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Their Eyes Were Watching God Literary Analysis

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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. In chapter five, the cat represents Zeena. In the chapter, Ethan and Mattie is alone while Zeena is away visiting a doctor in another town. Mattie attempts to impress Ethan and fails because of the cat. She tries to set up the table all nice for dinner and she does that by using the pickle dish Zeena got as a wedding gift, it is her prize possession. The cat destroys everything that Mattie does for Ethan even the pickle dish. The cat are the eyes of Zeena while she is away. The cat reminds them both that Zeena is still somewhat there in spirit, but, not physically present. …show more content…
It represents the death, Ethan wishes upon his wife Zeena. Ethan wishes Zeena is dead because he feels that Zeena is ruining his life. He feels than Zeena illness is keeping him and Mattie apart. To Ethan,Zeena is a burden. Furthermore, it represents not only death but, the attraction that he has lost for Zeena. He not longer feels as much for Zeena as he use too, because of how sick Zeena has gotten. As Zeena became very sick she started losing her beauty that Ethan once

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