When Zamora refuses to answer Nanay's question about the fate of families, she removes the cloth covering her disfigured face and confronts him. Nanay wants to know what will happen to her daughter who is clean despite living with "her demonstrably dirty mother, for all her life." Zamora states that they are "introducing the segregation to save the innocents." who will be sent to the neighbouring island of Coron. Sister Margaritte and the others are stunned at this. Zamora tells her they will be sent to an orphanage. When Sister Margaritte reminds him that the children have parents, Zamora tells her they would be living in what will become the largest leper colony in the world if they stay. He reveals that both Father Fernan and Dr. Tomas have agreed to this plan.Everyone on Culion must undergo a medical inspection; those children under the age of eighteen who do not have leprosy will "enter the care of the Director of Health...and will be transported to the CORON ORPHANAGE." As expected Nanay is found to have leprosy but Ami is designated as "clean" meaning she will have to leave her mother and go to Coron. Nanay is devastated.
Bondoc along with his brother Capuno who has leprosy, Nanay and Ami go with Sister Margaritte to present a petition to Mr. Zamora requesting that the children of those parents with leprosy be allowed to stay in the areas marked "Sano" on Culion. However Mr. Zamora cruelly rejects the petition telling them, "We want to end this disease. And do you know how we kill a disease? We stop ...it...breeding."
In their remaining time together, Ami and Nanay do many things together; plant a vegetable garden, and spend several days visiting their favourite beach, catching shrimp and crabs. One day they see a boat arrive filled with over one hundred "Touched" - that is people with leprosy. When Ami goes to help the boat moor, Nanay becomes frantic believing she is trying to get leprosy so she can stay on Culion.
Then Ami learns that the next day she along with the other "clean" children will be leaving Culion for the island of Curon with Mr. Zamora.She tells Nanay that she will return and that she will write her. Nanay tells Ami a story which turns out to be about herself and Ami's father. Nanay loved a boy who loved her too. They wanted to be married but were too young and he was too sick. They lived together in a house with a blue roof and red gumamella flowers climbing the walls. However, Nanay's family found her and took her back home. She soon became ill with leprosy and was sent to Culion. There she discovered that she was pregnant and when the baby was born she named it Amihan after the winds that bring the monsoon rains.
The next morning Ami and Nanay are told by Sister Margeritte that instead of leaving from the nearby port, Ami and the other children will ride in a cart with Mr. Zamora to the "Sano" port. Along with her is Kidlat, a little five-year-old boy and several girls from school. Mr. Zamora who studies butterflies, brings along five brown boxes with air holes in the tops, and a glass case filled with chrysalises which he angrily protects.
The long ride to the Sano port is punctuated by a catastrophe in which Mr. Zamora loses a box of his butterflies when the horse is startled. After the crossing to Coron, Ami and the others arrive at the orphanage to settle in. Will Ami ever see her beloved Nanay again? However when Mr. Zamora becomes increasingly hostile and paranoid, resulting in a serious accident and the threat to send Ami and her new friend Mari away, Ami knows she must find a way back to see her desperately ill Nanay.
Discussion
The Island at the End of Everything is a fictional account of a young girl's experience living in the leper colony on Culion Island in the Philippines in 1906. Culion Island is part of the Calamian archipelago in the province of Palawan. The island came under American jurisdiction in 1898 when the Spanish sold the Philippines to the Americans. The island was seen as an ideal location for a leper colony, the purpose of which was to eradicate the disease rather than simply help those with leprosy. Leprosy afflicted almost four thousand people on the Philippine Islands in the early twentieth century. With over a thousand new cases each year, it was a serious public health concern. Culion Island was formally established as a leprosarium in 1902 as segregation of leprosy patients became public health policy in the Philippines under American occupation. In 1906, the first patients from Cebu Island arrived via Coast Guard boats and soon patients from other islands were brought to Culion. Many Filipinos were resistant to the segregation as it meant separating family members in a culture that was strongly family oriented. Culion was staffed by the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Paul of Chartres as well as a Jesuit priest and Dr. Charles de Mey who was the colony's physician.
The author bases her novel on historical fact but incorporates fictional characters to create a story. The story is divided into three segments, a prologue written in second person present tense which introduces the reader to the unique setting of this novel - a beautiful green island that became the world's largest leper colony, the main body of the story written in first person present tense and the epilogue in which the reader meets Ami thirty years later, written in third person past tense suggesting that she has been telling the orphan, Sol who has wandered, lost on her way back to Manila, to her home, her story all along.
While all the characters in this short novel are fictional, Millwood Hargrave has stated that Nanay is based off of her own mother. The Island at the End of Everything has richly developed characters; Ami in a caring compassionate young girl who devotedly cares for her sick mother. Despite her mother's disfigured face with it's missing nose, Ami sees her humanity. She is so determined to be with her mother when she becomes desperately ill, that she undertakes a remarkable journey that almost costs her her own life. Ami demonstrates how strong the bond can be between mother and daughter. Then there are Sisters Margaritte and Teresa who are courageous and kind, attempting to protect the children from an uncaring bureaucrat who has a distorted view of illness.
In contrast to these characters is Mr. Zamora. It is the character of Mr. Zamora, the government's representative in charge of the orphanage on Curon who drives the plot. Zamora is a lepidopterists, someone who studies butterflies. His room is filled with numerous mounted butterflies "lined up like school children, or an army, in neat rows." Zamora refuses the parents (of Untouched children) petition to allow their children to remain on Culion. He believes what the government is doing is a kindness to the Untouched children, "giving them a clean life." He compares it to what he does with the butterflies, "Take these butterflies, he says gesturing at the walls. 'They have never known disease, or danger. I even give them a clean death -- is that not a kindness? They are beautiful. Clean. Untouched by the world." Never once does Zamora consider how the government's actions nor his treatment of the lepers and their families on Culion might affect them. Instead, Zamora views the children who do not have leprosy like his butterflies, to be preserved at all cost.
Yet despite his cruel treatment of Ami and her friends Kidlat and Mari, she forgives him, recognizing that his fear was a part of his sickness. Ami is able, years later to see the good in Zamora - she admits his first book on butterflies is exceptional. But she tells Sol, "By all accounts he lived in a prison of his own making by the end. His sickness got worse and worse -- it was punishment enough, I think." Ami believes "He did not have a life even a quarter as good as mine has already been."
Hargrave weaves a touching story that goes full circle, when fate intervenes, bring a young orphan girl, Sol to her home late one evening. Sol, who is lost after traveling to get a crate of oranges from a grove for her mistress, ends up at Ami's home. Ami is now a lepidopterist, someone who studies butterflies. But unlike Zamora, Ami does not kill the butterflies but instead has created beautiful gardens to keep them safe, with nets to prevent the bats from killing them. When she helps Sol return to Manila, to the orphanage now run by a kind mistress, with a new crate of oranges from her own grove, Ami meets those she lost so long ago.
The author bases her novel on historical fact but incorporates fictional characters to create a story. The story is divided into three segments, a prologue written in second person present tense which introduces the reader to the unique setting of this novel - a beautiful green island that became the world's largest leper colony, the main body of the story written in first person present tense and the epilogue in which the reader meets Ami thirty years later, written in third person past tense suggesting that she has been telling the orphan, Sol who has wandered, lost on her way back to Manila, to her home, her story all along.
While all the characters in this short novel are fictional, Millwood Hargrave has stated that Nanay is based off of her own mother. The Island at the End of Everything has richly developed characters; Ami in a caring compassionate young girl who devotedly cares for her sick mother. Despite her mother's disfigured face with it's missing nose, Ami sees her humanity. She is so determined to be with her mother when she becomes desperately ill, that she undertakes a remarkable journey that almost costs her her own life. Ami demonstrates how strong the bond can be between mother and daughter. Then there are Sisters Margaritte and Teresa who are courageous and kind, attempting to protect the children from an uncaring bureaucrat who has a distorted view of illness.
In contrast to these characters is Mr. Zamora. It is the character of Mr. Zamora, the government's representative in charge of the orphanage on Curon who drives the plot. Zamora is a lepidopterists, someone who studies butterflies. His room is filled with numerous mounted butterflies "lined up like school children, or an army, in neat rows." Zamora refuses the parents (of Untouched children) petition to allow their children to remain on Culion. He believes what the government is doing is a kindness to the Untouched children, "giving them a clean life." He compares it to what he does with the butterflies, "Take these butterflies, he says gesturing at the walls. 'They have never known disease, or danger. I even give them a clean death -- is that not a kindness? They are beautiful. Clean. Untouched by the world." Never once does Zamora consider how the government's actions nor his treatment of the lepers and their families on Culion might affect them. Instead, Zamora views the children who do not have leprosy like his butterflies, to be preserved at all cost.
Yet despite his cruel treatment of Ami and her friends Kidlat and Mari, she forgives him, recognizing that his fear was a part of his sickness. Ami is able, years later to see the good in Zamora - she admits his first book on butterflies is exceptional. But she tells Sol, "By all accounts he lived in a prison of his own making by the end. His sickness got worse and worse -- it was punishment enough, I think." Ami believes "He did not have a life even a quarter as good as mine has already been."
Hargrave weaves a touching story that goes full circle, when fate intervenes, bring a young orphan girl, Sol to her home late one evening. Sol, who is lost after traveling to get a crate of oranges from a grove for her mistress, ends up at Ami's home. Ami is now a lepidopterist, someone who studies butterflies. But unlike Zamora, Ami does not kill the butterflies but instead has created beautiful gardens to keep them safe, with nets to prevent the bats from killing them. When she helps Sol return to Manila, to the orphanage now run by a kind mistress, with a new crate of oranges from her own grove, Ami meets those she lost so long ago.
The Island at the End of Everything is a poignant exploration of the themes of forgiveness, the meaning of family and friendship, purity and how society views those with serious illnesses such as leprosy. Kiran Millwood Hargrave is a London-born, poet, playwright and novelist whose poetic prose allows younger readers to explore worlds very different from their own.
Book Details:
The Island at the End of Everything by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2018
243 pp.
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