Silence In Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome

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Edith Wharton's novella, Ethan Frome, demonstrates the consequences of silence, the theme of the novel, which the main character struggles to overcome due to society's mores. This compliance for the present "normal" dooms Ethan to a fate of unhappiness and guilt which screams louder than the words gone unspoken. However, Wharton utilizes the element of diction to highlight this relationship of Ethan Frome's past and the theory of determinism, which entraps him in a state of depression, forever to remain unhappy since the actions of his past. It is the errors of abiding by societal standards for marriage and happiness that, as his younger self, condemns his future.

This elaborate use of diction to express that all events, including moral choices,
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