This Other Eden

by

Paul Harding

Ethan Honey Character Analysis

Ethan is the oldest child of Eha and the grandson of Esther. Like most Apple Island residents, he is mixed-race, but unlike most of his family members, he is pale enough to pass as white to an outsider. When Matthew Diamond sets up a school for the Apple Islanders, he takes an early interest in Ethan, who shows an aptitude for art. Ethan continues to practice drawing outside of school, and eventually Matthew Diamond arranges for Ethan to go away to live with Thomas Hale, where Ethan can paint the landscapes and eventually take art classes. There, Ethan meets the Irish maid Bridget, and they bond over the fact that each of them comes from an island (while Ethan also has an Irish ancestor, Patience). Despite Ethan’s talent as an artist, Thomas Hale still keeps him at a distance, making him stay in the barn and never letting him into the main house. Ethan’s struggles to find a place where he belongs represent how complicated race and identity can be. On the one hand, his pale skin gives him advantages in life compared to his siblings, allowing him to leave the island and follow his interest in art. But this advantage turns out to be a mixed blessing, as it separates Ethan from the island community, and even with his pale skin, he can’t overcome the prejudices of men like Thomas Hale. Ethan eventually disappears after Bridget becomes pregnant with his baby.

Ethan Honey Quotes in This Other Eden

The This Other Eden quotes below are all either spoken by Ethan Honey or refer to Ethan 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:
Family Theme Icon
).
Part 1 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Esther Honey (speaker), Ethan Honey, Eha Honey, Zachary Hand, Tabitha Honey, Charlotte Honey
Page Number: 84
Explanation and Analysis:

THE MORNING AFTER the feast, Ethan woke with bleary eyes and a slight headache from the beer. He took the small circle of mirror that had been his mother’s from its shelf near his father’s bed and sat on the rocks on the west side of the island and drew four self-portraits.

Related Characters: Ethan Honey, Matthew Diamond
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2 Quotes

DO YOU MIND if I watch you draw? Bridget asked Ethan when, after a day spent mostly watching the mowers from just inside the opened barn doors (and stepping back out of view whenever Bridget came out to bring him food or to hang the laundry), he first ventured to the meadow and began sketching.

Related Characters: Bridget (speaker), Ethan Honey, Tabitha Honey, Charlotte Honey
Page Number: 116
Explanation and Analysis:

He was hot, probably sunburned, again, on his arms and nose and face and his neck, too. The hot sweet hay perfume mingled with the cigarette smoke and he wanted to sit down but there was no natural place to do so in the middle of the field.

Related Characters: Ethan Honey, Matthew Diamond, Bridget, Thomas Hale
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:

THE PAINTING WAS of a small, tidy bundle of asparagus, tied together with twine, placed on a dark stone tabletop, glowing under pure white light from somewhere above, ivory except at the tips, which blushed thistle-purple and pale green, as if just quickened into color by the lamp.

Related Characters: Ethan Honey, Bridget
Page Number: 132
Explanation and Analysis:

Here. He gave her his handkerchief and mixed the blood into the paint with a small brush. Look.

Related Characters: Ethan Honey (speaker), Bridget
Page Number: 138
Explanation and Analysis:

An animal Mr. Hale at first glimpse thinks must be a young doe trots into view along the drive near the servants’ entrance to the kitchen. But the animal does not move like a deer and, as what Mr. Hale instinctively thinks should be the case is replaced by what he in fact sees, the animal changes into a person, the person into a girl, and the girl into the servant, Bridget. The innocent trotting when she was a doe discolors and deforms into haste and guile and indecency as she hurries, now obviously away from the mulatto’s bed in the barn, to the servants’ entrance, which, although still in shadow, Mr. Hale knows she unlocks, opens, passes through, and closes behind her, to quickly gather herself in order to appear a spotless lamb by the time he rings for his tea and toast.

Related Characters: Ethan Honey, Bridget, Thomas Hale
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:

You do not need your paints anymore, Mr. Hale says. Leave them there and come with me.

Related Characters: Thomas Hale (speaker), Ethan Honey, Bridget
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3 Quotes

You have to leave the island.

Related Characters: Matthew Diamond (speaker), Ethan Honey, Esther Honey, Bridget, Eha Honey, The Governor
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:

This section of the State University’s exhibit commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the eviction of the settlers on Apple Island is devoted to the artwork of Ethan Honey. Honey was one of the last generation of native-born islanders (ca. 1897). He left behind dozens of competent—and informative—drawings of the people on the island and of daily life there at the end of its settlement. On loan from the estate of Ms. Phoebe Hale, of Enon, Massachusetts, where Honey briefly resided and practiced, are drawings of the summer hay mowing in July of 1913, the workers, the landscape, and the only three surviving paintings Honey made in oil: a large landscape depicting haystacks at sunset; a small, whimsically colored piece depicting a sop of green hay in an otherwise dry bale; and a portrait of a teenaged girl identified by Ms. Hale as Bridget Carney, an Irish immigrant who worked for the family as a domestic servant and Ms. Hale’s nanny for two years.

Related Characters: Ethan Honey, Bridget, Thomas Hale
Page Number: 171
Explanation and Analysis:

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!

Related Characters: Esther Honey (speaker), Ethan Honey, Eha Honey
Page Number: 212
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4 Quotes

Zachary turned away and walked across the island toward where his house and the others were nearly done burning. The men from the mainland had missed Zachary’s tree so he went to it and got inside. He closed his eyes and ran the pads of his fingers across the carvings as if to decipher them by touch. He opened his eyes and followed the radius of each band of pictures. Really, they were crude. Most of the intricacies and nuances of expression and gesture and architecture and decoration had been those of his thoughts while he’d carved. Very little of the finesse of his ideas had made its way into the wood, he saw now. He gathered his candle and cross. He knelt and cupped up a cone of wood shavings and set it burning with his flint and steel. Smoke rose into the darkness of the hollowed trunk then refluxed and began pulsing from the opening. Zachary watched the fire grow until he was certain it would not smother, then headed for the water.

Related Characters: Ethan Honey, Zachary Hand
Related Symbols: The Hollow Tree, Apples
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire This Other Eden LitChart as a printable PDF.
This Other Eden PDF

Ethan Honey Quotes in This Other Eden

The This Other Eden quotes below are all either spoken by Ethan Honey or refer to Ethan 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:
Family Theme Icon
).
Part 1 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Esther Honey (speaker), Ethan Honey, Eha Honey, Zachary Hand, Tabitha Honey, Charlotte Honey
Page Number: 84
Explanation and Analysis:

THE MORNING AFTER the feast, Ethan woke with bleary eyes and a slight headache from the beer. He took the small circle of mirror that had been his mother’s from its shelf near his father’s bed and sat on the rocks on the west side of the island and drew four self-portraits.

Related Characters: Ethan Honey, Matthew Diamond
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2 Quotes

DO YOU MIND if I watch you draw? Bridget asked Ethan when, after a day spent mostly watching the mowers from just inside the opened barn doors (and stepping back out of view whenever Bridget came out to bring him food or to hang the laundry), he first ventured to the meadow and began sketching.

Related Characters: Bridget (speaker), Ethan Honey, Tabitha Honey, Charlotte Honey
Page Number: 116
Explanation and Analysis:

He was hot, probably sunburned, again, on his arms and nose and face and his neck, too. The hot sweet hay perfume mingled with the cigarette smoke and he wanted to sit down but there was no natural place to do so in the middle of the field.

Related Characters: Ethan Honey, Matthew Diamond, Bridget, Thomas Hale
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:

THE PAINTING WAS of a small, tidy bundle of asparagus, tied together with twine, placed on a dark stone tabletop, glowing under pure white light from somewhere above, ivory except at the tips, which blushed thistle-purple and pale green, as if just quickened into color by the lamp.

Related Characters: Ethan Honey, Bridget
Page Number: 132
Explanation and Analysis:

Here. He gave her his handkerchief and mixed the blood into the paint with a small brush. Look.

Related Characters: Ethan Honey (speaker), Bridget
Page Number: 138
Explanation and Analysis:

An animal Mr. Hale at first glimpse thinks must be a young doe trots into view along the drive near the servants’ entrance to the kitchen. But the animal does not move like a deer and, as what Mr. Hale instinctively thinks should be the case is replaced by what he in fact sees, the animal changes into a person, the person into a girl, and the girl into the servant, Bridget. The innocent trotting when she was a doe discolors and deforms into haste and guile and indecency as she hurries, now obviously away from the mulatto’s bed in the barn, to the servants’ entrance, which, although still in shadow, Mr. Hale knows she unlocks, opens, passes through, and closes behind her, to quickly gather herself in order to appear a spotless lamb by the time he rings for his tea and toast.

Related Characters: Ethan Honey, Bridget, Thomas Hale
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:

You do not need your paints anymore, Mr. Hale says. Leave them there and come with me.

Related Characters: Thomas Hale (speaker), Ethan Honey, Bridget
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3 Quotes

You have to leave the island.

Related Characters: Matthew Diamond (speaker), Ethan Honey, Esther Honey, Bridget, Eha Honey, The Governor
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:

This section of the State University’s exhibit commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the eviction of the settlers on Apple Island is devoted to the artwork of Ethan Honey. Honey was one of the last generation of native-born islanders (ca. 1897). He left behind dozens of competent—and informative—drawings of the people on the island and of daily life there at the end of its settlement. On loan from the estate of Ms. Phoebe Hale, of Enon, Massachusetts, where Honey briefly resided and practiced, are drawings of the summer hay mowing in July of 1913, the workers, the landscape, and the only three surviving paintings Honey made in oil: a large landscape depicting haystacks at sunset; a small, whimsically colored piece depicting a sop of green hay in an otherwise dry bale; and a portrait of a teenaged girl identified by Ms. Hale as Bridget Carney, an Irish immigrant who worked for the family as a domestic servant and Ms. Hale’s nanny for two years.

Related Characters: Ethan Honey, Bridget, Thomas Hale
Page Number: 171
Explanation and Analysis:

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!

Related Characters: Esther Honey (speaker), Ethan Honey, Eha Honey
Page Number: 212
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4 Quotes

Zachary turned away and walked across the island toward where his house and the others were nearly done burning. The men from the mainland had missed Zachary’s tree so he went to it and got inside. He closed his eyes and ran the pads of his fingers across the carvings as if to decipher them by touch. He opened his eyes and followed the radius of each band of pictures. Really, they were crude. Most of the intricacies and nuances of expression and gesture and architecture and decoration had been those of his thoughts while he’d carved. Very little of the finesse of his ideas had made its way into the wood, he saw now. He gathered his candle and cross. He knelt and cupped up a cone of wood shavings and set it burning with his flint and steel. Smoke rose into the darkness of the hollowed trunk then refluxed and began pulsing from the opening. Zachary watched the fire grow until he was certain it would not smother, then headed for the water.

Related Characters: Ethan Honey, Zachary Hand
Related Symbols: The Hollow Tree, Apples
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis: