Ethan Brand

"Ethan Brand—A Chapter from an Abortive Romance" is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, first published in 1850.

Plot summary

The story begins with a lime-burner called Bartram and his son hearing a disturbing roar of laughter echo through the twilight in the hills. Soon there-after, the eponymous Ethan Brand arrives at the lime kiln and is questioned by Bartram.

Ethan Brand tells of how he used to keep the very same kiln before he went off in search of the "unpardonable sin", which he then reports to have found. When asked where the unpardonable sin is, Brand places an indicative finger on his own heart. When asked what the unpardonable sin is, Brand replies, “It is a sin that grew within my own breast. A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims! The only sin that deserves a recompense of immortal agony! Freely, were it to do again, would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept the retribution!" Bartram hears this but doesn't understand and mutters to himself that Brand is a mad man.

Soon thereafter, a group of townspeople arrive at the scene to gawk at the returned seeker-after-sin. In the course of his interactions with the townspeople, most of whom are of the variety of drunk-old-man-with-smoke-stained-semblance, Ethan Brand is disturbed by their coarse behavior to the point of doubting whether he actually found the unpardonable sin. When the townspeople compare Brand to another so called 'madman' called Humphrey, Brand is prodded to recall a individual victim of his search, one Esther [who happens to be the Humphrey's daughter] who left the province on her own trajectory to become a circus performer and who subsequently became the subject of an unspecified psychological experiment that Ethan Brand performed. Brand remembers that the research, "wasted, absorbed, and perhaps annihilated her soul, in the process," and so he is again full of conviction that he did indeed find the "unpardonable sin."

At this point in the story there is a quick transition and a Wandering Jew carrying a diorama on his back joins the scene out in the post-twilight hills near the kiln. The children of the town all flock to the Jew to see his images, and while they apparently find the images somewhat delightful, when Brand looks into the show box, it is unclear what he sees. Having looked, he addresses the so called Jew of Nuremberg in a desultory manner and bids him get 'into yonder furnace.'

Another quick transition and a village dog starts to fanatically chase his own tail. After the dogs despicable show is done, the villagers head home and Ethan Brand is left with Bartram and his son. Ethan Brand offers to tend the fire overnight, so Bartram and the boy leave the scene, too.

After recounting and considering his own story for a while, Brand decides that his 'task is done, and well done,' and he climbs to the top of the kiln and falls into self immolation. When Bartram and his son awake in the morning, after a night of fitful sleep and dreams full of rolling maniacal laughter, they find the landscape populated by beautiful atmospheric phenomena that give them impressions of the coincidence of heaven and earth. When they realize that Ethan Brand is gone, and that "the sky and the mountains all seem glad of it," they look after the lime kiln and find that Ethan Brand's skeleton has turned to lime along with all of the ordinary marble. And inside the rib cage of the skeleton, they see a chunk of lime in the shape of a human heart. Giving the strange scene in the kiln but a moment's notice, Bartram, a rude lime burner, pokes the fragile artifacts with a pole and they crumble to dust.

Analysis

It is often believed that the main character in "Ethan Brand" was inspired by Herman Melville, though the story was written before Hawthorne and Melville had met. [Cheevers, Susan (2006). "American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau; Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work". Detroit: Thorndike Press. Large print edition. p. 198. ISBN 078629521X.]

Composition and publication history

In the summer of 1838, Hawthorne had visited North Adams, Massachusetts and climbed Mount Greylock several times. His experiences here, especially a walk he took at midnight where he saw a burning lime kiln, inspired this story, originally titled "The Unpardonable Sin". [Ehrlich, Eugene and Gorton Carruth. "The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States". New York: Oxford University Press, 1982: 54. ISBN 0195031865] Hawthorne had not written tales since 1844 when he wrote "Ethan Brand" in the winter of 1848–1849. [Miller, Edwin Haviland. "Salem is my Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne". Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991: 263. ISBN 0877453322] He admitted he had difficulty writing it. He wrote:

References

External links

[http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/eb.html Online text]