Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

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The novel “Ethan Frome” by Edith Wharton, expressed that the influence of circumstances can affect the aspects of a person’s life, just as it did with the character Ethan Frome. For instance, Ethan inherited the family farm and sawmill while facing the adversity of maintaining agriculture but keep true to his family traditions. Secondly, Ethan will experience his parent’s misfortune, self-sacrifice, an unpleasant marriage and the emotions of human desire; furthermore, testing his character. The novel will have symbolic meanings throughout the story to symbolize the events of America’s society shared in its history and based on individual’s life experiences. For these reasons, Ethan’s life is unique, it resembles the different types of experiences that America and its society deals with.
The Frome’s family farm did not have a reputation of a rich plantation that flourished with many fields of crop, nor did they have a wealth of animals grazing on the property. For example, the Starkfield neighbors viewed the farm to “always ‘bout as bare’s a milkpan when the cat’s been round”, (Walton, par. 19) and that analogy provided the history of the Frome’s farmland. A family’s farmland with a reputation of this magnitude is extremely negative, because the American farmers expression “of an agrarian-capitalist ideology” (Sweet, par. 3) corresponded with their marketed relations for social and political stability. Ethan would work hard and struggle being so poor; however, his work from the sawmill would “yielded scarcely enough to keep his household through the winter” (Walton, par. 18). Regardless of the hardship, Ethan would cope with what he had inherited, and be humble with he had to work with.
The Fromes family presented dysfunction; he...

... middle of paper ...

...to achieve it. In conclusion, Ethan Frome’s unique life resembles different eventful experiences that share between America and its society.

Works Cited

Jacoby, Dan. "Looking Backward on Labor in the United States." Working USA 3.5 (2000): 27. ProQuest. Web. 9 Apr. 2014. http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/docview/236486399?accountid=8289
Sweet, Timothy. "American Pastoralism and the Marketplace: Eighteenth-Century Ideologies of Farming." Early American Literature 29.1 (1994): 59. ProQuest. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.
Thumé, Elaine, MSc, et al. "The Utilization of Home Care by the Elderly in Brazil's Primary Health Care System." American Journal of Public Health 101.5 (2011): 868-74. ProQuest. Web. 26 Apr. 2014.
Wharton, Edith. Ethan Frome. The Project Gutenberg of Ethan Frome. 8 Jan. 2013. Web 9 April 2014. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4517/4517-h/4517-h.h

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