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Of the characters in Edith Wharton’s novel, Ethan Frome, Ethan Frome is the most intriguing and profound. His characteristics and mannerisms make the reader sympathize with his pathetic existence and also feel his loneliness and exclusion from society. “He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe....and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight...but had in it...the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters”(5). Ethan, being a resident of the sleepy town of Starkfield, was a product of his environment, and lived his life in complete moral isolation, fearing change and clinging to routine. The series of misfortunes that were laid upon Ethan, as well as the morose chill of his hometown make it easy to sympathize with him. Being a fatherless boy and growing up in a destitute family with a mother who could do nothing to