Brotherhood and Betrayal: The Fractured Bond Between Chapman and Nathaniel in Appleseed

Thematic Claim: A Love That Betrays

In Matt Bell’s Appleseed, the bond between the faun Chapman and his human brother Nathaniel is both a sustaining gift and a source of deep wounds. Their brotherhood is defined not by simple loyalty but by a tragic mixture of love, secrecy, and betrayal—each brother’s hidden desires and conflicting allegiances (the wild versus civilization, the Tree of Forgetting versus earthly prosperity) tear them apart even as they remain bound together. The novel argues that intimate connection can coexist with profound betrayal, and that the very ties that sustain can also destroy.

Sowing Secrets: The Seeds of Betrayal

From their earliest journeys into the Ohio Territory, the brothers carry unspoken secrets. Chapman, driven by his quest for the mythical Tree whose apple could change his life, plants nurseries but resents the settled world he helps create. In chapter 6, he admits to himself that he envies the wild elk and wonders if without Nathaniel he might have become “a wilder creature, unbound from human wants.” This private dream contradicts the shared mission of building farms and towns—a dream that belongs entirely to Nathaniel.

Nathaniel, meanwhile, harbors his own resentments. In chapter 12, after weeks of grueling labor in a swamp, he snaps at Chapman over a broken gimlet, his anger “misplaced but genuine.” He blames Chapman for the hardship of their life, for their mother’s death, for the fact that they remain poor. Neither brother admits these feelings openly; instead, they let the distance grow, each convinced the other is holding them back.

The Confession and the Bullet: The Climax of Betrayal

The most explicit act of betrayal comes in chapter 38, when a drunken Nathaniel, bitter over Chapman’s fame, reveals a long-buried truth. He confesses that he once shot Chapman and dug the bullet from the faun’s chest—a bullet Nathaniel has carried as a “charm” in his pocket ever since. “If only Nathaniel hadn’t saved his brother’s life, ten years after he almost murdered him,” the narrative notes. This confession shatters the illusion of perfect brotherhood. Nathaniel’s love is real, but so is his rage; he loves Chapman because “the faun was the one thing in the world unlike any other, the one thing that was his alone to know,” yet that uniqueness also becomes a source of envy.

This moment reveals that betrayal can coexist with devotion: Nathaniel saves Chapman twice, but he also nearly kills him and secretly resents his brother’s very being. The bullet becomes a symbol of this unresolved tension—a piece of the past that Nathaniel can neither discard nor forgive.

The Horns of Sacrifice: Betraying the Self

After Nathaniel’s death (detailed in chapter 42), Chapman continues his life but at great personal cost. In chapter 47, he saws off his own horns to become fully human, trying to fit into the world of the Worth family. This self-mutilation is a betrayal of his faun nature, which was the essence of his bond with Nathaniel—Nathaniel had accepted him as a faun, even if reluctantly. By cutting away the horns, Chapman literally removes the part of himself that his brother had loved and feared. This act is both a rejection of his own identity and a desperate attempt to belong to a human family that ultimately rejects him anyway. The betrayal of self mirrors the earlier betrayals between the brothers: each tried to reshape the other, and now Chapman tries to reshape himself, with tragic results.

Beyond Death: A Fragile Reconciliation

In chapter 42, the night of Nathaniel’s death, the brothers share a tender moment: they sit back to back, smoking pipes, and Nathaniel rests his head between Chapman’s shoulder blades. Chapman thinks, “A brother is enough. A brother is a magnificent thing.” Yet even this peaceful scene is shadowed: Nathaniel dies in the night, and Chapman’s grief is interrupted by the song of the beheaded singer and the arrival of the witches. Their brotherhood is never fully resolved in life; it is only in death that Nathaniel becomes part of the orchard, his body fertilizing the apple seeds Chapman plants on his grave.

The epilogue, set millennia later, shows ghosts of a horned faun and a floating nymph among the Tree’s offspring. These ghosts accept that “the new hope was never meant for them.” This suggests that the brotherhood, while enduring, could never be fully realized. The betrayal and secrets left too much unresolved.

Symbols of Brotherhood and Betrayal

The apples and seeds (symbols page) represent the potential of the brothers’ partnership—each seed carries a unique future, just as each brother carries a unique dream. But the seeds also symbolize the seeds of discord: the endless labor that fuels Nathaniel’s resentment and Chapman’s doubt. The Tree of Forgetting (symbols page) embodies Chapman’s desire to escape the weight of his compromises, including his brother’s betrayal. He wishes for an apple that would allow him to “awake fresh as a babe, freed from all your years, all your decisions, all your compromises.” This wish implicitly includes forgetting the bullet, the resentment, the failed dreams.

The three witches (symbols page) act as external agents of punishment for the brothers’ ecological sins. Their attacks force Chapman to confront his complicity in the destruction of the wild—a destruction he helped enable for Nathaniel’s sake. The witches are thus a manifestation of the larger betrayal of the earth that underpins the brothers’ personal betrayal.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel refuses to present a simple moral. Love and resentment coexist in every scene. Nathaniel saves Chapman twice, but also shoots him. Chapman loves Nathaniel enough to spend a decade planting orchards he doesn’t believe in, yet he refuses to give up his quest for the Tree. Their brotherhood is a space where kindness and cruelty, sacrifice and selfishness, are woven together. This complexity is what makes the theme so powerful: it mirrors real human relationships, where betrayal is not an absence of love but a distortion of it.

Study Questions

1. Why does Nathaniel carry the bullet he dug from Chapman? What does this reveal about his feelings? The bullet serves as a charm he fingers when he fears he will “say the words to break their long fellowship.” It shows that Nathaniel is haunted by his own violence but also uses the memory to control his resentment. He loves his brother but cannot let go of the injury—both the one he caused and the one Chapman’s fame inflicts on his pride.

2. How does Chapman’s secret quest for the Tree of Forgetting betray Nathaniel’s dreams? Chapman’s quest is a private goal that often takes priority over their shared work. He admits in chapter 6 that his faith in the Tree wavers, but he cannot give it up because “giving up the story . . . would mean abandoning Nathaniel too.” His pursuit diverts energy and attention from the nurseries, and it embodies a desire to escape the human world Nathaniel wants to build.

3. In what ways does Chapman’s decision to saw off his horns represent a betrayal of his own identity? The horns are a part of his faun nature, which is the core of his being and also the trait that made Nathaniel love him as unique. By cutting them off, Chapman tries to become fully human—a shape he associates with belonging, but which also erases the very thing that defined his bond with Nathaniel. He betrays himself in an attempt to avoid the same rejection he suffered from the Worth family.

4. How do the three witches function as agents of betrayal, punishing the brothers for their ecological damage? The witches, who have “become protectors of the land,” attack Chapman for his role in clearing forests and planting orchards. They represent the natural world’s revenge for the brothers’ betrayal of the wild. Their persecution forces Chapman to recognize his complicity: “It wasn’t the witches who cut down thousands of trees . . . it was men.”

5. Does the epilogue suggest that brotherhood survives betrayal, or is it ultimately a tragedy? The epilogue offers an ambiguous resolution. The ghosts of a faun and a nymph exist for millennia among the self-willed forest, but they “accept that the new hope was never meant for them.” Their survival hints that the bond endures, but their fading suggests that the betrayals and losses were too great to allow a full reconciliation. It is a quiet tragedy: love remains, but it cannot undo the past.