Previous
Margaret
Ethan is a middle-aged white man who works at Harvard’s University’s library. He is Bird’s father and Margaret’s husband. As Bird’s sole guardian, Ethan is very aware that his actions and beliefs directly impact his son’s safety under PACT law. Consequently, he spends most of his time fearfully keeping his head down and encouraging Bird to do the same. Ethan’s library job hints at his true passion for words, a passion he shared with Margaret, though he actively tries to repress it in the novel’s present. During the Crisis, he and Margaret find refuge from the world’s unrest in each other, and he defends her against his own parents when they question her loyalties as a Chinese American. He supports, too, Margaret’s difficult decision to leave the family, and he fully commits to publicly denouncing the woman he loves to protect their son. Ethan’s fear underscores the culture of surveillance in this imagined America, where parents lose custody of their children for saying the wrong thing. Though Bird does not always understand his father’s actions, it becomes clear over the course of the novel that Ethan’s denigration of Margaret and his adherence to strict pro-PACT ideologies are motivated by his desire to protect his son at all costs.
Ethan Quotes in Our Missing Hearts
The Our Missing Hearts quotes below are all either spoken by Ethan or refer to Ethan. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part 1, Chapter 1
Quotes
You’d have to be a lunatic, Bird had agreed, to overturn PACT. PACT had helped end the Crisis; PACT kept things peaceful and safe. Even kindergarteners knew that. PACT was common sense, really. If you acted unpatriotic, there would be consequences. If you didn’t, then what were you worried about? And if you saw or heard of something unpatriotic, it was your duty to let the authorities know. He has never known a world without PACT; it is as axiomatic as gravity, or Thou shalt not kill. He didn’t understand why anyone would oppose it, what any of this had to do with hearts, how a heart could be missing. How could you survive without your heart beating inside you?
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
You need to show your teacher you really get this—there should be absolutely no question you understand. PACT protects innocent children from being indoctrinated with false, subversive, un-American ideas by unfit and unpatriotic parents.
Part 1, Chapter 4
Quotes
It’s dangerous to look like him, always has been. It’s dangerous to be his mother’s child, in more ways than one. His father has always known it, has always been braced for something like this, always on a hair trigger for what inevitably would happen to his son. What he’s afraid of: that one day someone will see Bird’s face and see an enemy. That someone will see him as his mother’s son, in blood or in deed, and take him away.
Part 1, Chapter 6
Quotes
Someone was always watching, it seemed: when Bird went out without a hat and stood shivering at the bus stop; when Bird forgot his lunch and his teacher asked him if his father was giving him enough to eat. There was always someone watching. There was always someone wanting to check.
Part 2, Chapter 2
Quotes
In the quiet of Ethan’s apartment, poems came to her like timid animals emerging after a storm.
She wrote about the hush of the city, how the pulse of it had changed, with so many people gone. About love, and pleasure, and comfort. The smell of his neck in the early morning. The warm soft den of their bed at night. About finding stillness in the whirr that had been there for so long, a quiet place in the grinding, never-ending shriek of the Crisis.
Part 3, Chapter 2
Quotes
Bird. Why did I tell you so many stories? Because I wanted the world to make sense to you. I wanted to make sense of the world, for you. I wanted the world to make sense.
[…]
There are so many more stories I wish I could tell you. You’ll have to ask others—your father, your friends. Kind strangers you will meet someday. Everyone who remembers.
But in the end every story I want to tell you is the same. Once upon a time, there was a boy. Once upon a time there was a mother. Once upon a time, there was a boy, and his mother loved him very much.
Get the entire Our Missing Hearts LitChart as a printable PDF.
Ethan Quotes in Our Missing Hearts
The Our Missing Hearts quotes below are all either spoken by Ethan or refer to Ethan. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part 1, Chapter 1
Quotes
You’d have to be a lunatic, Bird had agreed, to overturn PACT. PACT had helped end the Crisis; PACT kept things peaceful and safe. Even kindergarteners knew that. PACT was common sense, really. If you acted unpatriotic, there would be consequences. If you didn’t, then what were you worried about? And if you saw or heard of something unpatriotic, it was your duty to let the authorities know. He has never known a world without PACT; it is as axiomatic as gravity, or Thou shalt not kill. He didn’t understand why anyone would oppose it, what any of this had to do with hearts, how a heart could be missing. How could you survive without your heart beating inside you?
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
You need to show your teacher you really get this—there should be absolutely no question you understand. PACT protects innocent children from being indoctrinated with false, subversive, un-American ideas by unfit and unpatriotic parents.
Part 1, Chapter 4
Quotes
It’s dangerous to look like him, always has been. It’s dangerous to be his mother’s child, in more ways than one. His father has always known it, has always been braced for something like this, always on a hair trigger for what inevitably would happen to his son. What he’s afraid of: that one day someone will see Bird’s face and see an enemy. That someone will see him as his mother’s son, in blood or in deed, and take him away.
Part 1, Chapter 6
Quotes
Someone was always watching, it seemed: when Bird went out without a hat and stood shivering at the bus stop; when Bird forgot his lunch and his teacher asked him if his father was giving him enough to eat. There was always someone watching. There was always someone wanting to check.
Part 2, Chapter 2
Quotes
In the quiet of Ethan’s apartment, poems came to her like timid animals emerging after a storm.
She wrote about the hush of the city, how the pulse of it had changed, with so many people gone. About love, and pleasure, and comfort. The smell of his neck in the early morning. The warm soft den of their bed at night. About finding stillness in the whirr that had been there for so long, a quiet place in the grinding, never-ending shriek of the Crisis.
Part 3, Chapter 2
Quotes
Bird. Why did I tell you so many stories? Because I wanted the world to make sense to you. I wanted to make sense of the world, for you. I wanted the world to make sense.
[…]
There are so many more stories I wish I could tell you. You’ll have to ask others—your father, your friends. Kind strangers you will meet someday. Everyone who remembers.
But in the end every story I want to tell you is the same. Once upon a time, there was a boy. Once upon a time there was a mother. Once upon a time, there was a boy, and his mother loved him very much.
