Ethan Frome Quotes

Ethan Frome takes place during the winter in the town of Starkfield and surrounding rural areas. The harsh winter is crucial to the development of characters in the novel and also to overall theme. The winter causes the characters to become isolated and make decisions that they would not normally make. For example, Ethan and Mattie make a rash decision when they decide to commit suicide by sledding into a tree rather than choosing to face their problems. The narrator describes winter in the following quote, “…this phase of crystal clearness followed by long stretches of sunless cold; when the storms of February had pitched their white tents about the devoted village and the wild cavalry of March winds had charged down to their support; I began to understand why Starkfield emerged from its six months’ siege like a starved garrison capitulating without quarter.” The preceding quote clearly shows the effect that winter has on the the …show more content…
The narrator narrates the Prologue and the Epilogue in first person and the rest of the novel is written in third person. The narrator is very distant from the characters in the novel, and this is shown by the fact that the reader never even learns his name. As a third person narrator in Chapters 1-9, the narrator is limited, because he does not know what is going on in the other characters minds. The narrator is unreliable because Ethan is obviously biased towards Mattie, so the reader never really knows if Ethan is exaggerating Zeena’s unfavorable qualities and Mattie’s favorable ones. The narrator also states in the Prologue, “I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.” The preceding quote is another example of how the narrator could be unreliable, because he is piecing evidence from many sources to tell Ethan’s