hopes and dreams were always dashed by the economic and moral dilemmas and this leads to unhappiness and stress, ‘The inexorable facts closed in on him like prison- warders handcuffing a convict.’ Ethan’s moral duty, maybe the most important factor in tragedy, has led him to unhappiness and despair. For the whole of his life he ’had to stay and care for the folks’. He is so used to caring he can’t bring himself to abandon Zeena. ’Sickness and trouble: that’s what Ethan had his plates full of with, ever since the very first helping’. Ethan has such growing love for Mattie who makes him feel alive again, she ‘was like the lighting of a fire on a cold hearth’ to him unlike Zeena who was the ’deadly chill of a vault’ so Mattie is heat and Zeena is the cold. To Ethan Mattie, ‘Had an eye to see and an ear to hear; he could show her things and an tell her things and taste the bliss of feeling that all he imparted left long reverberations and echoes he could wake at will’. Mattie made Ethan feel clever and wanted. He could tell her things and she would remember unlike Zeena who was in charge of Ethan. Mattie ’had given him something of her own ease and freedom’ and Ethan benefited from her so when she was forced to leave he was shattered. Over time Ethan has grown to hate Zeena, he even wishes his wife was dead. Ethan thought of his wife as having ’flat breasts’, ’puckered throats’, ’high-boned face’. She has made her husband think of her like that because of her personality towards him; even her bonnet is ’hard’ and ’perpendicular’. To Ethan, Zeena has been the ’woman at every turn has barred his way’, she has stopped him being happy and therefore his hate and revulsion aga...
