How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"He's looked that way ever since he had his smash-up; and that's twenty-four years ago come next February […]" (Prologue.3)
We see Ethan's transformation before we hear his story. The fact that he has gone through some kind of great transformation is a big part of what draws the narrator to him.
Quote #2
The "smash-up" it was-I gathered from the same informant-which, besides drawing the red gash across Ethan Frome's forehead, had so shortened and warped his right side that it cost him a visible effort to take the few steps from his buggy to the post-office window. (Prologue.4)
We just thought you might like to see this description of Ethan's injury, his physical transformation. The "red gash" reminds us of the red ribbons in Mattie's hair.
Quote #3
"We're kinder side-tracked here now," he added, "but there was considerable passing before the railroad was carried through to the Flats." (Prologue.55)
This passage points to the transformation of Starkfield. While the area can be said to have progressed, with it's increased rail service, Starkfield has been damaged, just like Ethan.
Quote #4
It was that night that I found the clue to Ethan Frome, and began to put together this vision of his story. (Prologue.65)
This is the narrator's artistic transformation. The clue he finds is never revealed. Just meeting Zeena and Mattie wouldn't be enough to find the clue, we don't think. Whatever it was, it let him know that Ethan and Mattie were, at least at one time, in love.
Quote #5
"I knew the cat was a smart cat," she said in a high voice, "but I didn't know he was smart enough to pick up the pieces of my pickle-dish and lay 'em edge to edge on the very shelf he knocked 'em off of." (7.123)
The shattering of Zeena's dish seems to spell tragedy and foreshadow the awful events to come. For Zeena, the ruined dish is a symbol of her broken marriage. Our vision of this marriage at the end of the novella is of something broken that has been put back together, and badly at that.
Quote #6
With the sudden perception of the point to which his madness had carried him, the madness fell and he saw his life before him as it was. (8.52)
Ethan thinks his plan to run away with Mattie is madness, not because it's inherently wrong, but because he sees his life as too solid and unbreakable to escape. This is just one of the transformations he will undergo on the day Mattie is supposed to leave.
Quote #7
Deep silence had fallen with the starless dusk, and they leaned on each other without speaking; but at every step of their climb Ethan said to himself: "It's the last time we'll ever walk together." (9.127)
Ethan's thought takes on bitter irony when we see that after that night Mattie will never walk again. This is a classic example of the tricky foreshadowing that Wharton layers into the tale.