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How The Structure Of Ethan Frome Is Important To The Story - College Essay

How The Structure Of Ethan Frome Is Important To The Story

The highly praised novel of Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is a frame-story with use of flashback, foreshadow, and symbolism. The story opens in the prologue first person with the narrator, a young engineer coming to Starkfield, Massachusetts for work, looking for the story behind Ethan Fromeâ€™s â€śsmash-upâ€ť and how Ethan became a conflicted, â€śruin of a manâ€ť. Ethan is fifty-two in the prologue. In the first chapter, Wharton decided to flashback twenty four years earlier to uncover the story behind Fromeâ€™s crippling handicap. The framework of this book is essential to the precision and suspense of the story.
Throughout the chapters Ethan is a young man at the age of twenty-eight. ...

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pick up Zeenaâ€™s cousin, Mattie Silver, from the train. Ethan is not exactly happy about this but changes his mind when he starts to fall in love with Mattie; the beginning of a tragic love story.
Ethan is forced to decide between leaving Zeena with guilt, and letting Mattie go when Zeena comes to the decision that Mattie is a horrible help and is making her illness worse. Ethan decides to have a last day with Mattie, where the tragedy ensues. Ethan brings Mattie to go sledding, something they had wished to do since the beginning of their relationship. Overwhelmed by sadness Mattie suggests purposely running into the Elm tree as an escape from life. Ethan and Mattie crash on their third one hoping to have ended their lives, but they survive to be crippled and ridden with guilt for the rest of their lives.
The Epilogue is flash forwarded twenty-four years yet again, in first person, and shows the narrator finally understanding the full story of Ethan Fromeâ€™s â€śsmash-upâ€ť ...

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How The Structure Of Ethan Frome Is Important To The Story. (2018, May 11). Retrieved January 6, 2026, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/How-Structure-Ethan-Frome-Important-Story/106740

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 5/11/2018 08:42:14 AM
Submitted By: SophiaParenteau
Category: Book Reports
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 469
Pages: 2

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