Ethan Hawke

Ethan Frome Is guilt the result of isolation or illusion? Did isolation arise due to guilt or was the illusion brought on due to guilt or isolation? These are questions that can be probed throughout Edith Wharton’s novel and answered by an evaluation of the main characters. Isolation is the underlying cause and motive of the three main characters and even rests in the setting of the novel. Guilt is a deep seeded emotion that often drives behavior, even unknowingly. This is Ethan’s struggle. And…

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is a novel dealing with a young man’s persistent battle between his desires and moral principles. The story is set in 17th century New England in a rural community. The town of Starkfield is an area in which northern winters siege the inhabitants and hinder their daily lives. The characters within the novel must resist the frigid climate as it is a major impediment throughout the novel. Ultimately, Ethan Frome faces a conflict between his emotional desires and moral…

The book Ethan Frome was a fictional work written by Edith Wharton. The book was set in the fictional town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. Edith Wharton is an esteemed writer who received a Pulitzer Prize for her book, The Age of Innocence. Ethan Frome details the story of a man and his struggles with maintaining his daily life and marriage with his sickly wife. Throughout the book, each character is faced with life-changing choices that would affect at least one other character within the tale.…

O Pioneers and Ethan Frome are two classic, exciting novels. Even though the two plots of these stories aren’t much alike, the have similarities so often, it’s eerie. From the cold, harsh winter that the stories take place in, to the fact that they were written 2 years apart (1911 - 1913). These stories were not meant to relate at all, but the more you read, the more similarities you may find throughout both books. I find it funny that the similarities are not more recognised in the reading…

An interesting problem in John Green’s Paper Towns is Man vs. the public. While Margo has disappeared Quentin tries to find her using various clues she has left behind. Before Margo disappears they both go and seek revenge on Margo’s “friends” that night is when Quentin thinks he has seen the “true” Margo. Quentin finds the reference paper towns. He finds out that paper towns can mean an undeveloped subdivision. He finds a subdivision in the area and finds clues that she has been there. He ends…

In her task of characterizing Zeena as selfish and shrewd wharton recounts Zeena and Ethan's marriage and how their plans for the future are ultimately forgotten. After his mother's death and subsequent marriage to Zeena they both agree to try and sell the farm and move to a big city. It sounds like a good plan except, not only has no one bought the farm, but Zeena will be impossible to move. “She chose to look down on starkfield, but she could not have lived in a place which looked down on…

Wharton establishes patterns of imagery by using figurative language — language meant to be taken figuratively as well as literally. In Ethan Frome, Wharton's descriptive imagery is one of the most important features of her simple and efficient prose style. Her descriptions serve a definite stylistic and structural purpose. The figurative language used by Wharton includes metaphors and similes. Metaphors compare two unlike things without using words of comparison. For example, in the beginning…

In her realist novel, Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton strategically crafts a story that highlights the contrast between two opposing archetypal images, winter and darkness versus summer and light, in order to draw forth a comparison between the effect that both Zeena, Ethan’s wife, and Mattie, Ethan’s love interest, have on Ethan. Zeena’s stark personality and depressive aura causes her to exemplify the desolate qualities of winter, dragging Ethan into a life classified by lonely days and even…

piece of literature, Ethan Frome, which gives the book a frigid and depressing atmosphere. The cold nature of the book explains the protagonist’s, Ethan Frome’s, need to search for companionship in other people. The fear of existing alone and forgotten in the gelid winter appears to be too much to bear for Ethan Frome. He pounces on the first opportunity that arises and marries his mother’s caretaker, Zenobia. All appears to be well in Ethan’s eyes. However, unbeknownst to Ethan at the time,…

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…