On My Honor

The river stench is a symbol of Joel’s guilt. When Mrs. Zabrinsky reaches out to touch his arm, Joel moves violently from her touch, as if he is corrupted and should not be touched by others, “sure that the stink of the river rose from him like a vapor” (72). His mother sits beside him and he’s certain that she can smell him, but the author reveals that this is entirely Joel’s imagination when his father tell him that he “can’t smell anything” (86).

When Mrs. Zabrinsky shares that Tony is afraid of the water, she quickly feels bad that she told Joel because she thinks Tony might be embarrassed. There is a dramatic irony in this moment: Joel knows that Tony could not be embarrassed because he is not alive, but for Mrs. Zabrinsky her son is still alive so she still doesn’t want to embarrass him in front of his friends.

As he lies in bed, Joel wonders if it would’ve been better if they’d climbed the bluffs together because “at least he wouldn’t have been left behind” (75). Joel is exhibiting survivor’s guilt, a psychological phenomenon that many survivors experience following traumatic situations. The “suffocating darkness” of Joel’s bedroom and the sensation of his burning tongue evoke vivid sensory associations. This language makes concrete the turbulent, abstract emotions Joel wrestles with as he struggles to keep a terrible secret.

When Joel witnesses the Zabrinskys’ profound grief and despair, he wants to run, but “his feet refused to carry him in that direction” (81). As Joel pounds his father’s torso, his dad allows him to punch because he knows that Joel is in immense pain and searching for a scapegoat. Though he tells his father he hates him and blames him, Joel still feels deep down that “Tony died because of him” (81). Through Joel’s wide-ranging reactions, the author explores the darkest emotions humans experience when they confront deep loss: sadness, regret, anger, guilt, hatred, and eventually, understanding and acceptance.

When Joel takes the first step toward acceptance of Tony’s death, his father’s empathetic nature shines. Joel confesses the entirety of the day’s events, including what he feels most guilty for, which is that he dared Tony to swim, but his father says that what happened will be “a hard thing to live with […] but there is nothing else to be done” (87). When Joel asks his father if he can smell the river, his father says that he can’t, and Joel realizes that it was a creation of his guilty conscience. The punishment that Joel expected is nowhere to be found: His father has the wisdom to realize that Joel has already punished himself.

Tony’s death leads Joel to contemplate the afterlife and whether there is a heaven. Rather than asserting that Tony is in heaven, Joel’s father uses the word “if,” leaving room for the possibility that heaven does not exist. The author makes the choice of ending the book on this melancholy note rather than assuring the reader that Tony is in heaven. Joel’s father says that he believes that perhaps there is something more after life than simply death, but he is honest in telling Joel that no one knows the answers to these questions. This ambiguousness completes a narrative about an adolescent coming to accept life’s uncertainties.