Ethan Lawson Wate Analysis

There are certain people that come into your life and leave your life relatively undisturbed. For example, all new teachers when each school year starts. While there are other people that make room in your life for themselves, pushing something else out in the process. Those are the people that transform your life. The protagonist in this story is Ethan Lawson Wate. Ethan lives in a Gatlin, except no living happens there and Ethan is the only one that feels the loss. Being a small town there are no strangers, making it impossible to keep secrets. There are rarely ever any unique people and everything is always the same. Despite Ethan’s less than favorable opinion regarding his town, he still fits in, and acts just as they act. As soon as
the town shut in’s niece comes to town, Gatlin spirals out of control. Ethan especially, considering that she is the girl he has been seeing in his dreams. No one likes her, except Ethan, for the reason that she is different and the town shut-in’s niece. Given these points, Ethan having kindled a relationship with this girl stirs up the disapproval of many people. Lena is a breath of fresh air to Gatlin’s suffocating sameness and Ethan grows farther and farther apart from Gatlin’s strict ways the deeper he gets involved with Lena. By becoming acquainted with Lena, Ethan has gotten himself shunned by his peers. Given these points, Ethan has become totally and completely engrossed in Lena’s world and is only a fragment of what he was before Lena arrived.