Thursday, May 24 Ethan Frome

Characters: 

narrator
Harmon Gow
Mrs. Ned Hale (Ruth Varnum)
Ned Hale
Ethan Frome
Zenobia Frome
Mattie Silver






In class: today you should have read through chapter 3 (page 58)
               vocabulary quiz (handed out last Tuesday)
               written response through chapter 3  (class handout / copy below)
                    for Friday: read through chapter 4 (76)
                    for Tuesday: read through page 149 (chapter 9)
Note: on Tuesday, there will be a content quiz

Ethan Frome Vocabulary Words    quiz on Thursday, May 24 (another copy below)

In class: review and discussion of Prologue through chapter 2

Characters: 

narrator
Harmon Gow
Mrs. Ned Hale (Ruth Varnum)
Ned Hale
Ethan Frome
Zenobia Frome
Mattie Silver


Frome prologue

Ethan Frome Vocabulary Words    quiz on Thursday, May 24

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.

Thursday, May 24

Name__________________________________ (the following is based upon having read through chapter 3.

Using your Ethan Frome text, respond to the following in a well-written paragraph of no fewer than five syntactically sophisticated sentences.

!. How are the personalities of Mattie and Zeena reflected in their actions? Weave in textual evidence as support.

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