Symbolism In Ethan Frome By Edith Wharton

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.

The oak tree is used to symbolize Ethan in the novel. The connection can be seen by comparing the characteristics of each. The Oak tree is seen by the characters in the novel as a solid, unchanging, and immovable object. The same can be said about Ethan. He has always has and probably always will live in Starkfield.

People have many dreams that they want to accomplish during their lifespan on earth. However, not all of the dreams can be fulfilled. The dreams and desires of a person can be hindered by interfering forces which might be external, social and environmental factors, or internal like lack of will. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton demonstrates how social factors, including rules and expectations, and environmental factors such as weather and landscape, hindered the protagonist from accomplishing his dreams. These factors together with his lack of will, played a major role in the tragedies of Ethan.

With reference to at least two characters in the novel Ethan Frome, show in detail how Wharton uses setting to reflect character.

Many people oppose society due to the surroundings that they face and the obstacles that they encounter. Set in the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is the story of a poor, lonely man, his wife Zeena, and her cousin Mattie Silver. Ethan the protagonist in this novel, faces many challenges and fights to be with the one he really loves. Frome was trapped from the beginning ever since Mattie Silver came to live with him and his wife. He soon came to fall in love with her, and out of love with his own wife. He was basically trapped in the instances of his life, society’s affect on the relationship, love, poverty, illness, disability, and life.

Throughout Ethan Frome, winter seems to be a prominent season that is spoken of or described. In symbolic terms, winter is a time of dormancy. It is a time when life gives way to stillness and people take the time to reflect and still their minds and souls. Although winter does, in fact, reflect despair, death, loneliness and pain, it is not all negative. The main component of a winter storm is snow and what color is snow? White. White symbolizes hope, rebirth, naivety and much more just like life in a winter wonderland might. In the case of Ethan Frome though, there seems to be a far darker meaning behind it. The fact that he's "...been in Starkfield too many winters" (Pg. 4) shows the real symbolism that's been the long-lived dormancy of Ethan's life.

In Edith Wharton’s novel, Ethan Frome, one major critical theory revolves around the psychological criticism. The novel revolves around this critical theory because Wharton wanted the reader to observe how the setting becomes dependent on the emotional state of the character and vice versa. Throughout the novel, Wharton makes changes to the environment to represent Ethan’s fondness for certain characters. On the contrary, Wharton displays how the setting directly influences Ethan’s mental state. As the reader perceives this influence that each character has on Ethan Frome, they can develop an understanding of the relationships established in the novel. This critical theory will be expressed throughout the literary analysis paper, specifically in the Novel Summary section and Literary Criticism sections. The following text will analyze the drastic changes in the environment and compare it to Ethan’s mental state.

In Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, the author places Frome in situations where he is shown to be caring and/or sentimental to demonstrate the irony of his miserable life in Starkfield. In the beginning of the story, Harmon Gow describes how Ethan once gave up his education to care for his father, who “went soft in the brain, and gave away money like Bible texts before he died…” (12) and his mother, who “got queer and dragged along for years as weak as a baby” (12). At his heart, Frome is a very caring man with morals, choosing his family over his own personal needs. After his parents died, this left Frome with a limited number of skills or education, effectively trapping him in Starkfield. Soon after their deaths, Frome married Zeena because

There are a quite a few short stories, novels,and poetry that uses things to represent something else. This is also known as symbolism. Stories and novels such as “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, “The Most dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, and “ The Giver” by Lois Lowry. These novels consist a great deal of symbols.Also, these symbols may have more than one meaning to them. In the novel “Ethan Frome”,there are many different things that symbolizes something. The symbols that are found in the novel, “Ethan Frome”, is the cat, the dead cucumber vine and the pickle dish.

“‘Most of the smart ones get away.’ But if that were the case, how could any combination of obstacles have hindered the flight of a man like Ethan Frome?” (Edith Wharton). In Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton, Ethan marries his cousin Zenobia (Zeena), and then cheats on his cousin/wife with her cousin, Mattie. Mattie makes one mistake and Zeena’s prized possession, a pickle dish, is ruined. The pickle dish symbolizes Ethan and Zeena’s relationship.

In Ethan Frome, Ethan would be considered a strong person. After Zeena hurts him financially, socially, and emotionally, this proves Ethan is a strong person. Ethan does prove some points where he is not strong with standing up to Zeena becomes a conflict. Ethan would be considered an antagonist by cheating on Zeena. Although she can be difficult to deal with at times, that did not give him the right to cheat on her. He would be considered passive because he allows Zeena to tell him what to do. By giving this evidence, this would tell anyone that Ethan’s level of tolerance is his strongest characteristic.

The characterization of winter which Wharton uses illustrates that the cold, brutal nature of the season reflects the isolation and bitter qualities of life during challenging times. Throughout the novel, the weather remains intensely frigid, symbolizing not only the harshness of life in Starkfield and the loneliness which comes from having to seek shelter from the elements. Foster uses words such as “severe,” “inhospitable,” and “suffocating” (75) to describe snow, which is sustained in Frome’s world. The continuous process of struggling to withstand the psychological and physical challenges of “the isolation of a Starkfield farm” (Wharton 13) becomes unbearable for Ethan, as he consistently daydreams of breaking away from his past. It seems

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton takes place in Starkfield Massachusetts during the winter; this setting was chosen and described in such a way to emphasize Ethan’s emotions throughout the story.

In the novel Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton uses words and symbolism to convey the deeper feelings that the characters cannot themselves express. The symbolism in the novel ranges from the sled that ultimately disfigures Ethan and paralyzes Mattie to symbols of death that foreshadow not literal death but the tragedy of the story. Color symbolism is a major literary tool used throughout Ethan Frome to enrich the story and show who the characters really are. White in the story is in a sense used to show the sterile life of Ethan and just how badly his dreams have become buried like underlying life gets buried under a mountain of snow. A major color used throughout the novel though is the color red.

In Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton illustrates Ethan's perpetual lack of control over his destiny through Nature which binds him to Starkfield with no hope of escape. Nature always has control over his life, and even when he attempts to take back any control over his life, it unrelentingly oppresses him. In the prologue, Wharton establishes that Winter dominates Starkfield like a military, blockading the people into isolation. Nature's winter surrounds the people and sends the "wild cavalry of March winds" to assist "the storms of February" that