His life is not life, but "rather its negation-. In this way, through the use of death imagery in relation to the weather Wharton implies that Ethan suffers a living death. .
Wharton further uses death imagery to illustrate the similarities between Ethan's life and death by emphasizing the death that surrounds his house and mill. The narrator even describes the mill itself as "exanimate- and "idle- (Wharton 12). In other words, the very environment Ethan lives and works in, previously busy and active, is now deprived of life. Death imagery further illustrates the connection between Ethan's home and work environment and death when Wharton uses it in correlation with plants. Ethan's house is often described as having dead plants attached to it, such as "the black wraith of a deciduous creeper flapp[ing] from the porch- or "a dead cucumber-vine dangl[ing] from the porch like the crape streamer tied to the door for death- (Wharton 13,33). Just like the home he lives in, Ethan is unable to rid himself of the vines of death which stubbornly cling to him. However, for Ethan these entanglements come in the form of his responsibilities toward Zeena and the farm. Wharton uses additional death imagery to depict Ethan's orchard as being full of "starved apple trees writhing over a hillside- (Wharton 12). Though Ethan is extremely poor he is not literally physically starving, but in a figurative sense he is starving for love, hope, and some sense of pride and accomplishment. Since he cannot obtain these things, especially after the accident and Mattie's subsequent change for the worse, Ethan is resigned to a living death. This pining away of Ethan's hopes and dreams is further illustrated through death images in connectiion Ethan's house plants. In reference to the geraniums Ethan once planted for Mattie, Zeena comments that those of her "Aunt Martha's ain't got a faded leaf on em; but they pine away when they ain't cared for- (Wharton 100).