Ethan Brand Summary & Analysis

Ethan Brand represents intellectualism, while Bartram’s lack of thoughtfulness and his athletic physique represent a more bodily and instinctual approach to life. Both approaches are limited, but Bartram’s at least provides a useful product—lime—in the end. The flashes of firelight that illuminate the clearing symbolize the limitations of human perception, as the firelight shows nearby things but obscures the night sky. When Bartram closes the door, the moon and the pink clouds reappear, but the hut and the trees disappear. This suggests that one perspective isn’t better than the other; they are complementary. One can only see the whole picture by alternately welcoming one perspective and then the other.

Bartram and Joe benefit from each other’s company. Joe’s sensitivity balances his father’s unimaginative nature, warning them both that there’s something strange about the approaching figure. (The stranger is implied to be Brand, since he suggests that he’s returning “home” to the kiln he used to work in.) In contrast, Brand has apparently become so used to his isolation that he expects to be unwelcomed wherever he goes, even when he comes home. Brand approaches in darkness, indicating the limits of his knowledge, despite his lengthy quest to find the Unpardonable Sin. When Bartram opens the kiln door, he and Joe can see Brand—but only his superficial, physical form. The personality that lies beneath isn’t immediately evident, because human perception is limited. In contrast, Brand stares into the fire as if he expects to find something hidden within it, thus demonstrating his interest in what lies below the surface appearance of things.

Brand’s awkward attempt to talk with Bartram betrays his social isolation and arrogance. He seems to expect Bartram to recognize him, even though there’s no indication that the men knew each other before Brand left and Bartram took over the kiln. Although Brand is nondescript in his plain clothing, his expression in the firelight alarms the sensitive Joe. Given repeated suggestion that the kiln’s flames are—or are at least related to—hellfire, the fiery gleam in Brand’s eyes points to his transformation from human being into a hard-hearted, possibly evil creature.

Brand’s reputation precedes him; his search for knowledge has yielded him fame as well as the Unpardonable Sin. In keeping with his legendary status, he introduces himself in the third person, an act that demonstrates his arrogant belief in his superiority over other people, like Bartram. It also hints at the distance between the Ethan Brand of old and the transformed man who has returned. His return to the starting point of the quest foreshadows the revelation that he found what he was looking for close to home. 

Brand’s cyclical journey—away and back again, out into the world to find a sin that lies in his own soul—show the fruitlessness of pure knowledge. Brand has discovered the Unpardonable Sin, but without empathy or human connection, the knowledge doesn’t take him anywhere. His bitter laughter, which indicates hopelessness and shame rather than joy and success confirms Joe’s intuition and provides further evidence for the boy’s sensitivity. Furthermore, the extremely alarming sound again suggests that the quest has transformed Brand into something inhuman.

Throughout the story, the common noun “fiend” stands for non-specific devils or demonically inspired creatures, while the proper noun “Devil” represents Satan himself. If Ethan Brand’s laugh is fiendish, then, it’s because his search for knowledge transformed him from a man into something closer to a monster.

Although Bartram doesn’t want to be alone with Brand, it’s impossible for him to avoid feeling connected to Brand as a fellow human being. Unfortunately, he only knows Brand’s reputation, so he experiences that connection through his sense of shared sinfulness. In contrast, Brand believes that the Unpardonable Sin distinguishes him from others, so he doesn’t appear to feel the same connection as Bartram.

Even though the two men watch the kiln together, Brand’s intense sense of isolation maintains the distance between them. This yet again demonstrates Brand’s difference from other people: neither Bartram nor the villagers can imagine his near-total isolation from humanity, so in their stories they invent a demon to keep him company at the kiln. Whereas Bartram burns lime impartially, without much thought, it seems that the solitary nature of the job caused Brand to ruminate on the nature of sin to the point that it may have actually driven him to commit sin. Bartram’s—and the readers’—feeling that Brand’s quest for knowledge was unnatural or possibly evil slowly builds through imagining Brand’s late-night conversations with his own personal demon.

Bartram’s fear makes his laughter sound hollow, but it’s still less alarming than Brand’s, further underscoring Brand’s abnormality. Standing close to the flames, Brand begins to look like a fiend to Bartram, suggesting his devilish transformation. Brand confirms his fiendishness when he brags about his guilt. The image of passing Satan on the road suggests the depths of evil he has reached: Satan was cast out of heaven for his sins, but Brand’s thinks the sin he committed is even worse. Notably, he doesn’t demonstrate any shame or guilt over his sins; instead, he seems proud of their immorality. 

Ironically, the very act of looking for the Unpardonable Sin caused Brand to commit it. His quest for knowledge is thus related to the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Bible. God forbade Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of this tree, but they ate it anyway to find out about the nature of good and evil. But in disobeying God, learning about evil meant sinning at the same time. Likewise, Brand’s quest for knowledge leads directly to the intellectual pride, social isolation, and misanthropy that make up the Unpardonable Sin. His attitude suggests that his disinterest in being pardoned is perhaps what makes his sin Unpardonable, rather than the nature of the sin itself.

The gulf between Brand’s certainty that he alone has committed the Unpardonable Sin and Bartram’s belief that Brand is more likely to be insane than a dreadful sinner illustrates the wide range of opinion that divides people. This gap suggests that human judgment is imperfect, and without hard evidence either way, the question of Brand’s sinfulness remains open. Moreover, Bartram’s persistent refusal to believe that Brand’s sins are categorically different than his own suggests that Brand isolates himself in part because companionship with others compromises his sense of pride—which is a component of the Unpardonable Sin.

The Stage Agent’s body bears the signs of old age, although he still dresses well. He thus symbolizes both continuity and change over time, which contrasts with Brand’s assertions of complete transformation. The changes Lawyer Giles has undergone since Brand’s departure are more drastic, yet he, too, has maintained key elements of his temperament and thus escapes becoming a pitiable figure. Lawyer Giles also demonstrates one of the limits of knowledge: in itself, it is essentially worthless. Without the ability to practice law, his training and education do not benefit him.

Like Lawyer Giles, the Village Doctor demonstrates the emptiness of knowledge without practice: although he still visits patients, he’s stopped having a meaningful impact on whether they recover or die. The fact that people still call a doctor who swears incessantly and shows up drunk testifies to humans’ imperfect judgement of one another’s virtues and faults. On another note, the story once again associate hell with fire, and fire with a character’s sinful behavior (in this case, the Village Doctor’s pipe smoke is associated with his swearing).

Lawyer Giles, the Village Doctor, and the Stage Agent instinctively try to form a feeling of community with Brand by offering him a drink. But Brand’s alienation and social incompetence have already become apparent in his awkward interactions with Bartram. This encounter suggests that Brand maintains his isolation by choice because interaction with normal people compromises his fanaticism.  

Intellectual pride and separation from humanity are not only the form of Brand’s sin, but also how he maintains a belief in his sinfulness. Ironically, although he characterizes his sin as separation from humanity, he needs to be around other people to assure himself that he is, indeed, especially sinful. He reinforces his sense of guilt by declaring the tavern-goers’ sins unremarkable—even though the Village Doctor may be guilty of manslaughter. When the doctor reveals an important part of the backstory—that he once treated Brand  for insanity—he calls Brand’s transformation into question. Like Bartram earlier, the Village Doctor believes that Brand is an ordinary sinner.

Humphrey’s disheveled and wild state provides yet another mirror for Brand’s decline. He, like the doctor, also unlocks an important piece of background information: the loss of his daughter at Ethan Brand’s hands. In the 19th-century context of the story, Esther’s fate as a circus performer certainly insinuates immorality and loss of status. Yet, the reports that come back to the village emphasize her success and beauty, so it’s not at all clear that she has been as ruined as Brand wants to believe. In the privacy of his own memory, Brand reasserts his conviction that he’s the Unpardonable Sinner, yet again pointing out how much  guilt and sinfulness lie in the eye of the human beholder. In any case, however, Esther’s story shows how Brand became so consumed with his search for knowledge that he drew other people in to use as research subjects (though it’s unclear how, exactly, he experimented on them). So, her story provides a cautionary tale about the dangers of human knowledge without morality or empathy.

The German Jew’s traveling show emphasizes the size of the world and the length of history. While this suggests a reason for Brand leaving the kiln—the area was too isolated for his research—it also points out the finite nature of human knowledge, which is limited by time and space. Brand is unlikely to have any ultimate knowledge of good and evil because his experience is limited to his single perspective. The German Jew recalls the story of the Wandering Jew who, according to folklore, taunted Jesus Christ on his way to the cross and was cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming. By invoking the crucifixion, the German Jew offers a quiet reminder of God’s mercy toward sinners—at least those who seek forgiveness. However, in his eternal punishment, the Wandering Jew also offers a warning to unbelievers that this mercy isn’t automatic—he was cursed because he didn’t believe that Jesus was the Messiah. On another note, Joe’s brief turn in the German Jew’s magnifying box transforms him into something monstrous, but only for a moment. This suggests that transformation isn’t an irrevocable process, at least in people. No one but Brand  himself believes that he’s not salvageable, and this belief alone is what ensures that he isn’t.

No one else sees what Brand does—or thinks he does—in the box, although the German Jew knows what it is. The German’s reference to the Unpardonable Sin suggests that Brand is reacting to his own sinfulness and guilt. Because he alludes to the figure of the Wandering Jew, the German may represent another sinner who is just as unapologetic as Brand.

The dog chasing his tail invokes the ouroboros, an ancient symbol of a snake eating its own tail. This image is usually interpreted to represent the inevitable and cyclical nature of transformation—particularly the cycle of birth, life, and death. In this instance, the dog serves as a metaphor for Brand’s quest for knowledge. The fact that the dog can’t catch its own tail implies that Brand’s search for the Unpardonable Sin, which supposedly lies in his own heart, has been similarly impossible, since he can never know for sure (nor prove to others) if he really has found it. Moreover, the Unpardonable Sin (as Brand sees it) is circular in the fact that searching for it necessarily entails committing it—which means that it can’t be objectively assessed. In searching for the Unpardonable Sin, then, Brand has become his own enemy, driving himself away from human connection and behaving against his own interests. Where the dog makes a lot of noise, Brand makes many assertions of his own sinfulness—but without presenting any evidence or referencing anything external to himself that could be used to evaluate his claims.

While laugher at the dog brought the rest of the crowd together, Brand’s laugher both demonstrates his isolation and reinforces it by driving everyone else away. Joe’s feeling that the forest is scared like him shows the deep-seated human need for understanding and community: if his father remains unaffected by Brand, Joe will imagine himself a companion in nature. Brand, however, so welcomes solitude that he sends the others off to bed.

Joe’s sensitivity to the feelings of those around him makes him the sharp but kind observer of humanity that Ethan Brand once was. Unlike Brand, however, Joe still has empathy for others—including someone as alienating as Brand himself. His tears of pity for Brand contrast with Brand’s pitiless experimentation on other people and his sinful pride. In this way, Joe is someone who is perhaps just as introspective and intellectual as Brand, yet his companionship with his father and communion with other people prevent him from the same moral corruption Brand has fallen into.

Brand’s transformation from illiterate laborer to heartless philosopher seems to offer a warning against the pursuit of knowledge. But, as Brand himself realizes, the search for knowledge itself is not inherently good or bad. Early on, even Brand understood that the knowledge he sought was dangerous, and when his intellectual and emotional motivations were in line—when his mind and his heart were in balance—he feared success. He went astray when a desire for pure knowledge overpowered his sense of humility and empathy. Now, his shriveled heart testifies the limits of human knowledge in and of itself.

Brand’s isolation and quest for knowledge are intimately connected. He never articulates a purpose for discovering the Unpardonable Sin, which suggests that his quest would never have benefitted anyone. Thus, he progressed from considering the whole of human nature, good and bad, to experiments that only considered its criminal and sinful aspects. In Christian theology, fiends or demons tempt people into committing sins. So, because Brand’s experiments manipulated people into committing crimes, he himself became demonic. In considering his sin a “delicious fruit,” Brand alludes to the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible: they committed the Original Sin by disobeying God to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. But if Brand ate the fruit of knowledge like Adam and Eve, he also played the role of Satan, tempting himself to do so. 

Brand’s sense of purposelessness yet again points to the emptiness of pure knowledge in itself: the discoveries he’s made give him a sense of accomplishment, although he hasn’t improved himself or helped anyone else along the way. The flames of the kiln once again evoke hellfire, and Brand throws himself into them to guarantee the punishment he feels he deserves. By enacting his own punishment, he asserts his superiority not only to other people but also to God, whom he denies the chance to judge his guilt. Additionally, Brand finalizes his alienation in this moment, as he dies alone in flames that he finds friendlier than the company of other people. 

Brand’s life ends with his alienating laughter rather than with any testimony that would improve the world or anyone’s lives with the knowledge he’s found in his quest. In this way, his isolation from humanity is complete. Bartram’s willingness to watch the kiln alone forever rather than to be subjected to Brand’s company further emphasizes how far outside of humanity Brand fell.

In contrast to the night’s focus on darkness and sin, everything looks brighter and happier in the light of day. The morning reasserts a view of the world directed by God: the village is nestled in and protected by His “great hand of Providence.” Nature (represented by the mountains, mist, and clouds) and civilization (seen in the villages and the church spires) both reach up toward heaven. The heavenly view that the morning reveals suggests that Brand’s perspective was limited (as represented by the fact that he came to the kiln at night, when this view was obscured by darkness), and it serves as a reminder that human knowledge in general is limited.

In the end, Brand’s heart of stone demonstrates both the degree of his transformation and the emptiness of his quest for knowledge. Up to this point, the story has been completely realistic—Brand even mocked Bartram for believing that he could summon a demon from the kiln’s flames. By reversing that stance here and literalizing Brand’s metaphorically hard heart, the story underlines the degree to which he strayed from humanity. Because the heart represents the center of human emotion, Bartram’s decision to incorporate Brand’s remains into the lime might seem shocking. The last connection between Brand and humanity is destroyed, and he’s denied even the dignity of a normal burial. This cold treatment underlines the futility of his quest for knowledge: Brand leaves literally nothing behind of himself. His pride in his accomplishments and knowledge are, in the end, only mineral dust.