Realism In Ethan Frome

With roots in the 19th century, Realism broke the barrier of the Romanticism trend and period. Realism is a style of writing that authors use to convey to the readers that life is not a fairy tale; bad things happen and life is not always easy and hopeful. Stories such as "Ethan Frome", written by Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin's "The Story of An Hour", and "War is Kind", by Stephen Crane demonstrate the ideals of the Realist Era and what realism is in American Literature.

Edith Wharton's "Ethan Frome" is a story about a poor man, Ethan Frome, who falls in love even though he is already married, and faces challenges of expressing his emotions or plans. The reader knows Ethan doesn't love his wife, Zeena, since they barely speak to each other and

He uses examples, such as a mother losing her son saying, "Mother whose heart hung humble as a button, on the bright splendid shroud of your son". By using these situations, Crane shows the reader that it does not matter who you or your loved ones are, in war there is only death, and honor and glory will not prevent it. Crane uses sarcasm in parts of the poem such as, " The unexplained glory flies above them, great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom..." to convey to the reader how terrible war is and then is truthful afterwards saying, "A field where a thousand corpses lie", to push his central idea of war being cruel and terrible. In life, war is not a romanticized place where there is nothing but honor and glory, it is a brutal place where people fight and die in cruel and bloody ways. Crane being a realist author, wanted people to know and depict war as it really was: horrific and terrifying.

Realism in American literature depicts how life can be unfair and cruel instead of the romanticized version in which the two lovers are happily together, the woman is free from a marriage she does not want to be in, and war only has wins, loses, and unexplained glory. People wrote about how life actually was, by having their character go through real challenges and speak how they would in real life, not poetically, as authors from the Romanticism Era did. Realism made many people become more self-aware and push for changes in their lives, propelling the Women's Rights Movement, for example, into