In the midst of life we are in death. Book of common prayer the anglican church .
Death imagery is often considered a clear indication that a novel will conclude with the actual death of a main character. This is especially true of Edith Wharton's novel Ethan Frome, as its prevelant death imagery leads many readers to predict the death of Mattie Silver. However, the correlation between the imagery and the plot is not quite so direct. In actuality, Edith Wharton surrounds Ethan with death imagery to illustrate that his life is in fact a living death. .
In order to remind the reader of the death of Ethan's hopes, dreams and future happiness Edith Wharton continually employs haunting death imagery in relation to the stark New England setting in which he lives. This landscape related death imagery is extremely important as it refers to Ethan's situation, for as the narrator points out, "He [seems] a part of the muted melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface- (Wharton 9). Therefore, every instance in which Wharton employs death imagery within the setting relates directly to Ethan's life, as he is an inherent part of that setting. This link between Ethan and the environment in which he lived is further supported by Wharton through death imagery in relation to the winter weather. Wharton's setting of her novel during the winter is an extremely appropriate method of conveying the death imagery she employs since winter, traditionally, is the season when life ebbs from the earth. For example, the narrator notes that when winter began in Starkfield, and "the village lay under a sheet of show perpetually renewed [he] began to see what life "or rather its negation "must have been like in Ethan Frome's young manhood- (Wharton 4). Ethan, like Starkfield, is seemingly covered by a white sheet, or shroud, unable to escape from his isolation and sufferinjg.
