Mattie and Ethan confirm that their love for each other is indeed real. The revelation is also sad because they must part. The couple first voice their feelings that they'd rather be dead than be apart. Wharton creates suspense as the couple arrives at the sledding hill and decide to go sledding. After the first ride, Ethan asks Mattie if she was scared of running into the elm tree. The idea of fear signals the mounting pressure of the death wish building in the two lovers.
It also foreshadows the accident. As the conversation about fear and the thrilling exaltation of the sled ride have passed, silence, darkness, and cold are emphasized as the couple climbs up the hill.
Ethan thinks this will be their last walk together. His thoughts foreshadow not only the coming accident, but also Mattie's future as a cripple. As the idea of a mutual death gains momentum, Ethan is caught in a frenzy of love for Mattie that blots out his former conscientious thoughts of not leaving Zeena to fend for herself. Ethan is overwhelmed by the knowledge that Mattie loves him.
Only the touch of Mattie's cold cheek and the whistle of the approaching train bring him out of his vision. The idea of mutual suicide is now identified in Ethan's mind as a sort of quest to preserve the love and beauty of his relationship with Mattie.
Passion, not reason, dominates his mind; appropriately, the darkness has increased and his usually sharp vision is dimmed, just as his rational faculties are dimmed in the obscurity of passion. As they coast downhill, the last thing Ethan sees before the tree is a vision of his wife's face, a manifestation of his conception of her as an alien presence.
It seems to try to prevent him from attaining the goal of the tree, but he maneuvers around it. The vision is a symbolic reminder that Ethan will never escape Zeena's dominance, and that he will fail tragically in his attempt to carry away in death the beauty and love he found with Mattie. After the crash into the tree, Wharton describes what Ethan sees and feels; he had wondered briefly what it would be like after death but now he slowly realizes he is still alive.
Mattie's beauty has turned into the twisted, ugly reality that Ethan will have to bear for the rest of his life. The accident results in the destruction of two lives. Wharton does not tell readers that the attempt at death has failed and that Ethan and Mattie are condemned to live out their crippled lives in Starkfield.
Instead, readers can sense with Ethan the quiet acceptance of his fate when he thinks that it is time to feed his horse. For Ethan, there is no escape from the silence, isolation, and entrapment. Sirius a binary star in the constellation Canis Major, the brightest star in the sky.
But it's also possible that Zeena felt social pressure to take in Mattie because Mattie was a relative who had suffered so horribly.
In other words, just as Zeena's "illness" gave her power over Ethan, Mattie's more profound and real suffering seems to have given her power over Zeena, as shown when Mattie complains about Zeena letting the fire go out.
At any rate, they are now all trapped by misery, poverty, and disability in their lonely, decaying farmhouse. Determinism and Free Will. The Narrator comments that life must be horrible for them all. Hale agrees, but says she thinks Ethan has it the worst. She confides to the Narrator that she thinks it's a pity that Mattie survived the accident, because if she had died, "Ethan might ha' lived.
Hale describes Ethan's life as a kind of living death. Ethan sought to keeps things just as they were by doing nothing. But by never making a choice, either to break the rules of society and go off with Mattie or to give up what he desired and follow society's rules, he managed to destroy everything.
Related Quotes with Explanations. Cite This Page. Home About Story Contact Help. Previous Chapter 9. Next Themes. What exactly did Mattie say to Ruth when she woke up after the accident? Why couldn't Ruth bear to repeat it to the narrator? Whatever it was, it, combined with the change for the worse in Mattie's personality, leads Ruth to speak the novella's final lines: There was one day, about a week after the accident, when they all thought Mattie couldn't live.
Well, I say it's a pity she did. I said it right out to our minister once, and he was shocked at me. Only he wasn't with me that morning when she first came to And I say, if she'd ha' died, Ethan might ha' lived; and the way they are now, I don't see's there's much difference between the Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard; 'cept that down there they're all quiet, and the women have got to hold their tongues.
We realize there are lots of things going on in this final paragraph, and we want to help break it down. The first shocking thing that Ruth says is that if Mattie had died, Ethan could have lived. At this point we can be pretty sure that living for Ethan would mean escaping Starkfield, Zeena, and finding a place where his educational and social needs could be met.
In short, this has to do with the getting away that we hear so much about. Is this what Ruth means? Does she mean that if Mattie had died Ethan could have left Starkfield? These kinds of questions reveal why " Morality and Ethics " is an important theme in Ethan Frome. The first time he imagined himself living out his years with Mattie, the second time of enduring his life with Zeena.
He did not suspect his fate was to be a nightmarish combination of the two daydreams. The prologue emphasizes the themes of silence, isolation, and entrapment that Ethan has accepted as his fate because he was unable to violate the rules of society. Ethan did not choose to stand up to Zeena, divorce her, or run away with Mattie.
He stood by his marriage vows, right or wrong, and as a result, will live out his life in silence and isolation. Previous Chapters Next Ethan Frome. Removing book from your Reading List will also remove any bookmarked pages associated with this title. Are you sure you want to remove bookConfirmation and any corresponding bookmarks?
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