Honoyeta is the serpent-man of eastern Goodenough Island and the central figure of the Kalauna myth explaining the origin of death. By day he lay as a snake beside the hearth; by night he sloughed his reptile skin to become a beautiful young man and visit his two wives, whom he forbade to reveal his secret. When the deception was exposed and he was shamed, Honoyeta was seized by unuwewe, the resentful blend of grief and anger that Kalauna regards as the mainspring of destructive action. He resolved to die once and for all, and ordained that human beings would henceforth die permanently rather than renew themselves by shedding their skins as snakes do; in this way irreversible mortality entered the world. Sources also bind him to the sun, to scorching drought and to the sorcery of famine, so that his buried anger is felt whenever the gardens wither. Michael Young treats him as the archetype of the resentful hero whose withdrawal underlies Kalauna anxieties about hunger and abundance.