had the upper hand in the house by the line "Now she [his wife] had mastered him [Ethan] and he obeyed her." Ethan just could not find the right things to say and it was because of his failure of not being able to stand up to his wife, he was going to lose the only thing that made him happy. Ethan's last failure was the way he modified his and Mattie's lives regarding the "smash up." He so desperately wanted to run away with Mattie, but he could not because his practical sense told him it was not feasible to do so. Mattie wanted so desperately to be with Ethan, that she suggested in order to stay together forever, was to die together. It was Ethan's job to steer into the tree with the sled so that it looked like an accidental death instead of suicide. Instead of running square into the tree, he did not hit the tree right and it did not kill either of them. Instead it just injured them , and these injuries stayed with them forever. In this way Ethan had his last failure in not exceeding to die with his love, instead he had to live with the guilt from his wife, the injured Mattie, and broken dreams. In these three ways, of marrying the wrong person, not being able to stand up to his wife, and incidents that come from the smash up, proves that the main theme of the book is failure. It seemed that everything Ethan tried to do, worked against his favor. With all the incidents that happened it seemed inevitable that his life would always be a string of failure....
