The Forgotten Character

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Poised to fly through the air, to finally let go, Ethan and Mattie cling to their last hope of being together. The landscape is still, the snow settled from hours of continuous falling, and they glide down the hill to their inevitable doom. Pages away, two lifelong friends stand in a gentle clearing with a pond lazily pooling about, as they say their final words just before the ring of a gun. Edith Wharton’s, Ethan Frome, takes readers back to the late 1800’s in Starkfield, Massachusetts. Ethan is a simple farmer burdened with a wife who insists she is sick whenever a slight sneeze escapes her. His dull, inescapable life brightens at the appearance of his cousin-in-law, Mattie, who comes to take care of the house. As the two lovers slowly descend into a darkness of their own creation, they do not take note of the warnings that surround them. In an entirely different kind of tragedy, John Steinbeck’s, Of Mice and Men, follows the quiet lives of George and Lennie who have finally found jobs on a ranch after forceful measures were taken to run them out of their old ones. One big and dumb, the other small and clever, these two friends find themselves on opposite ends of a gun with only one option; pulling the trigger. Both novels use setting to illustrate that place not only reflects one’s emotions, it also greatly dictates one’s future, as it can either stifle or encourage one’s dreams and aspirations, demonstrating the enormous role it has in any book.

Setting, in both books, works as another character, mimicking the emotions and characteristics that the characters themselves possess. Steinbeck provides readers with the simple description, "Inside, the walls were whitewashed and the floor unpainted,” to subtly suggest the conn...

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...er form, encompassing and smothering the two lovers. Together they stand alone, finally giving in to the irrefutable reality that they can never truly be together. Locale is used by both authors to hint at the upcoming disasters that await the readers at the end of the books.

It doesn’t matter where one starts, it’s the setting that surrounds a character that illustrates his emotions and ultimately decides his fate as seen in Edith Wharton and John Steinbeck’s novels. Multiple characters from two different books, yet the same outcome is clear; setting not only illustrates emotions, it also predicts and changes futures. It gives insight into the minds of Ethan, George, and Lennie, especially when they are at a loss for words themselves. It develops the characters and the stories’ plots, and proves that location is a huge player in the grand scheme of any book.

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