You know, as much as we talk about Ethel being an unreliable narrator, I think she has a degree of self awareness that most people miss. In Nettles, she laments to Willoughby that “you’ll go fight a war, I’ll go missing”. She obviously has some sort of subconscious knowledge about the unfortunate truth of the circumstances she and Willoughby are in. And in Sun Bleached Flies she says, “I always knew no one was coming to save me”. Family Tree Intro, which is sort of an intro to the Ethel Cain lore entirely, is solely about Ethel’s awareness of the dire nature of her existence. I think that Ethel is aware of what is happening to her because she grew up seeing rural America destroying lives all around her - that’s the entirety of American Teenager. And in that same song, she reassures herself that she’s “all good out here”, while also admitting that she grew up believing in goodness and hope even though everybody in Shady Grove was living out tragedy (like the loveless life of Holly, for example, or the “neighbor’s brother” who died at war, or even Willoughby who is abused by his father).
Ethel isn’t naive, she’s incredibly mature and smart. Most people in her community are numb to the motions of life and go through all the hurt, but Ethel knows that if she doesn’t escape middle America, she’s going to be stuck there living out the same life as her peers. And that’s the tragedy of the Ethel Cain story. A girl who knew she needed to get out, but she was doomed from birth.
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