The hero’s adventure describes someone’s transition into something more than themselves through trials that must be overcome. Ethan Frome is the story of a failed hero that was removed from his own story around the time that he met his mentor the kind, older professor. Edith Wharton wanted us to understand how Ethan Frome veered off course, how he failed to acknowledge the circumstances of his life, and failed to understand his failure, so that we can gain a better insight toward the depths of humanity, how we are all the heroes of our own story, failed or otherwise. Ethan fails to realize that in his own journey he has already failed, even said by the author that he thought so. “He was too young, too strong, too full of the sap of living, to submit so easily to the destruction of his hopes.” (Wharton, 71). He is unable to find happiness because he is on an adventure he is unable to complete.
Frome is derailed from his adventure in a succession of three examples of mortality, the first being his father’s death, which pulled him out of Florida and back to Starkfield, the second being his mother’s sickness …show more content…
We as a species don’t enjoy pain. Humans want to be happy so badly in some cases that they will not accept their current situation and refuse to believe that they are what they are. We do this because we are afraid of death and by extension afraid of wasting our lives in the process of living them. Ethan Frome is a man who fell out of his own adventure but not his own story. His life turned into something he did not want to believe so he simply refused to look at his own circumstances, that he is someone whose life is out in front of him but the life he wants is behind him. This book is a tragic love story not because Ethan and Mattie cannot be together, but because Ethan really wants Mattie for what life she represents to