1.Edith Wharton writes, "In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires."  The constellation, the Dipper is being compared to icicles hanging from an unnamed object.

There are many more, but the very next one I saw came in the next paragraph when Frome is thinking that "It's like being in an exhausted receiver."  Here the character is comparing his situation to the exhausted receiver and he continues by recollecting on how his present situation reminds him of concepts learned in physics class.

There are many more.  Go through and find like or as and see if it is comparing something.  If it is, you have found a simile.

"Ethan Frome" is a novel by Edith Wharton about a man, Ethan, his wife, Zeena, and her cousin, Mattie Silver.  Ethan is obsessed with Mattie but married to Zeena. The story opens with Ethan standing outside a building watching his wife's cousin dancing.  He is resentful of the looks she gives other people and is jealous that he is not the one dancing with her.

As the first chapter progresses, Ethan's wife is becoming less tolerant of Mattie and begins to speak to Ethan about her needs, hiring someone to help her, and Mattie leaving.  Ethan won't hear it and pretends he is in a hurry.

A Simile is a comparison between two thing using the term "like" or "as."  There is a simile in the second sentence of chapter 1,

"In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion' flashed his cold fires."

Later in the chapter Wharton writes:

"the dancers were going faster and faster, and the musicians, to keep up with them, belaboured their instruments like jockeys lashing their mounts on the home-stretch."

On page 24 in my edition Wharton writes:

"But hitherto the emotion had remained in him as a silent ache, veiling with sadness the beauty that evoked it. "

"That's Orion down yonder, the big fellow to the right is Aldebaran, and the bunch of little ones-like bees swarming- they're the Pleiades..."

Let us remind ourselves that similes and metaphors are both examples of figurative language when one thing is compared to something else that is normally not associated with the first object. The comparison helps us see how the two objects can be compared. A simile is a comparison that uses the words "like" or "as." A metaphor is when the comparison is asserted directly, without these two words.

Examining this chapter, therefore, Ethan Frome himself uses a simile to describe how dark it is outside, saying "it's as dark as Egypt outside." A simile is then used to describe Mattie's face:

He kept his eyes fixed on her, marvelling at the way her face changed with each turn of their talk, like a wheat-field under a summer breeze.

This is a highly appropriate agricultural comparison for Ethan, as a farmer, but it also reflects the way in which Mattie's face is so changeable and attractive as she listens to Ethan's words, or his "magic" as he describes it. There are two similes to get you started. Now you need to go back through Chapter Five and see if you can identify any more. Good luck!

Similes are where you compare two different things, using the words like or as.  So, for example, "my love is like a red rose," or "my love is as constant as the sunshine."  When you are looking for similes, keep your eyes open for those tag words of like and as, and it will help you to find them.

In chapter seven of Ethan Frome, Mattie and Ethan's happiness is abruptly ended when Zeena comes home from her trip a bit earlier than expected.  Ethan goes upstairs to confront his wife and talk to her about their journey.  The first simile comes after they break into an argument--she accuses him of marrying her only out of pity after she helped out with his mother, and he gets upset, and then Wharton writes,

"their thoughts seemed to dart at each other like serpents shooting venom."

This simile symbolizes their angry, hateful mood, and the bitterness of their thoughts for one another.  Their thoughts were fierce, angry, darting, and poisonous, like a snake.  Just after that, Ethan is ashamed at his thoughts, and thinks that they are as "senseless and savage as a physical fight" between enemies.  That is another simile that is mentioned.

A few pages later, Zeena mentions how the townspeople gossip about Mattie being at the house, and that comment is described as "like a knife-cut across the sinews," which cuts Ethan to his core.  All of these descriptions serve to intensify and heighten the anxiety and stress that exists between Ethan and his wife.  They are strained, but not outright cruel or mean, and the similes serve to enhance that controlled bitterness that they have.  I hope that those thoughts helped; good luck!