Symbolism In Wharton's Ethan Frome

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Distinctively American: Ethan Frome
Since the inception of the original thirteen colonies, European settlers have attempted to break the traditional English mold, developing a discernable American culture which encompasses language, art, and music. Edith Wharton is a renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, celebrated for numerous literary works, including the famous novel Ethan Frome, published in 1911. This paper aims to establish the main character, Ethan Frome, as distinctively American, by exploring various literary elements of this eminent novel, and exploring exhibited attributes of this fictional character throughout the narrative.
Nationality: American by Birth/Citizenship
In order to prove the character of Ethan Frome is …show more content…

At the very onset of the novel, Wharton strategically employs detailed imagery of severe winter conditions, common to the Starkfield landscape, and quickly parallels the unforgiving setting to Ethan’s distraught life. The symbolism is clearly conveyed by the narrator, who, while reflecting upon a previous conversation with another character in the novel, says, “But one phrase stuck in my memory and served as the nucleus about which I grouped my subsequent inferences: ‘Guess he’s [Ethan’s] been in Starkfield too many winters.’ Before my own time there was up I had learned to know what that meant” (Wharton …show more content…

While the named town of Starkfield is fictional, Ethan resides in a small town, common to rural areas of Massachusetts, not likely dissimilar to the town Wharton lived. Furthermore, Ethan’s distinctive dialect and verbiage utilized throughout the fiction account are reminiscent of the depicted area and era. After the failed suicide attempt, Ethan remarks, “‘Oh, Matt, I thought we’d fetched it,’ he moaned; and far off, up the hill, he heard the sorrel whinny, and thought: ‘I ought to be getting him his feed...” (Wharton 73). These literary elements substantiate the claim that Ethan Frome is distinctively

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