Abstract
Edith Wharton’s writing exhibits an understanding of and fascination with the connections between pain and language. Her novel, Ethan Frome, is her first extended analysis of the cycle of silence and suffering into which her characters fall. She explores how these interests complicate the conflicting pressures of individual necessities and community responsibilities. She also attempts to find ways of breaking the silence of those in pain through the manipulation of physical material rather than verbal expression. World War I compels Wharton to return to the subjects she considered in her earlier novel. However, her understanding and attitude evolves as she begins to experience the awful realities of war.
In Ethan Frome, she disapproves of the sacrifice of his individuality for the community, but in most of her war writing, she views the sacrifice of millions of individuals as a horrible but necessary result of the defense of France. In her fiction and nonfiction, Wharton shifts between an insightful analysis of the use of cliché to manipulate and hide the truth, to the use of cliché to describe and glorify the war. However, despite this idealization, Wharton continues to recognize the pain and suffering war caused and looks for ways for war victims to express their inner minds. She details the translation of abstract thought into physical representations, which in turn help reduce a human need. Much of her focus in her war work is on the numerous ways the process of war destroys these physical expressions, and the ways people work against the destruction of these objects.
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