous decision is not a negative action. It is actually healthy for a person to have enough confidence to change her/his mind. This quality of a self-reliant individual is exemplified by Ethan in the novel Ethan Frome. As Ethan leaves his mother’s funeral, Wharton writes, “...when he saw her [Zeena] preparing to go away, he was seized with an unreasoning dread of being left alone on the farm; and before he knew what he was doing he had asked her to stay there with him. He had often thought since that it would not have happened if his mother had died in spring instead of winter…” (Pg. 29) In this quotation, Wharton highlights the fact that Ethan is unhappy with his original decision to marry Zeena. When Ethan asks Zeena to marry him, his desire for her is out of loneliness due to his mother’s death. Later on in the novel, however, Ethan realizes that he does not love Zeena and that he wants to begin a relationship with Mattie. Ethan has the choice to discard his true feelings, stay married to Zeena, and forget about Mattie. Despite this opportunity to avoid divorce and hardships, Ethan agrees to commit suicide together with Mattie in order for them to live happily in their afterlife together. Ethan is confident and knows what he wants out of his relationships, which helps him complete the second component of self-reliance according

He abruptly chose not to go back to school after his father died, which was one of his biggest mistakes. He stayed in Starkfield even though he had the opportunity to go back to school and study his main interest, science. Because of this, he spent most of his days cooped up in his house. “But one phrase stuck in my memory…Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters.”(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. Ethan flirted with Mattie and would try his hardest to impress her, for example, he began shaving his face everyday which he never used to do for Zeena. These inappropriate actions caused chaos within the household. Ethan began to lust over Mattie, wanting to spend as much

Although some people who read the novella feel bad for Ethan Frome because he turned out unsuccessful, nobody should. The reason Ethan turned out unhappy, like the way he did, was all his fault by his own choices. Since the beginning he made the understandably not-so-great choice of leaving college, every single decision after that was all his fault. Ethan Frome's tragedy was completely caused by his own

People live all their lives trying to chase dreams. Most people do and those are the risk takers they ones who aren 't afraid to try even if the future is uncertain. The ones who don 't try often look imagine how their life could have been if they had taken that risk. In the book Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton we see the main protagonist Ethan lack the courage to chase his dream and in the end pays the price for it.

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

Doomed to remain in an ever-stagnant state of being like that of the bones of his past ancestors deep in the frozen ground of cemetery that houses them. As his own antagonist, he forces himself to be frozen in his death while still breathing by never taking a risk to change his fate of ending up being buried beside his wife in Starkfield while he longed for another. Whether progressive or detrimental, Ethan time and time again refuses to take his life into his own hands and make decisions to change it. In the end, Ethan truly is a dead man walking, accepting his life as it was and simply waiting it out until it’s

In society, from the 1800s to the 1950s to today, there frequently is the assumption that it is necessary to put the needs and importance of the community in front of one’s own. Though this may seem out of place in some situations, in others it is simply protocol in order for the society to function smoothly. But in the cases of Edna Pontellier and Ethan Edwards, two seemingly very different characters, they both share the same struggle between their own personal interests and those of society. Edna, a Kentucky native married to a New Orleans Creole, faces her own private conflict as she does not understand the culture of this traditional society. While she is expected to be a loving mother and a doting wife, she feels conflicted while loving another man and not following the ways of a mother-figure. In the case of Ethan, he is a wanderer in a society that relies heavily upon each other. When his niece goes missing, his drive and bravery leads him on the search for her, but also leads him into conflict with newfound urge for revenge. This contradiction of feelings for both characters is