In Paul Harding's This Other Eden, he depicts the intricate relationships between the islanders and the mainlanders from Maine that serves as a poignant exploration of cultural prejudice, patronizing attitudes, and the destructive consequences of imposing external values on a minority community. By depicting the daily lives, emotions, and relationships of the Apple Island inhabitants, Harding contrasts their self-sustained life with the condescending perceptions of the mainlanders, who view themselves as the standard bearers of civilization, superior to the Apple Island inhabitants. The book’s intimate view reveals the richness of the islanders' world that’s often overshadowed by the ignorance of the outsiders by addressing themes such as family survival, racism, and the power of art, while also highlighting the social implications of these prejudices.

This Other Eden can be interpreted from a more general perspective: considering the social implications of this work through contrasting views and biases among different social groups, the specific way of living of the shunned islanders and how the book effectively portrays such issue through writing from various perspectives and depicting the actions and emotions of various characters and events. Throughout the book, a fictional representation of Harding’s knowledge for the Maine Islanders is presented. As it was stated in the preface, “malaga island…home to a mixed-race fishing community… when the state of Maine evicted 47 residents from their homes and exhumed and relocated their buried dead” and it wasn’t until 2010 when “the Maine legislature passed a resolution expressing its ‘profound regret’ ”(Preface); The Apple Island symbolizes all the unfortunate ones whom the society couldn’t tolerate and reconcile with. 

The whole plot revolves around the idea of racism. Harding effectively contrasts the idea of how the mainlanders, who considered themselves to be normal and upright, perceive the islanders. His message includes how prejudice can turn ugly when one can only appreciate based on their standards of beauty and how such misguided judgements can overpower the truth of the meaningful lives of the people and belittle their value as human beings. 

 To begin with, Harding contrasts the the opinions of three groups that can also be seen commonly in the society today: the superior and arrogant ones, the persecuted ones, and the ones trying to find a middle ground between the two, attempting to reach a consensus that allows both groups to coexist, while oftentimes their well-intentioned approaches may lead to unexpected and harmful consequences. 

Matthew represents the sympathetic and helping ones towards the islanders; but he also in part led to the death of the community as unwanted scrutiny came along his presence. Only difference is, compared to the rest of the mainlanders so effected by Christian Darwinism– –Matthew’s arrival was well intentioned, an attempt to educate and assimilate the islanders who have been excluded from the “civilized” world for so long. Despite Matthew’s “visceral, involuntary repulsion whenever [he] is in the presence of a living Negro” (45), he still prioritized his passion for educating the children in an attempt to ‘save’ them by assimilating them. Interestingly, the children viewed Matthew as a respectable individual. Not only would they respect his private space, follow the rules he established, but children of the Honey family, including Tabitha and Ethan, Emily Sockalexis, Millie from the lark family… all bought in to his effort. Nevertheless, his arrival to the island brought more attention to the islanders. Dr Darwin called into question the challenges of “deformed issue of incestuous marriages” and called for the needed treatment at “manic-depressive floor at a hospital for the insane, with histories of paranoia and nymphomania” (48).  The first committee inspected the settlement with preexisting notions that they are ill-suited to live in this society without being taken care of. Thus they measured their skulls, foreheads, and cheekbones and noses and ears and mouths and soon publicized their report stating the residents’ incompetency of “turning the settlement around”(55). Their patronizing attitude towards the islanders’ existence marked the demise of the community. Even as Ethan Honey was sent to Hale’s place for better education, he struggles to find it a place where he belongs due to the inferiority the society has imposed upon him, leading to his ultimate departure. Not only did racism impede Ethan’s pursuit as an artist, but it disconnected him from his family: being the only one with pale skin meant that he had their privilege to disguise himself among the others at the cost of excluding himself permanently from his family. 

By the second time the mainland concil arrived, their violent actions, arrogance and ignorance driven, led to the death of rabbit. Their forceful evictions destroyed the peacefulness established within the community: childrens are subjected to ‘real education’ a mainland schools, adults purposely displaced. Little did they know that generations of primitive ways of living, despite its tremendous contrast from the urbanized lives, suited the islanders better. By restricting the Apple Islanders within their own morals, values and standards, mainlanders’ interference, whether good or bad intentioned, directly contributed to the demise of the community and its population; all of which resulted from lack of open-mindedness and ignorance. 

Interestingly, Harding provided considerable insights to the Apple Islanders’ way of living too, revealing the knowledge that was not revealed to the public during their times. Their incestuous relationship and handicaps–“pale, colorless features and fragile constitutions, and all of whom were slightly harder of hearing, slightly nearer sighted, slightly more asthmatic…more sensitive to sunlight…”(25)–seemed not to have prevented them from living lives that resemble that of the mainlanders. Throughout the novel, its description of the islanders’ culture, emotions, and relationships stood out the most. For instance, The apple orchard Benjamin Honey initially purposefully planted signifies his hope for continuity amidst adversity. The islanders often gather for communal activities, including education, meals, celebrations…. These gatherings highlight the close-knit nature of the community: especially when “the islanders prepared a send-off banquet for Ethan three days” prior to his departure for Massachusets, during which “Iris and Violet took their pay for the week and went to the mainland and bought cream and milk…Candace Lark caught a cod and Eha caught a bucket of clams…Tabitha and Charlotte returned with sacks of corn… and Annie Parker snuck off and picked strawberries and raspberries and Blueberries…”(95). This event underscores the islanders’ support for one another and their ability to find joy and solidarity even in times of change. Moreover, several islanders display intelligence, creativity, and unique traits that distinguish them not only from the Apple Islanders but even the mainlanders. Ethan Honey is notably intelligent and artistically talented. His exceptional drawing skills set him apart, and his ability to capture the essence of his surroundings and people in his art highlights his creativity and perceptiveness; Esther Honey, the matriarch of the community, demonstrates remarkable resilience and strength. Despite her traumatic past, she leads her family and the island community with wisdom and compassion; Tabitha's intelligence displayed in her proficiency in latin and math–given the limited educational resource–serves as a testament to the hidden potential and talents of the islanders, which are often overlooked or dismissed by the mainlanders. Despite little phenotypical defects, and some physical shortcomings, intellectual and character traits that the islanders demonstrate challenge the patronizing and biased views held by the mainlanders, who tend to underestimate the islanders' intellectual capacities and cultural richness.

The power of art plays a vital role in the book too as the theme can be interpreted through two different lenses: one of which is an ‘archeological dig’ presented through the exhibit, seeing through the urban lens the artifacts and art pieces–by Ethan Honey–and the other being a direct look of Ethan Honey’s arts in the context of the book. 

Apple Islanders, representing the Maines who are the premise of the story, struggling to fit in a world brutally intolerant of difference finally has their lives revealed to the public. The exhibit–Harding’s attempt to tell a story of the love and closeness of the forgotten–displays various pieces by Ethan Honey, who captured the mundane but meaningful daily lives of his loved ones: “Perhaps the most remarkable quality of this drawing is how Honey managed to capture not only the glossy wetness of the block of ice, but the light inside it,” an “intuitive grasp of light and texture is also seen in the closely juxtaposed layers of the lemon slice’s skin, rind, and pulp” (179) the first art piece reveals. Followed by a portrait of Birdget, which portrays her in “a slanted brim bucket cloche hat…a festoon necklace with five diamond floret pendants” with a “charming slight tilt of the head, a wistful half-smile”(181); and a crayon capturing Lark family’s “full head of hair, [Mr.Lark’s] attentive expression, the evident care with which he is polishing a plate”(187).... All of which provided insights into the eventful and self-sufficient lives of the islanders, in contrast to the traditional biases. 

Ethan Honey, throughout the story, has produced more art pieces: to capture the daily lives of loved ones he surround himself with, and to paint the nature, land where he finds peace and beauty. He depicted scnenes wholesome and loving prior to his permanent departure: he observed an islander “olive-green, now yellow, now purple cascading into blue” and “from a ledge halfway up the bluff, [he] watched his sisters return… and drew the channel and the patterned flowing water and his sisters breasting against it” (77). He attempted to capture a single moment in their lives, framing it to preserve the love. He thought the “carbon sisters on [his] drawing will always be in the carbon water, crossing the carbon channel, beneath a carbon sun, watched from above by people of bones and blood and muscle and mind”(79); People he mentioend could be interpreted as Ethan, the Honey family, islander as a whole–as they all care for each other–as well as the modern population decades later who perhaps may, in retrospect, understand the lives of those ‘castouts’.  

Family, whether it be the Honeys, and Larks, or the islanders as a whole, represent some type of beauty, shunned by the society in which people evaluate others by conventional standards but prospering exclusively on their island. The families on the island are unconventional. Knowing that “no good ever came of being noticed by mainlanders…by white people”(42), they decided even to reproduce among themselves. Although the Honey family cherishes each other, Esther had a rough decision to make when she almost drowned her own baby–being impregnated by her father; Iris and Violet have no biological children but chose to take care of Norma Sockalexis, Scotty and Emily; Candace and Theophilus are siblings, yet they still are married and have biological children. Each of these incestuous families are unconventional, peculiar, even despicable, and yet the novel portrays them with dignity, questioning what right outsiders have to judge their lives as it was portrayed to be just like any other mainlander family–having benign and loving relationships, social and gender roles, and most importantly, self-sufficient. The families on the island, including Zachery, survive, prosper, and depart the island almost simultaneously, as their lifestyles depend on one another. In the end when rabbit was inadvertently wounded and killed, and Ethan missing, the islanders seemed to have yielded to their fate of being evicted, fearful and unwilling to undergo any more conflicts and oppressions that may cause them to lose any more family members. This large family may even represent the greater population of the persecuted ones among the society, hopeless, oppressed but never dies out: Zach, “chest-deep in the water… held what looked like an old faded and patched flag bundled and knotted together by the corners above his head”(221). Having Zachery’s actions tie back to when the island community was first founded perhaps foreshadows the rising of future populations like them. 

In conclusion, the book masterfully explores how devastating patronizing views may have on a minority community. Despite their rich and self-sustained lifestyles; loving bonds within families and the community; and meaningful culture and traditions, as Harden portrayed through a third person persepctive, being imposed of external values makes minorties suseptible to mainlanders’ biased judgements. In other words, prejudice and ignorance can obliterate a vibrant culture. The characters’ resilience, creativity, valuable traits, and the power of art underscore the inherent worth and dignity of the islanders–even when they’re handicapped both physically and mentally. Harding’s narrative functions as a poignant reminder of the importance of empathy, open-mindedness, and the importance to embrace differences. The demise of the Apple Island community stands as a warning against the danger of arrogance.