Previously in this series: The Animorphs and Sylvia Plath.
Ethan Frome is probably a book about a man named Ethan Frome who just loves to go sledding. “There goes Ethan Frome,” the villagers say, “probably going sledding again, on account of how much he loves sledding.” He’s just nuts about it, I guess. At first the other villagers aren’t so sure about how much Ethan Frome loves to go sledding, but eventually they all come around.
***
ETHAN FROME [sledding]: wheeeeeeeeeee
MRS FROME: dont you go sledding ethan
ETHAN FROME: come on
MRS FROME: ok
MRS FROME [sledding]: wheeeeee
***
At first Ethan’s wife Zenobia is worried they won’t have enough pickles to last the winter (the Fromes love pickles), but then it turns out that they do, and they all sit down to a nice dinner with some pickles.
***
ZENOBIA: where is the pickle dish
ETHAN FROME: its right here
MATTIE: i’m afraid i broke it
i’m so sorry
ZENOBIA: thank you for being honest with me
it was an honest mistake
ETHAN FROME: let’s put the pickles in another dish
and we can call that dish the pickle dish
MATTIE: what a great idea
ZENOBIA: pickles for everybody
***
The main conflict of the story is how much Ethan Frome loves to go sledding. He just sleds everywhere. The ultimate struggle is between Ethan and society, because society doesn’t want him to go sledding as much as he does, but he does it anyways. Some people wonder: is it too much sledding? “Ethan Frome,” they call out as he sleds by, “in a land this austere, surrounded by people this stoical whose snowy hearts match this frozen landscape, is it right to sled this much?”
But it isn’t. It’s just the right amount of sledding. Then he goes home and has vigorous, athletic sex with his wife who loves him.
***
ETHAN FROME: i want to go sledding
who will go sledding with me
ZENOBIA: i don’t feel very good
i cant go sledding
MATTIE: i will go sledding
ZENOBIA: what a perfect solution to all of our problems
ETHAN FROME AND MATTIE [sledding]: wheeeeeeeee
***
“im going sledding.” – Ethan Frome, 1911
***
In conclusion, Ethan Frome is a novel of contrasts. How much Ethan Frome loves to go sledding is contrasted with all the times that he can’t go sledding, or has to wait a little while to finish work before he can go sledding later.
***
ETHAN FROME: lets go sledding right now
Tags: books, edith wharton, ethan frome, literature probably, sledding
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really want to be a fly on the wall of the first 9th-grade English teacher who gets a printout of this piece turned in on Ethan Frome essay day.
..Any Teenage Dirtbags ™ reading this article right now who’d be willing to take one for the team?
Hmm, I’ve never taught Ethan Frome. This is tempting me to assign it and see what happens, as a social experiment.
It would certainly be more entertaining the SparkNotes/123Essays/Schmoop plagiarism masterpieces that I usually receive.
I really, really loved Ethan Frome in high school. It was so tragic and awful. (THE RED PICKLE DISH). I even painted a picture of their house and turned it in for a class project. And wrote about on the AP Lit test. I mean, “pursue your dreams of being an engineer in Florida or have a bad sledding accident and live with your wife and your lover in broken bodies in Vermont” is a pretty powerful message, right?
“THE PICKLE DISH it’s such a metaphooooor isn’t it romaaaaaantic but like traaaaaagic romaaaaantic” – every high school English teacher
“Bitch, you broke my pickle dish. And I will hold that over you forevaaaaaaaaaaah.
“Oh, paralyzed, are we? Goodie. A BROKEN SPINE IS WORTHY RECOMPENSE FOR MY PICKLE DISH! There is a God after all…let me tuck you in, dear. Don’t make that face, now. Zenobia will take good care of Mattie. Oh, yes she will.”
Zenobia deserves a sequel where she gets to leave and go to Europe like an old angry Mary Crawley
I would so read that.
Then WWI breaks out and she goes to the Front as a nurse and is a great war hero.
I can’t remember if I liked this or not.
Maybe just Jane Eyre and Macbeth.
Always makes me think of Nick Cave’s “Jack The Ripper” and vice versa though.
Hah, I was the only one in my english class who liked Ethan Frome. But it was so tragic and angsty – it really warmed my teenage heart.
yes I feel like there are Ethan Frome people and Catcher in the Rye people when it comes to teen angst
They both seemed goddawful boring to me.
This reads like the fake “Underwater Ninja” script in that commercial with Charles Barkley, Samuel L. Jackson, and Spike Lee.
I swear I have received this paper from a student. Thanks for killing spring break.
PICKLES FOR EVERYBODY
No, really, pickles are awesome, everyone go eat some.
CLAUSSEN!
Bitters, can we have FRIED PICKLES?? Or is that too much decadence for New England?
Deep-frying makes everything taste better, of course we can have All the Fried Pickles. If other New Englanders don’t like it, they can go jump in the Charles.
I had fried pickles in Danvers, MA this past Thursday. They were good fried pickles – the fried stuff totally stuck to the pickles vs. going soggy and falling off. Much joy.
There are some really good fried pickles in Dover, NH (where I used to live). I had some the other day in a bar in DC and I was deeply disappointed, not only because they were expensive.
First, they were chips and not spears, which I think is a very small form of sacrilege, similar in violation to eating a pecan spinwheel without unwinding it as you eat it (circa 1997).
Second, they were skimpy as shit with the batter. If I wanted to eat a pickle, then I would eat a pickle (and I would love it). What I want from a fried pickle is to bite into batter and then be surprised by the hot weirdness that is the pickle inside. MORE BATTER.
Third, you shouldn’t need a dipping sauce in order for them to be delicious. Remoulade my ever expanding ass.
BATTER 4EVA. A pox on skimpy batter. People complain to me about deep-fried things having too much batter, like that’s even possible.
Batter is the source of all good in the world. Praise the batter.
And the butter. I really like butter, too.
you can fix a broken pickle dish
but you can’t fix broken trust
oh you can fix a broken pickle dish
but you can’t fix a broken heaaaart
Halfway through sophomore year I transferred to a new high school where the English class had just finished reading Ethan Frome. (I missed out on reading so many books that way. It’s great. There is a large gap in my classic lit knowledge filled solely by Wishbone.)
Judging from what I remember of the tail end of their conversations this seems to be pretty accurate.
I missed Dickens that way. I haven’t exactly looked back (though I wrote a paper on “Hard Times” junior year of college and I thought “I am fucking NAILING this book!” and I’m up late playing Billy Bragg and feeling the workers plight……and I got a C+).
I got kicked out of honors English for arguing with my teacher (FYI I have not forgiven you, Mrs. Lepky) and demoted to regular English class that was reading stuff I’d already studied. My new teacher (who shared my feelings about my previous teacher) put me on independent study which was pretty great in that I got to pick my own books and write essays and poetry on whatever I wanted. A+++ would do again.
Lucky, lucky person you. When I switched schools I ended up doing American Lit twice since it was taught in different grades in each state. No amount of pleading could get me out of reading The Scarlet Letter again. And Huck Finn. And Death of a Salesman. (When they told me I had to read it again in college I didn’t even pretend to bother. Or care.) And The Crucible.
Fuck The Crucible.
Math tells me that between birth and age 17, I was moved from place to place on average of once every three months. I missed some things, but I got to double up on Great Expectations (pah-TUI), got three or four rounds of Romeo & Juliet (sigh, but I did get good at reading for Mercutio), and a few runs at Hamlet (BONUS), among other repetitions.
Double bout of Scarlet Letter, though? Nope, dodged THAT bullet. Your pain, I feel it.
Fuuuuuuuck The Crucible. *nod nod*
Also, I was apparently unaware this book took place in Vermont? Yet another one to add to my list of books that support the theory that nothing good or happy can happen in Vermont. I live here. If nothing else, I know this to be true with every fiber of my being.
What about Ben & Jerry’s? Ice cream is good & happy… unless you’re a vegan or lactose intolerant…
It’s just a front. To help lure in tourists and unsuspecting New Yorkers. (Usually one and the same.) “Look at us. We have ice cream and happy cows and GMO labeling. Come closer. Closer. The maple trees demand their annual bloodletting before the sap begins to run…”
*Munch’s Scream face* just as Chris Kimball prophesied! Old Henry hungers in the night!
I am not at liberty to comment on Old Henry. But I will say that there are more ingredients in the ice cream than either Ben or Jerry wants you to know about.
I really, really liked Ethan Frome in high school but it got me yelled at in class. We read it in 11th grade for our US literature class, and my mom decided to read along with me, and she made me read the book before we got to it in class because she wanted to see the movie. So I read it and liked it and watched the movie with her.
And then we got to the book in class and my teacher already hated me because he was an asshole and he asked if anyone had read it already and I raised my hand and he yelled “Who the hell has already read Ethan Frome?” in front of everyone. Fuck you, Mr. Maoury.
What kind of Literature teacher yells at a student for being well-read? I mean honestly, WTF.
He was such a jackass. He was also the wrestling coach and a Republican homophobe. I have no idea why he was teaching honors English, but he shouldn’t have been.
Replace wrestling with tennis and he sounds suspiciously like my 11th grade American Lit teacher…
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! ETHAN FROME IS THE WORST!!!!!!
I was a total awkward book nerd and I generally loved the classics we read in English class, but when my teacher sprang this book on us in the first months of ninth-grade I almost despaired because I thought all of high school English class would be about reading boring and nihilistic books where every character just needs a good slap!
Basically what I took from this book is – Never have any hopes and dreams, or try to make your life better, because everything will go wrong in the most ironic way possible and fate will spit in your face. Great advice!
I much prefer Mallory’s version and henceforth I will consider it canon!
I loved Ethan Frome and what I though was the main message – don’t get married just to avoid being alone.
When I was young, there was still a lot of pressure to marry within a few years of High School, like we turned into rancid pumpkins at 25. For me, Ethan Frome detailed the horror that awaits the hastily wed. “Don’t do it!” Ethan calls out from the page. “You’re enough as you are, and happier too. Being unmarried is not the same as being alone.”
There was no irony here. Irony would have been if he married the pinched and sallow Z only to have her bloom into an incessant talker / party hostess whose constant minute-to-minute summaries and loud-laughing houseguests made him long for the days of the silent farm.
This is making me want to re-read Ethan Frome (high school was a LONG time ago) and I’m pretty sure that would be a terrible decision. I blame you!
this series resembles certain essays I wrote about books I hadn’t read in elementary school
They both seemed goddawful boring to me.
“Zena, I made a mistake…” said Ethan, NEVER!