This Other Eden Character Analysis: The Antagonists

What do you do when you technically fit in more with the antagonists of a story than the protagonists in an us vs them situation? When the story paints the antagonists as wrong and all that you might see as strange or disgusting in the protagonists is portrayed as reasonable, beautiful, or understandable? The novel This Other Eden by Paul Harding places readers in this uncomfortable position, forcing a reader to reckon with these questions. As the antagonists, the mainlanders, evict a mixed-race community from an island in Maine, a reader is more likely to find similarities between themselves and the mainlanders than the islanders, even if a reader is unlikely to agree with the mainlanders’ views. This middle position in an us vs them storyline

This is most impressively done when it comes to the tale of Theophilus and Candace Lack, as “after their parents passed within two days of one another in the winter of 1899, out of loneliness and grief continued their family together” (25). Loneliness is the feeling of being alone and wanting company. Grief, mental pain, distress, or sorrow. The initial response a reader has to the idea of a brother and sister having children together is likely an automatic recoil, as both modern and mainlander societies have proclaimed inbreeding as wrong. But Harding gives readers an explanation as to why Theophilus and Candace Lark got together. There might have been some perverted desire mixed, but this relationship is being born out of shared loss and desire for companionship. Additionally, the islanders all treat Theophilus and Candace’s relationship the same as any other relationship, and this nonchalant treatment of a sibling sexual relationship makes it more difficult for a reader to get fired up than if the other islanders appeared to have strong opinions about Theophilus and Candace’s relationship. Given how a reader is primed to not have strong opinions about Theophilus and Candace’s relationship and how the relationship is born out of tragedy, a reader is ready to

During Ethan Honey’s journey to Enon, he realizes “that every [mainlander] with whom he came into the briefest contact, which, certainly, had not been very many, treated him as if he were plain white, too, unlike the mainlanders in Foxden, who knew his folks” (122/3). In Foxden, the mainlanders are familiar with and have experience with Ethan’s family, so they understand that Ethan is not a part of their community. On the other hand, when Ethan comes into brief, short, and curt, contact with mainlanders that have likely never met an islander before, they treat him as one of them. The fact that mainlanders cannot quickly tell the difference between themselves, and the islanders shows that islanders, at least on the surface level, are just like mainlanders, humans just like them. Similarly, Matthew realizes that white-passing islanders have left Apple Island for years to “go somewhere no one knows them, no one will ever know about the blood that flows in their veins, no one will ever be able to tell from their skin or their eyes or their hair” that they have family from all across the globe (94). As a mainlander could never know where a white-passing Apple Islander originally came from, it is clear that the only