Friday, March 13 Ethan Frome chapter 4

1. I can analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).

2. I can determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text

3. I can interpret words and phrases that are used in the text, including technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape the meaning.

Ethan Frome text link
ethan frome audio link
narrator asks Ethan to drive him to station prologue 9:30

In class: vocabulary quiz (another copy below); When you have finished, work on your thematic organizer.  If time permits, we are watching a film clip taken from the prologue. (Note that at this point you should have read through chapter 4. Over the weekend, finish up your textual evidence in you graphic organizer for chapter 4.  Note on Monday, you will be filling in the organizer for chapters 5/ 6/ and 7.  The expectation is that by Wednesday you will have completely finished the graphic organizer! 

Coming up: Read pages 77- 111(chapters 5, 6 and 7) for Monday. Make sure you are caught up on your organizer.
     Getting ahead: Tues: Chapters 8 and 9
                                Wednesday: the afterward

Ethan Frome Vocabulary Words    quiz on Friday, March 13 periods 3 and 9 only

1.  sardonic: adj. Scornfully or cynically mocking; sarcastic.

2.   colloquial: adj.  1. Characteristic of or appropriate to the spoken language or to writing that seeks

                            the effect of speech; informal.  2. Relating to conversation; conversational.

3.    innocuous: adj. 1. Having no adverse effect; harmless. 2. Not likely to offend or provoke to strong

                        emotion; insipid.

4.  reticent: adj. 1. Inclined to keep one's thoughts, feelings, and personal affairs to oneself;

                              Restrained or reserved in style. 3. Reluctant; unwilling.

5. poignant: adj.  Keenly distressing to the mind or feelings: poignant anxiety; profoundly moving;  touching: a poignant memory.

6. wraith:  n. 1. An apparition of a living person that appears as a portent just before that person's

                            death. 2. The ghost of a dead person. 3. Something shadowy and insubstantial.

7. wistful:  adj. 1. Full of wishful yearning. 2. Pensively sad; melancholy.

8. undulation: n. 1. A regular rising and falling or movement to alternating sides; movement in waves.

9. tenuous:  adj. 1. Long and thin; slender: tenuous strands. 2. Having a thin consistency; dilute;   

          having little substance; flimsy: a tenuous argument.

10. throng: n. 1. A large group of people gathered or crowded closely together; a multitude.

                throngs  v.tr.  1. To crowd into; fill: commuters thronging the subway platform.2. To press in  

                    to gather, press, or move in a throng.

11. vex:   (verb) 1. To annoy, as with petty importunities; bother. 2. To cause perplexity in; puzzle.

12. laden:  adj. 1. Weighed down with a load; heavy: "the warmish air, laden with the rains of those

               thousands of miles of western sea" Hilaire Belloc.  2. Oppressed; burdened: laden with grief.

13. preclude:  1. To make impossible, as by action taken in advance; prevent. 2. To exclude or prevent (someone) from a given condition or activity: Modesty precludes me from accepting the honor.

14. succumb: (verb) 1. To submit to an overpowering force or yield to an overwhelming desire; give up or give in. 2. To die.

15. foist:  (verb) 1. To pass off as genuine, valuable, or worthy: "I can usually tell whether a poet . . . is foisting off on us what he'd like to think is pure invention" J.D. Salinger.

    2. To impose (something or someone unwanted) upon another by coercion or trickery:They had extra work foisted on them because they couldn't say no to the boss. 3. To insert fraudulently or deceitfully: foisted unfair provisions into the contract.

Chapter IV (pp. 50-64)

Ethan and Mattie are left alone, and Ethan feels excitement at the prospect of enjoying his house without Zeena. We learn more about his past. Although quiet, he had a sociable streak and enjoyed his college studies. After his forced return to Starkfield, he assumed both the burdens of the farm and his mother. In her early years his mother had been a "talker," but had become quiet and withdrawn after her illness.

The silence of his life was so oppressive that when his cousin Zeena came to nurse his mother, her chatter and efficiency made him feel he couldn't bear being alone. After the funeral, Ethan proposed to Zeena, with the intention of moving away from Starkfield to try their luck in a new and larger town. Although Zeena didn't like Starkfield, she was unwilling to be transplanted to a place where she would be unknown. Within a year of their marriage she had retreated to the security of self-imposed hypochondria and silence.