Wednesday, March 11 Ethan Frome..character, setting ..review chapters 1 and 2

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

If you were absent yesterday, please turn in the.Natualism sheet that was started in class on Monday. It was due yesterday!

IMPORTANT: We had an in-class writing assingment yesterday. Make sure to check yesterday's blog for the details. This was a writing assignment. It should not take you more than 30 minutes to complete.

Coming up: vocabulary quiz Friday, March 13 (another copy below)  Read chapter 3 for tomorrow.
In class: review of characters in Ethan Frome
              review of setting 
              summary of Prologue
              thematic handout for the text; copy below. This will count as a writing grade, when we have finished the novel. This is independent work to accompany your reading.  Make sure you have this, along with your text, each day.

1. Who are the main characte
2. rs of the "Eponymous" Ethan Frome:
1. Narrator: An engineer who is working on a job at a powerhouse at Corbury Junction. He is in Starkfield for his work, and rents a room from Mrs. Ned Hale, who tells him about Ethan Frome, the mysterious man he hired to transport him to and from the train station. 1st person narrator - WHAT IMPACT DOES THIS HAVE?
2. Ethan Frome: Protagonist, Farmer, his family lived and died on the same farm where he lives, once had hopes of leaving Starkfield to become an engineer, but never did. 
3. (Zenobia) Zeena Frome: Wife of Ethan Frome, Sick(ly), prematurely aged, unattractive, possible hypochondriac, nurse of Ethan's late mother. 
4. Mattie Silver: Zeena's cousin who comes to stay with the Fromes to help around the house, until she becomes the product of Ethan's affection. Described as young and lively.
3. What is the setting of Ethan Frome:

Themes: 

Determinism and Free Will

Duty and Morality vs. Desire

Gender Roles and Marriage

Name________________________________ Thematic Organizer for Ethan Frome  by Edith Wharton

Explain each of the following themes in your own words, using complete sentences

1.       Determinism and Free Will _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2.       Duty and Morality vs. Desire

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Gender Roles and Marriage

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As you read through each of the chapters, select one textual example that supports each of the above three themes. Write out the text and explain your selection. Include the page number and relevant character (s)

Chapter I: 23-35

determinism and free will

duty and morality vs. desire (space continues on back)

gender roles and marriage

Chapter II 36-49

determinism and free will

duty and morality vs. desire

gender roles and marriage

Chapter III 50-58

determinism and free will

duty and morality vs. desire

gender roles and marriage

Chapter IV 59-76

determinism and free will

duty and morality vs. desire

gender roles and marriage

Chapter V 77-85

determinism and free will

duty and morality vs. desire

gender roles and marriage

Chapter VI 86-93

determinism and free will

duty and morality vs. desire

gender roles and marriage

Chapter VII 94-111

determinism and free will

duty and morality vs. desire

gender roles and marriage

Chapter VIII 112-124

determinism and free will

duty and morality vs. desire

gender roles and marriage

Chapter IX 125-149

determinism and free will

duty and morality vs. desire

gender roles and marriage

 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 I (pp. 20-29)

Ethan, through the Narrator’s vision, is introduced as a young man. We learn that he had taken a year’s course at a technical college, dabbling in physics, but had to stop when his father’s death and subsequent financial losses called him home. Ethan is on his way to pick up his wife’s cousin, Mattie Silver, who is attending a church dance. The night is cold; the village buried under two feet of snow. He stops for a moment to look over the long hill behind the church, a favorite place for coasters – a scene that foreshadows the tragedy of Chapter IX.

We also learn that Mattie, an orphan, has come to live with the Fromes to help Ethan’s wife Zeena (Zenobia), a chronic invalid. Mattie is described as very pretty and possessing a sensitivity to natural beauty that is like Ethan’s own. They share a communion that is precious to both, but which causes Zeena to be jealous. Mattie has no natural bent for housework, and when Ethan helps her, Zeena makes vague threats about replacing her with someone stronger. Peeking through the church window, Ethan watches Mattie dance with many partners, and also feels jealous. He recalls Zeena's threats, and he feels uneasy.

Chapter II: As Ethan and Mattie walk home, they pass the big elm at the bottom of the hill, and Mattie mentions that her engaged friends, Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum, had almost run into it while coasting (more foreshadowing). When Ethan suggests Mattie might want to get married and leave them, she assures him that she doesn't. Walking past the family graveyard, he has a vision of living forever with Mattie and after they are dead, also having her beside him. This reverie is interrupted at the door by Zeena, who has failed to leave the house key in its accustomed place. Her glance seems to accuse them of improper behavior, and seeing her ugliness contrasted to Mattie's beauty makes Ethan even more aware of his unhappiness.