Synopsis and Analysis of Ethan Frome
Synopsis and Analysis of Ethan Frome
In the introduction of Ethan Frome, the narrator finds himself in Starkfield, Massachusetts for the winter due to a carpenter‘s strike. During this time, he learns the story of Ethan Frome through various people in the town. His first impression of Frome is that he is a quiet and unapproachable man just by encountering him at the post office. When the stable horses fall ill to an epidemic in the town, the narrator is left without a way to the train station each day for his work, a local man, Harmon Gow, to speak to Frome about getting a ride to and from work. For one week Frome takes the narrator back and forth without even speaking. Then one day when his train is delayed Frome decides to take the narrator all the way there, upon passing Frome farm he hesitantly speaks about changed family fortune.
Finally, during a real bad snowstorm the horses have a hard time keeping to the road so once they saw Frome’s gate they decide that the narrator should stay the night at his farm. As they enter the house and as Frome speaks you hear a women’s voice. This is all that happens in the introduction.
In chapter 1, Ethan Frome finds himself stand in front of a church at midnight. He walks around the church so he can look in the basement window to look at the festivities going on. When he looks in to see the dance seems to be coming to a close. But when the young, handsome, and energetic Denis Eady jumps back onto the dance floor and claps his hands, the musicians take up their instruments and the dance hall again fills with life.
Ethan focuses his attention on Mattie Silver, a girl wearing a cherry- colored scarf and dancing with Eady. She is cousin to Ethan's wife, Zeena, and has been living with the Fromes as a housekeeper for over a year. Ethan, who has come to walk Mattie home from the dance, has become quite attached to her in the course of the year, finding kinship with her in their mutual appreciation of nature. As he watches her whirling effortlessly among the pulsating crowd, he wonders why he had ever dreamed that the feelings of attraction might be mutual. It seems to him that her free and easy movement between partners indicates her indifference toward...