Theme Of Isolation In Ethan Frome

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.

“Guess he's been in Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart ones get away” (Wharton 13). The setting of the novel Ethan Frome creates an atmosphere which helps establish the character of Ethan Frome himself. Ethan is a man living a very depressing life in Starkfield, Massachusetts with his wife Zeena, whom he doesn't feel affectionate towards and only married because he's afraid to be alone. The environment he’s in is the only reason why he fell in love with Mattie. He's part of the lower class and lives in a secluded area, there's no way for him to divorce his wife and “start a new life” with Mattie, the love of his life.

In addition to Ethan’s conflicts with Zeena, he now had more weight over his shoulders with Mattie. Leaving with Mattie gave a horrible twist to his story. “Ethan! Ethan! I want you to take me down again!’ ‘Down where?’ ‘The coast. Right off. ‘ she panted, ‘so’t we’ll never come up any more” (p.90). His decision to leave with Mattie was probably one of the worst choices he could have made. Not only did he mess up his life, and his relationship with Zeena. He also ruined Mattie’s life by going down that hill and running into the elm causing her to be

With Maddie’s entrance, the Frome house became even more in turmoil as Ethan starts to fall for Maddie, even though he was still married to Zeena. There is the possibility that someone reading may feel sympathetic towards Zeena but I think many people will think she indirectly asked for her marriage to be irreversibly broken as she never truly showed that she loved Ethan nor did she go out of her way to create a happy home environment. Though she did love him deep down in her heart, she was unable to obtain his heart as easily and without effort as Maddie did, even though she was around him more. Ethan was so unhappy in his marriage, he was willing to die with Maddie and leave Zeena behind but fate is a cruel mistress because not only did Maddie and Ethan survive, Maddie actually became a younger version of Zeena which led to the end of the love he had acquired and the beginning of a more depressing and barren

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

Ethan’s farmhouse has always been home to loneliness. An example of this is the relationship Ethan had with his mother. Ever since she got sick, she stopped talking with Ethan, and Ethan began to feel lonely. “His mother had been a talker in her day, but after her "trouble" the sound of her voice was seldom heard, though she had not lost the power of speech.” (Chapter IV) Ethan’s heartache is the only reason he ever fell in love with and married Zeena. This same process repeated with Zeena. When she got sick, he began to feel lonely and fell in love with Mattie. This also would not have happened if Zeena didn’t get sick and stop talking with Ethan.

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

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.

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

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. Unfortunately with this type of relationship, a goal of happiness cannot be achieved or

The book that I chose to read for the first quarter is called “The Princess of Iowa”. This book was written by M. Molly Backes. I was really excited to read this book because it mentioned Iowa on the front cover. This book is about a teenage girl named Paige who is from Iowa. She is very popular and her life seems to be perfect. That all changes, when one day, she gets in a crash and her friends begin to treat her like an outsider. All of the sudden, her dreams of becoming homecoming queen change, and the crash changes Paige’s perspective on how she has been living her life.

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. He cast away his dream because he did not know whether he would have an opportunity like this

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

The quest for happiness can be a long and winding path. One that Ethan didn’t know where to start from, or where to go when he got on it. He struggled in making key decisions to achieve happiness for himself. Instead of choosing happiness Ethan chose to isolate himself from others and not pursue his feelings although it went against his own moral code. In the novel “Ethan Frome” by Edith Wharton, the title character, Ethan, immolates his euphoria so he can obtain an improved quality of life for his family and to retain a superb reputation. Wharton uses this immolation to display that one should do whatever it takes to be jubilant and not live a life of isolation.

Ethan Frome is a story of a man who finds love in his cousin’s wife Mattie although