Ethan Frome

Use these activities to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity. 

ACTIVITY 1: “Painting a Picture”

Ethan Frome contains many vivid descriptions of the Massachusetts landscape in winter. For this activity, choose one description that you find particularly interesting or evocative and create a piece of visual art inspired by it.

• Although your work should take its cues from a particular passage, it doesn’t necessarily need to be a realistic or literal interpretation; you may want to adopt a more abstract style.
• You can also experiment with the media you use. Your final product, for example, might be a collage rather than a sketch.
• When you’ve finished, jot down a few sentences identifying the passage you used and describing how you chose to interpret it visually.

Teaching Suggestion: The winter landscape is one of Ethan Frome’s most prominent motifs, contributing to the novel’s mood and echoing its ideas about the futility of human action in the face of vast natural forces. At the same time, the natural world is also a source of great beauty and wonder for characters like Ethan and Mattie. This tension provides students with ample room for creative interpretation; although their statements about the work they create do not need to be extensive or deeply analytical, look for implicit links to the novel’s tone, themes, and style.

ACTIVITY 2: “Character Case Notes”

Ethan Frome’s tight focus and relatively limited action mean that the personalities and relationship dynamics of its central trio—Ethan, Zeena, and Mattie—drive the narrative. In this activity you will create a short psychological profile of one of these characters.

Part A: Imagine that you are providing counseling to one of these characters. What might this conversation look like? In particular, consider the following:

• What are the basic biographical facts about this character (age, gender, profession, etc.)?
• What does the character see as the major conflicts or sources of stress in their life?
• How does the character describe their thoughts, feelings, and relationships to others?
• What is your impression of this character and their emotional state?
• How might the character go about resolving their central problem(s)?

Part B: Use your brainstorming in Part A to draft a three-part set of “case notes” for the character.

• Part One should include all of the character’s identifying information as well as a brief, objective description of their current circumstances.
• Part Two should include both the character’s thoughts about their situation and your independent analysis of the character’s circumstances and how they are responding to them.
• Part Three should include any recommendations you have for how the character might handle their concerns going forward.

Teaching Suggestion: Ethan Frome is a character-driven novel, and this activity helps students tease out those characters’ traits, motivations, and beliefs about others. In particular, it prompts students to think about any disconnect between the ways the characters seem to view themselves (and their lives) and how a reasonably objective reader might view them (i.e., is Ethan really as powerless as he believes himself to be, or is this feeling a product of his temperament?). This in turn provides an opportunity to discuss the subject of Mattie and Ethan’s suicide attempt as a class: How else might these characters have tried to address their problems?