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Ethan Honey
Esther Honey is the great-granddaughter of Benjamin and Patience, and the oldest currently-living member of the Honey family during the time when the novel is set (in the 1910s). She is the mother of Eha and the grandmother of Ethan, Tabitha, and Charlotte. In the present day, Esther is arthritic and has difficulty moving, rarely getting out of her rocking chair. When she was younger, Esther Honey was raped by her father, and when she eventually gave birth, she considered drowning the child (Eha). Her decision not to drown him ultimately allowed the Honey lineage to continue, illustrating how family involves making tough decisions. That same night, she snuck up on her father and killed him by pushing him off a bluff, showing Esther’s determination to get rid of her troubled past. Esther represents how family is strong enough to endure even challenges and dark secrets. The image near the end of the novel of her, still in her rocker, on a raft floating away from Apple Island suggests that even after the eviction of the Apple Island residents, their way of life will find a way to continue.
Esther Honey Quotes in This Other Eden
The This Other Eden quotes below are all either spoken by Esther Honey or refer to Esther Honey. 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
Quotes
[…] I held that foolish flag as high as I could, and the water rose up my shoulder, and the water rose up to my raised elbow, and the water rose up my forearm, and the water reached my wrist, and so there was just my one hand holding that motley little tattered flag sticking up above the surface of the flood, and the waters rose up my fingers, and just as my hand was about to disappear and that flag and all us Honeys be swallowed up in the catastrophe, the water stopped rising.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Esther watched Tabby and Lotte and Ethan come up the path. The memory of curling up on her side, still-unnamed Eha in her arms, the water by then alternately pulling and pushing them both toward the depths and back onto the rocks, and her thinking that was cruel—Just drown us now, quick—as ever overwhelmed her, not because it was vague and dim and made her feel like she’d suffered some awful half-recollected disfigurement while practically still a child herself, but because she remembered every single detail of it all and because she did it all on purpose. She shuddered, at the shame of almost having murdered her son and therefore her three grandchildren, but also in gratitude for God having taken all their fates out of her selfish hands.
Or Zachary, she corrected herself. Gratitude for Zachary—or God through Zachary—having taken all their fates out of her selfish young hands.
Part 3
Quotes
You have to leave the island.
There’d been no real need to get onto the tree, but Zachary had said to Eha, Well, get up onto it and see if it’s sound. It’s going to be your house.
Zachary interlocked his hands into a stirrup and Eha put a foot in it and Zachary launched him up onto the trunk. Zachary clambered up like he was a bear scrambling for a beehive full of honey. There was no need for the man and the boy to stand on top of the tree other than for the man to take pleasure in the work and the boy to thrill at the work and his part in it and for the view, for the simple novelty of standing eight feet up on top of the tree they’d just felled with the old saw. Zachary looked at the tree, smiling with transparent pleasure, thinking maybe about the first time he himself had cut down a tree with his father, and he seemed to Eha from that moment on like his own father, his real, blood father.
While the girls helped Bridget, Eha circled a length of rope around Esther’s middle, threading it in and out of the chair’s backrest splats.
And Esther, sleeping in her rocking chair in the house—as she did now, lashed to the deck of the raft—would awaken at the commotion and know it was Ethan come back and cry out, Is that our boy? Bring him here! Bring him here so I can see his beautiful face!
Get the entire This Other Eden LitChart as a printable PDF.
Esther Honey Quotes in This Other Eden
The This Other Eden quotes below are all either spoken by Esther Honey or refer to Esther Honey. 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
Quotes
[…] I held that foolish flag as high as I could, and the water rose up my shoulder, and the water rose up to my raised elbow, and the water rose up my forearm, and the water reached my wrist, and so there was just my one hand holding that motley little tattered flag sticking up above the surface of the flood, and the waters rose up my fingers, and just as my hand was about to disappear and that flag and all us Honeys be swallowed up in the catastrophe, the water stopped rising.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Esther watched Tabby and Lotte and Ethan come up the path. The memory of curling up on her side, still-unnamed Eha in her arms, the water by then alternately pulling and pushing them both toward the depths and back onto the rocks, and her thinking that was cruel—Just drown us now, quick—as ever overwhelmed her, not because it was vague and dim and made her feel like she’d suffered some awful half-recollected disfigurement while practically still a child herself, but because she remembered every single detail of it all and because she did it all on purpose. She shuddered, at the shame of almost having murdered her son and therefore her three grandchildren, but also in gratitude for God having taken all their fates out of her selfish hands.
Or Zachary, she corrected herself. Gratitude for Zachary—or God through Zachary—having taken all their fates out of her selfish young hands.
Part 3
Quotes
You have to leave the island.
There’d been no real need to get onto the tree, but Zachary had said to Eha, Well, get up onto it and see if it’s sound. It’s going to be your house.
Zachary interlocked his hands into a stirrup and Eha put a foot in it and Zachary launched him up onto the trunk. Zachary clambered up like he was a bear scrambling for a beehive full of honey. There was no need for the man and the boy to stand on top of the tree other than for the man to take pleasure in the work and the boy to thrill at the work and his part in it and for the view, for the simple novelty of standing eight feet up on top of the tree they’d just felled with the old saw. Zachary looked at the tree, smiling with transparent pleasure, thinking maybe about the first time he himself had cut down a tree with his father, and he seemed to Eha from that moment on like his own father, his real, blood father.
While the girls helped Bridget, Eha circled a length of rope around Esther’s middle, threading it in and out of the chair’s backrest splats.
And Esther, sleeping in her rocking chair in the house—as she did now, lashed to the deck of the raft—would awaken at the commotion and know it was Ethan come back and cry out, Is that our boy? Bring him here! Bring him here so I can see his beautiful face!
