Construction of a Person Who Feel Disconnected

¶ … construction of a person who feel disconnected from his social setting? What are the elements of a person's experiences that combine to disconnect him or her from his social environment, and create the archetype misfit? Sometimes the person's ethics create the desire within him to be separate from his social surroundings sometimes the person is thrust into a setting with which he does not share any connections. Sometimes the simple choices of the individual separate him or her form the social surroundings, and create an isolated individual who is searching for meaning, and purpose. Such is the case for the characters in Ethan Frome, and Recitatif.

In the case of Ethan Frome, to combat the silence, isolation, and loneliness in his life, he marries a woman who is dissimilar to him, names Zenobia Pierce after his mother's death. While Ethan wants to leave their home town of Starkfield, his new bride will never leave and develops into an oppressively silent hypochondriac in order to gain her husbands attention. Ethan is unable to break away from the laborious captivity of his farm, and so there seems to be no hope for Ethan. The moral landscape of Starkfield offers no redemption and no new life. Therefore Ethan must live out his days surrounded by the elements of a harsh and indifferent nature, and harsh and emotionally stark surroundings of a loveless marriage.

For Ethan, the escape he sees from the cold, the silence, the isolation, and the loneliness of his life, is his name on a headstone in the Frome's graveyard. The motif of silence is complementary to the motif of isolation of man from his fellow men. The isolation of each character before the tragedy is not self-imposed, but is enforced upon them by outside circumstances.

Ethan tried to escape the isolation of Starkfield and his father's farm by going off to college at Worcester. Then his father's death brought him back to the farm. There are several significant phrases within the novel that signify the silence and isolation that these three characters live in, including: "A dead cucumber-vine dangles from the porch like the crape streamer tied to the door for a death...." (Wharton, 51) In this particular phrase, the narrator has portrayed Ethan looking for a way out of his marriage and isolated life, even if it by imagining his wife's possible death, without him having to make the choice. The narrator refers to "hemlock-shaded lane, where Ethan's sawmill glommed through the night and out again into the comparative clearness of the fields" (Wharton, 48), in this paragraph alone, I get an imagery of death and loneliness without any hope for tomorrow.

For the characters in Recitatif, the misanthropic tendencies of two childhood friend follow them through their lives. The two girls, Roberta and Twyla are of different races, which begin their odyssey. They were both "stuck in a strange place (an orphanage) with a girl from a whole other race." Throughout the story, each character is developed more and more, though it does not necessarily lead to a conclusion as to what race each girl is. The purpose of this story is not for the reader to identify which girl is which race, but to understand that there are similar feelings and experiences among people, regardless of their race.

These two girls are not heroes, or rebels. Like Ethan, from their earliest memories, they are simply misfits. Whereas Ethan became disconnected from his surrounding by his own rash choices, the girls are disenfranchised from their social settings because they are orphans. In the innocence of their youth, the race doesn't matter. But as they age, they are forever kept from building on their friendship by the different color of their skins.

The problem follows them all their lives, until toward the end of the book, the community is torn buy the issue of desegregation and bussing. When Twyla and Roberta discuss the bussing, Roberta says, "It's a free country." Twyla comes back by saying, "Not yet, but it will be." Obviously offended, Roberta retorts with, "What the hell does that mean? I'm not doing anything to you." This implies that Twyla was blaming Roberta for this bussing, meaning that possibly Roberta is a white woman. Twyla continues by referring to Roberta's fellow picketers as "they." "Look at them. Just look. Who do they think they are? Swarming all over the place like they own it. And now they think they can decide where my child goes to school. Look at them, Roberta. They're Bozos."