What Is The Difference Between Ethan Frome And The American Dream

In Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome and Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady, the difficulty of obtaining the highly sought after “American Dream” is examined through the struggles of the characters in each respective novel. Wharton and Cather grapple with the American Dream as the set piece for a tragedy, in which they use different approaches to highlight the elusiveness and fragility of the idealized state of the American Dream. In Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton aims to idealize the American Dream through Ethan’s unfortunate circumstances that always leave him unable to capture the dream he so greatly desires. In the novel, the narrator explains how Ethan “had always wanted to be an engineer, and to live in towns, where there were lectures and big libraries …show more content…
Wharton succeeds in making the American Dream an important theme within Ethan Frome because the continuous decay of Ethan’s dream further romanticizes and idealizes the goal of accomplishing it. Throughout the entire novel, Ethan is so close, yet so far away from achieving the perfection of his hopes and dreams. Even in older age, Ethan remains at his house with both Zeena and Mattie, who is now sick, and thus spends his days in the presence of a living representation of his failed American …show more content…
After both strokes, the Captain begins to become an invalid, with his only notable action being his time spent sitting in the garden, staring at the sundial that he so greatly admires. This sundial represents the all-encompassing time of the past, present, and future and the effect it has had on the Captain. Here, Cather provides an important commentary on the American Dream by showing the transformation of Captain Forrester, a man whose past held so much and whose future holds next to nothing. Cather continues to grapple with the American Dream as a fragile state, and just as Edith Wharton does in Ethan Frome, shows the tragedy of the failed American