"After the funeral, when he saw her preparing to go away, he was seized with an unreasoning dread of being left alone on the farm; and before he knew what he was doing he had asked her to stay there with him. He had often thought since that it would not have happened if his mother had died in spring instead of winter" (Wharton 62).
I chose this passage because I understood the deeper meaning of this seasonal imagery right away. I remember from the sonnet lessons what each of the four seasons represents. I was drawn to this passage primarily because of the thought process Ethan Frome goes through. He seems to relate his marriage to the season of winter and when his mother had died. The season of winter has been symbolic of things like cold, brittleness, and old age. The fact that Ethan describes his wife’s appearance as cold and wrinkly shows that her cold expression and her aging relates to the season of winter because those are the portrayals given by the symbolic meaning of winter. I think that this shows the function of imagery as well, because it gives the reader a deeper and more complex way of grasping an idea, such as the true meaning of the season, winter.
The description of the setting gives the reader a chance to further interpret an idea brought about by the author. The different meanings of each season illustrates the diverse possibilities of these interpretations, which proves that the setting description can be used to help a reader further explore the deeper meaning of the ideas brought about by life. The different situations that the characters go through in the book establish the effect that seasonal imagery has on the reader’s judgment. Ethan questions his relationship with his wife by discussing the different possibility in setting change when he asked her to stay with him. This signals the reader to consider Ethan as an ambivalent man who seems to make excuses to make up for his hesitant nature.
No comments:
Post a Comment