Ethan Brand Summary

While tending their lime kiln one evening, Bartram and his son Joe hear an eerie laugh and footsteps approaching their clearing. A gloomy stranger greets them and identifies himself as Ethan Brand, the same man who tended their kiln many years ago, before he left to discover the Unpardonable Sin. Bartram sends Joe to the village tavern to spread the news of Brand’s return.

While he is gone, Bartram recalls the stories about Brand, which claim that he summoned the Devil himself from the flames of the kiln to discuss the Unpardonable Sin. Bartram’s fear of being alone with someone who’s committed an unforgivable sin is somewhat soothed when Brand helps him tend the fire, but Brand can’t resist asking about the Unpardonable Sin. Brand believes that he himself committed the Unpardonable Sin when he chose intellectual pride over human connection and reverence for God. However, he admits that he would commit the same sin again, if given the chance.

Joe soon returns, bringing the Stage-Agent, Lawyer Giles, and the Village Doctor—men who have succumbed to alcoholism in the years since Brand left. He also brings Humphrey, a wild old man who spends his time searching for his lost daughter, Esther. Brand rejects the tavern-goers’ friendly gestures of welcome and denies any knowledge of Esther’s whereabouts, although he subjected her to one of his experiments in human sinfulness long ago and likely ruined her soul in the process. The men take offense to Brand’s prideful attitude and don’t believe his claims that he’s uniquely sinful, instead writing him off as mad.

While the older men talk, young people from the village and a passing “German Jew” join them at the kiln. After the German entertains the crowd with his traveling picture show, a dog in the crowd makes a scene by wildly chasing its own tail. Everyone begins to laugh and applaud, until Ethan Brand joins them. His awful, uncanny laugh alarms everybody, and the crowd disperses.

When the others have left, Brand tells Bartram and Joe to go to bed, offering to watch the fire himself during the night. Once he is alone, Brand thinks back to his early days watching the kiln before his quest for knowledge hardened his heart and separated him from other people. Realizing that his life’s work is done, he runs to the top of the kiln and throws himself in. At this very moment, both Bartram and Joe hear his frightening laughter in their dreams.

In the morning, they find Brand gone, and Bartram hurries to check the kiln in case Brand’s negligence has ruined the lime. The lime is fine, and on top of the heap lies Brand’s skeleton, with a heart of stone nestled between the ribs. Although he wonders briefly about the miraculous nature of Brand’s transformation in the fire, Bartram quickly concludes that Brand’s remains will add to the value of his lime, and he crumbles them into the batch.