Guest Blogger - Mitch N.

WOW! What an ending to Ethan Frome, what I thought was going to be a very very boring book turned suddenly into an extremely, well semi-exciting book. Ms. Arko had always mentioned that the book was not going to end all happy, so I just figured that Mattie would leave and Ethan would get the “smash up” doing something farm related. But I did not expect anything like that to happen. The first thing I noticed while I was finishing the book was that Ethan seems to have actual feelings for Mattie, and he does indeed love her, that became very apparent when he first thought about running away with her and started writing a note to Zeena. I always thought that maybe his feelings were a little fake, like she was a sort of substitute for his otherwise boring wife and his life. But the note, along with his continued rebellion against Zeena really proved that Mattie meant a lot to him, enough for him to basically become a new person.
But the second thing I noticed, right after Mattie confessed her love for Ethan, and suggested that they no longer go on living, was that throughout the whole book, it seems that every character gives their opinion. We are somewhat in Ethan’s head, or at least getting the story from him, we get some of the narrator’s feelings through his changing the story to make it sound more exciting, and we even get Mrs. Hale’s opinion about the whole thing after we come back to present time. But we never get anywhere near Zeena’s opinion/feelings on anything that has happened. Mrs. Hale even says it “nobody knows Zeena’s thoughts.” I wondered why that is? I mean we get a very good description of her personality, at least from Ethan’s point of view. But she never really says anything that she thinks. She wants to get rid of Mattie, but never gives a specific reason, just that she needs to go. And then at the end she suddenly has compassion and the 3 of them somehow live together, but still Zeena does not give any indication of what she is thinking. Anyone have any ideas as to why that is?
The final thing I noticed was that during the sled scene, it reminded me very much of Romeo and Juliet, and the typical love story. Ms. Arko says that this storyline could be told anywhere, and it has been. But Ethan Frome turned into much more than a storyline, it turned into a book full of symbols and hidden meanings and about a small town named Starkfield and how that affects everyone’s lives, constantly being imprisoned by the town and by each other, it all comes out in Ethan’s personality, or lack there of.