John Gardner's "On Moral Fiction"
             John Gardner's "On Moral Fiction" is a fine example of fictional analysis. After reading the excerpt assigned in class, I was in awe at the truth and reality presented. I had never thought of morality in that sense and found it to be truly inspiring. True morality is just and comes from the heart. Morality found in novels, more like fashionable morality, comes from the head and is thus untrue to the heart. In "On Moral Fiction," Gardner is arguing that literature should consist of fiction that leads to life instead of despair. I absolutely agree with his passage, which could easily be applied to Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome.
             Gardner discusses how essential character is to moral fiction, since it is through our understanding of character in action that we come to understand the truth of fiction. Ethan Frome's morality is shown throughout the novel as an apathetic one, in which he goes with the flow instead of thinking with his heart before making a decision. He is a very easygoing character. He is the kind of person who doesn't seem to mind making decisions by thought rather than soul. As Aristotle preached, "the moral man must be so trained in making the right choice that he makes it as a matter of habit...instinctively (The Morality of Inertia)." Ethan Frome acts as a complete opposite; he doesn't make any choices for himself, they are made for him.
             Another aspect discussed is that people read literature to relate to the characters in the pieces we read, and again it is through our understanding of character in action that we come to understand the truth of fiction. We read to feel a sense of closeness to the creator of the work, or to get closer to works characters. Although I could not relate to any of the characters in Ethan Frome, the idea that "we read literature in the hope of...[finding] characters we l...