51 pages • 1 hour read
Paul HardingThis Other Eden
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Government Interference in Marginalized Communities
Content Warning: This guide includes depictions of racism, discrimination, forced eviction, eugenics, nonconsensual relationships, and rape.
The eviction of the residents of Apple Island stems from the rise of eugenic theory in the early 20th century. In the novel, Foxden’s public views of eugenics and their opinions of the men, women, and children on Apple Island are tracked through excerpts of newspaper articles and academic records. Their attention, and the eyes of the state of Maine, turn to Apple Island after the first international congress on eugenics, featuring Charles Darwin’s son, is held. Apple Island is a community that makes its own way, tends to stay on the island, and causes no public issues on the mainland. However, they are a marginalized community because of both their diverse racial makeup and their low socioeconomic status. As such, actions are taken to irrevocably change the direction of their lives without their consent, disturbing and destroying a longstanding community.
The first step in this eviction is observation of the islanders and their homes. Officials and doctors come to take notes on the islanders, with a keen interest in their biology. The subsequent objections to public health and humanity stem from the mainland’s insecurity about the diverse racial makeup of the residents, whose ancestors came from across the world. The government of Maine’s solution is to remove the islanders from their longstanding homes, segregate them, spreading them around the state and even forcing many into state institutions. They not only want to remove the community from the island but also ensure that the community itself does not survive.
Though Maine’s governor agrees with Matthew Diamond’s ideas about preserving the community, his councilmen immediately disagree, citing “polluted blood” and “the depravity and imbecility and mixed races” (156). The government does not want to aid the islanders, but erase them, seeing any health issues of the islanders as not merely a result of incestuous parentage but as a matter of their race. The committee’s decision to break up the community on Apple Island demonstrates a desire to erase a disadvantaged but autonomous community rather than help support it, as this community does not engage in bolstering the state’s economic productivity due to their communal values.
Art as Personal Expression
Art plays an important role in the lives of many of the characters of This Other Eden. Art is a way for them to express their identities, emotions, and anxieties. In the novel, the two most notable artists are Ethan Honey and Zachary Hand to God Proverbs. Each uses a different mode of artistic expression, but both are committed to honing their craft. Zachary is one of the oldest residents of the island, and lives alone, with no family around him. Zachary lives an isolated life in which he spends his time thinking about the world around him. He ponders big questions, and his carving helps to focus and calm him. He takes up carving the Bible into the tree as his life’s work. The tree becomes a reflection of him, showcasing scenes he connects with and demonstrating a craftmanship that is always evolving, growing and lending greater detail to attention.
Ethan comes from a long line of carpenters but is an artist who expresses himself on paper and canvas. He begins drawing and expands to painting once Matthew Diamond obtains supplies from the mainland. Ethan understands how art can capture a moment, or a person, and keep them from changing or aging through time. As he prepares to leave for the mainland to pursue his artistry, he draws four self-portraits to capture his life on the island: “He placed the four drawings side by side. Something about each of the first three seemed false, forced. Too old, too sorrowful, worried-looking as it stared back at him” (98). Ethan struggles to truly capture himself in his drawings and worries that his family will eventually forget him. He draws these self-portraits while looking into a mirror, and yet when he completes them, he does not feel like they match how he views himself. He realizes that his own perception of himself must not be how others perceive him.
When Ethan arrives at the Hale estate and begins painting in earnest, his life changes in more ways than one. He not only has a new opportunity and a future of art ahead of him, but he also meets Bridget, Hale’s maid. She watches his artistic process closely, and his painting of her solidifies their love for each other. Not only does Ethan mix their blood and use it in the painting, meaning that they will always be with it, but his actual depiction of her demonstrates how much he cares for her: “Bridget wiped tears from her eyes and gasped a little laugh. To think how closely, with how much care, how much courtesy and gentleness he had looked at her” (138). Ethan does not merely paint a caricature or likeness of Bridget, but seeks to capture her as she is, including her physical flaws. The painting becomes a manifestation of Ethan as an artist and a person. He is a patient, kind, and meaningful artist, concerned with capturing the world and its people as they are rather than instilling them with beauty that is not there.
Family Legacy Across Generations
The characters of This Other Eden are particularly sensitive to family legacy and the ways in which it influences their lives. The community is small, with only a few families that have survived for over 100 years, passing stories and experiences from generation to generation. The memories of those who came before them live on in the present as the residents, and most specifically the Honeys, are a continuation of their ancestors. Family legacy plays an important part in life on Apple Island, as well as an instrumental role in its founding by Benjamin Honey, who planted apple trees, seeking to create his own Garden of Eden because of his memories of his mother. Apple Island is founded on his hope of reconnecting with his mother through apples, and in turn, it creates a community in which his descendants will remember him and his wife Patience as their ultimate patriarch and matriarch.
The legacy of Benjamin and Patience Honey is strong, and their experiences serve as the founding myth for the island and its residents. The story of the hurricane that nearly wiped the community off the island is told frequently by Esther, serving as a reminder of what their family has struggled through to carve out their place in the world on Apple Island. The legacy of Patience is one that lives on through the women of the Honey family. Esther tells the story from her perspective, as though Patience lives on through her. Patience is their common mother, just as Benjamin is their common father, and every Honey on the island shares a connection through the legacy of their ancestors. Their first matriarch and patriarch survived a natural threat that nearly ended their community, but their resilience serves as a reminder to the Honeys of the importance of family and faith in the face of danger.
When the Honeys are made to leave Apple Island, they do what they can to preserve their family legacy, primarily through the disassembly of their home for transport. Zachary passes down his carpentry knowledge, with Benjamin Honey’s tools, to Eha, and teaches him everything he knows by helping Eha to build the house. The house is not only Eha’s legacy but is also situated in the larger Honey legacy, as it is Benjamin’s tools that built it. Eha knows the house, and it is a part of him and his family. Eha’s knowledge of the house is so extensive that he takes it apart knowing that he can put it back together just the same. The Honeys may be losing their home of Apple Island, but they take their house with them, extending their family legacy. They will live under a roof crafted by the hands of Eha with the knowledge and skill of Benjamin, even if they are in exile from their true home of the island.
