Ethan Frome, Paper.
Well I know none of your are going to read this or care, but here it is.
C.B.
Day 2 Period 1
American Lit. 1
1/29/05
Irony:Ethan Frome
The story Ethan Frome a short story by Edith Wharton. Is set in a small rural town, Starkfield. The meaning of Stark deprived from the name of the town Starkfield as quoted from the Webster's New World Dictionary :"1. Rigourous, severe 2. Sharpley outlined 3. Bleak, desolate 4. Sheer: downright - adv. utterly; wholly. The title of the story, in one word is depressing. The overall scenary, mostly set in the winter brings in a bleak and desolate mood.
Ethan Frome the main character of the story lives at his unsuccessful Starkfield Farm, which is a hardship because he isn't making much money from it, especially the saw mill. Has a wife that's sickly, and always has been ever since Ethan's mother has fallen ill, and passed away. Ethan had dreams of getting out of Starkfield and making somthing out of himself, but unfortunately do to the ill events IE father's passing, his mother falling ill, and the many misfortunes following after it. He just never got away from living on the farm, he'll just end up like the rest of the Fromes that once lived there. Especially on one of the gravestones, while Ethan was walking around in the story, he looked at a gravestone and it said: "We never got away, why should you?"
You can say when Ethan Frome had this fantasy of moving to the West, to California with Mattie Silver he was going to do it. Even if it meant leaving Zeena, the farm, and where he grew up. Money came into question, what was he to do with the farm? Where is he going to get this money? He got as close to deceiving the Hales, their hospitality. As quoted in the book:
"He started down the road toward their house, but at the end of a few yards he pulled up sharpley, the blood in his face. For the first time, in the light of the words he just heard, he saw what he was about to do. He was planning to take advantage of the Hales' sympathy to obtain money from them on false pretences. That was a plain statement of the cloudy purpose which had driven him in headlong to Starkfield.
With the sudden perception of the point to which his madness carried him, the madness fell and he saw his life before him as it was. He was a poor man, the husband of a sickley woman, whom his desertion would leave alone and distute; and even if he had had the heart he could have done so only by deceiving the two kindly people who had pitied him. He turned and walked slowly to the farm."
Zeena, Ethan's sickly wife. Came to Starkfield to help Ethan's mother, and Ethan eventually fell in love with the woman. And when Ethan's mother passed away, Zeena eventually became as sick as his mother. Its ironic. So Zeena hires a woman to take care of her, Mattie Silver, and Ethan began to have a infatutation on her. Ethan didn't really love his wife, he was 28 years old, still young, still had some of his youth in him. Zeena on the other hand, after their 8 years of marriage doesnt look so attractive as she used to be,and she looks old, pale, and boney. Ethan met Mattie the same way he met Zeena. Later in the book they express how they feel about each other, and go on a sled riding trip down the Elm, and Ethan sits in the front because he wants to feel like he's being hold on to, and while they're doing it, they crash. Ethan dies, Mattie severly injured, but miraculously lives on. Ethan's wife eventually got better and started to take care of Mattie, though in the beginning it was those two, Ethan & Mattie doing the caring. Now the tables have turned and Zeena owes it to both of them, and is now well on the other hand. Maybe Zeena was faking it the whole time? Who knows....
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I hate writing.Dont really write much, so.... yep.
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