Battle of the Books: Ethan Frome vs. Of Mice and Men Research Paper between these two books of which book is better.

The novella Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck begins and ends in 1930’s southern California, during the great depression. This book is centered around two main characters, George Milton and Lennie Small. George is a short, quick thinking man, and Lennie is pretty much his opposite: huge, clumsy, and mentally ill. The book starts off with George and Lennie walking to a ranch to get work, which they desperately need. Once they get to the ranch, they meet several other folks, most of which suffer from some sort of oppression. There’s a black, a cripple, a woman, and a whole lot of poverty. In Of Mice and Men, oppression is presented as a major issue, one that affects nearly every character in the book to some degree, whether it be through racism, sexism, or ageism.

Ethan's wife, Zeena, displays another area of the poverty of Ethan's life. Her particular poverty is the lack of feeling. She is a cold, decrepit individual, who is convinced that she is sick, and refuses to be told otherwise. She is very uncaring and unpleasant. She constantly gripes at Ethan, and she can't stand her cousin, Mattie. on page 38, Zeena is trying to get rid of Mattie, by hinting that she should get married quickly. She wants to hire another girl.

That makes him stand between what he want and what he need and all he wants, just to stop at thinking. And Ethan's thoughts become his biggest barrier to reaching happiness. Ethan loves Mattie. Ethan dreams about the happiness of him and Mattie. We know that when Ethan says, "I guess we'll never let you go, Matt," he whispered, as though even the dead, lovers once, must conspire with him to keep her; and brushing by the graves, he thought: "We'll always go on living here together, and someday she'll lie there beside me.". But there is no way that comes true when he becomes passive in front of Zeena. When Zeena figures out what is wrong in her family, and try to indirectly force Mattie to leave the farm, Ethan is passive with his feeble reasoning cannot protect Mattie. Then, Ethan plans to flee with Mattie. But once again, another thought comes up to Ethan's mind as an excuse for his passivity, and make him flinch. The narrator states, " If he gave the farm and mill to Zeena what would be left him to start his own life with? Once in the West he was sure of picking up work—he would not have feared to try his chance alone. But with Mattie depending on him the case was different. And what of Zeena's fate? Farm and mill were mortgaged to the limit of their value, and even if she found a purchaser—in itself an unlikely chance—it was doubtful if she could clear a thousand

However, the restraints that moral and societal concerns imposed by society on the desires of an individual are arguably the novel's most noticeable theme since the plot of the prose is centered on Ethan’s desire of a lady who isn't his better half. The novel describes ravaging soul of Ethan as he is torn between the obligation to his wife and the desire of his heart. Ethan describes Zeena as the epitome of coldness and despondency. When he saw her before she embarked on her journey to Bettsbridge, he found "the pale light reflected from the banks of snow made her face look more than usually drawn and bloodless (Wharton 39). On the other hand, Wharton’s discerption of Mattie in the eyes of Ethan is related with natural life, warmth, and summer. At the start of the Novel, He perceives Mattie's face as "like a

Ethan Frome has a strong enough sense of responsibility to keep himself from achieving true happiness with his love Mattie. While Ethan and Mattie sit in the sled preparing to ram head first into the tree, he sees Zeena’s face appear before him, and this reminds him that he still needs to care for her. Sitting on the sled with his love, Ethan

Ethan being very needy marries Zeena, and once she turns cold, Ethan suffers. Ethan had been very lonely, living with his sickly mother.

When Mattie is to be sent away, Ethan and Mattie grow desperate looking for a way out of their impossible situation. They decide that it is better to die in a sledding accident together than live their lives apart. Ethan hesitates slightly, “But in a flash

In the book, Ethan Frome, to ‘resolve’ their issue, Mattie and Frome decide they would rather be dead than apart. They choose to do a double suicide by sledding right into a tree, “‘Right into the big elm. You said you could. So ‘t we’d never have to leave each other any more.’” (119).

Just after Zeena informs him of Mattie’s forced departure, he thinks, “Now she had mastered him and he abhorred her. Mattie was her relation, not his: there was no means by which he could compel her to keep the girl under her roof.” Zeena is the master of the house, not Ethan. Around Zeena, Ethan’s masculinity is threatened, which was unheard of for the time period. Also note how Wharton uses the phrase ‘her roof’ to stress that Zeena is the one who wears the pants in the relationship. At a different part of the book, Mattie breaks the pickle dish and relies on Ethan to fix the problem. In addition, “She did not even ask what he had done…he had never known such a thrilling sense of mastery.” Ethan feels like the man of the house with Mattie, his masculinity is strengthened, and he isn’t being ordered around like someone’s dog. Wharton does this to add to Ethan’s yearning for a better life with Mattie and to be permanently rid of his

By explaining how they all seemed to live miserable lives, Mrs. Ned Hale concluded that if Mattie hadn’t survived the crash maybe Ethan could’ve had a better life. Edith Wharton develops a full-circle ending with the epilogue, perfectly portraying the miserable life of the Frome

Readers more fully understand the force of Zeena’s controlling personality by observing the effect her domineering tendencies have on both her husband, as well as his new love interest, Mattie. When Zeena takes in homeless Mattie to serve as an unpaid housemaid, Zeena’s harsh, tyrannical proclivities increase. Instead of Zeena’s efforts quelling the growing infatuation between Ethan and Mattie, Zeena’s heightening nastiness only make the lovely, obedient and good-natured Mattie more appealing to Ethan. The lovers now share a common bond and a common enemy, feeling trapped with a monster in their midst. During the first few months of Mattie’s stay, Ethan desires “to see Mattie, defy Zeena, and trembled with fear of the result…”(pg 52). Even after months of staying in the Frome household, Mattie still feels this effect. “since the previous night, a vague dread hung on the sky-line. It was formed by Zeena’s obstinate silence, of Mattie’s sudden look of warning…” (pg

Ethan had “taken a year’s course at a technical college at Worcester, and dabbled in the laboratory,” however later ended his schooling because of “his father’s death, and the misfortunes following it” (Wharton 24).His action in giving up his proud studies is an example of what makes Ethan a tragic hero as he feels obligated to pursue his family’s farm instead of following his dreams through college. Not only is he troubled by leaving college for the farm, but Ethan is also unhappy with his relationship with his wife, Zeena. Zeena they were both happy until within a year of their marriage Zeena contracted an alleged illness and she becomes bitter. “He felt a chill of such forebodings,” within Ethan’s diminishing marriage with Zeena as she has become a burden (Wharton 63). Since Ethan is not capable in revealing his feelings about Zeena, it leads to the downfall of Ethan’s miserable relationship with her. than Frome begins to live a life of tragedy that evolves into suffering by the action of unthoughtful

When Ethan arrives home in chapter 4, for example, he’s greeted by Mattie in the same position his wife had been at the door the previous night, except the light Mattie’s holding brings out her “slim young throat” and “brown wrist no bigger than a child’s” (33). Mattie is the picture of youth. She’s young and usually in good spirits, in an almost child-like way. There’s a stark difference between how she’s described here compared to how Ethan’s wife’s described when she’s in the same stance, where, compared to Mattie, she’s “tall and angular” and has a “puckered throat” (22). Zeena is the polar opposite of Mattie in all regards. She has sharper, more angular features compared to Mattie’s, which brings out their age difference. Zeena’s constant bitterness is also different from Mattie’s usually cheerful disposition. This shows how desperate Ethan had been following his parents’ death, and how contradictory it’d been that he fell in love with someone he wouldn’t have grown to love, in normal circumstances. It’s this same woman who’d saved him from his loneliness, who’s in fact nursing his

The movie Of Mice and Men, is the doomed story of two friends who drifted from farm to farm with only each others company. The story set in the Great Depression time period, when many people struggled with money problems, and many traveled long distances to find a job. Two of these drifters are our heros, Lennie Small and George Milton, two men who couldn't be more different yet could only exist with one another. George, played by Gary Sinise, is a clever man with cunning and compassion, and Lennie, played by John Malkovich , is a large man with the mind of a child whose heart is pure and never means harm to others. Lennie is mentally challenged, and isn't capable to think for himself, so george helps him out often getting himself into lennie's

In the novella Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck, the relationship between Lennie Small and George Milton is complex. Lennie and George are two companions who look for work and brave the hardships of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression together. Although Lennie and George are both grown men, their relationship resembles more of a child and a single parent, or a boy and his dog. Lennie is portrayed as animalistic and childish through his behavior and Steinbeck’s comparisons. This reveals the crucial power dynamic in George and Lennie’s relationship.