Torn between the two women, Ethan Frome is a very confused man. He tries to find some "ease and freedom" represented by Mattie, but society doesn't allow him to do so. Society instead forces him to accept the burden represented to him in the form of Zeena, even if it means the ruin of his life. Social pressure, whether it takes the form of conventional morality or any other form, offers Ethan blind opposition at every turn, guiding his actions “like the snapping of a chain” (p.3). Aware that he doesn't even have the money to take Mattie with him to the West, for example, Ethan sets out on foot towards Starkfield to ask Andrew Hale, the village carpenter, for an advance on some lumber. In this episode, he is soon intercepted on the street by Mrs. Hale, who, appealing to his sympathy with a few kind words, baffles his attempt just as he is about to rebel. Throughout the novel, this “invisible hand” of social pressure is constantly imagined for Ethan as a prison: “The inexorable facts surrounded him like prison guards handcuffing an inmate. There was no way out, none. He was a prisoner for life." (page 134). A little later in the story, Ethan, watching Mattie's trunk being carried on a sleigh to the station, feels as if "her heart was bound by strings that an invisible hand tightened with each tick of the clock." (page 147). He again expresses the same emotion later when he tells Mattie as they walk to the station: “I'm tied hand and foot, Mattie. There's nothing I can do." (p.158) Because Ethan suffers from an internal conflict in his mind, the pressure of convention and group morality appears to have little, if any, power over him. If, indeed, social force had been involved in that… middle of paper… if his mind were as incalculable as the flight of a bird among the branches” (p.46). For Ethan Frome, Mattie is “his one ray of light” (p.134) that gives meaning to his bleak existence but which must be snuffed out by Zeena's cruelty. The image of light is further enhanced by the bright moon. Which is mentioned over and over in the novel. Ethan Frome is the only book Edith Wharton ever wrote with which the author's name is readily - and deservedly - associated, and has in fact been held in higher esteem than any other of her novels. This book is a brilliant use of imagery and symbolism. The fate of human existence that Ethan can never resolve is made even clearer by Wharton's skillful use of contrasting images and symbols. Even more significantly, it is through the use of this symbolic imagery that the novel's characterization can be fully understood.