Question

What was your interpretation of the portrait of Frome through the narrator's eyes? What details did you use to support your ideas? Include your analysis of the switch to third-person narration in the first chapter and how that, and the use of flashback, allows Wharton to tell the story.

Answer 1

Ethan Frome is a novel written by Edith Warton in 1922. The way she wrote the novel was a complex first-person narration that joined the parts of the tale that collected in different sources. Then, it is presented as a whole story.

Ethan comes alive by the version of a first-person narrator, an outsider who was no witness of the relates in the story. He collected bits and parts of information to tell his version. In the novel, the Narrator met Frome in a Power Plant, in Starkville, Massachusetts.

Trough the eyes of other people, the Narrator comes to know more about Ethan. For instance, the stage driver, Harmon Gow, or the widow, Mrs. Ned Hale. from whom he gathers information about Frome.

This third-person narrator assumes the role of the conduit of the story, a guide that shows the life in Starkville. This imaginative character allows Wharton to use her creativity to portray a story that convinces, for its realism describing the relationship between the harsh land of cold winters and its inhabitants.