Ethan Frome Character Analysis

One of Ethan Frome’s centric ideas is that Ethan retreats from life into a vision. He escapes his reality to enjoy a few blissful moments in his dream, but never acts to make that dream come true. Harmon Gow says, “Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart ones get away”(Wharton 6). While having every reason to leave Starkfield and his querulous wife, the man doesn’t. Ethan’s moral and social values combined with his indecisiveness cause him to retreat from life into a vision.
Ethan retreats into his vision to escape reality. Being a poor man tending to a stoic, sick wife, living in a cold, desolate town leaves a life with much to be desired. With a community that is indifferent at best, Frome has nobody to share his troubles with. He ponders this. “Must he wear out all his years at the side of a bitter querulous woman? Other possibilities had been in him, possibilities sacrificed, one by one, to Zeena’s narrow-mindedness and ignorance. And what good had come from it?” (114). Ethan’s “vision” brings him happiness …show more content…
It is unknown what will happen if he makes a dream a reality, and he is scared of that change. Frome’s worry controls his life to the extent that he will not change it. It’s not that Ethan doesn’t wish to change his life; He just doesn’t have the guts to. The man escapes into his vision and hints at his fear of change in this quote: “He did not know why he was so irrationally happy, for nothing was changed in his life or hers. He had not even touched the tip of her fingers or looked her full in the eyes. But their evening together had given him a vision of what life at her side might be, and he was glad now that he had done nothing to trouble the sweetness of the picture. He had a fancy that she knew what had restrained him…” (86). It is possible that Ethan’s fear was brought on by the deaths of his parents. This fear of change provides Ethan with an indecisive