Sin and Justice in “Ethan Brand”, Essay Example

“Ethan Brand” is in many ways very typical of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works.  Firstly, it deals with a character who is obsessed with the ideas of sin and guilt, so much so that he turns himself away from others and from his own life and sacrifices all for the sake of his quest.  Secondly, it is heavily symbolic, with images of hellish fire and broken marble throughout the story which are a precursor to Ethan Brand’s end. Thirdly, it deals with a very grim and harsh concept of sin and its subsequent justice: in this paper, Brand’s unpardonable sin will be explored, and then whether or not Brand’s end was a just one.

The “Unpardonable Sin”

“Ethan Brand” is a dark tale which begins in the darkness of the night, with a lime-burner, Bartram, and his son Joe, who hears the sound of laughter that heralds the return of Ethan Brand.  Brand is a fanatic who, in the lonely and isolated job of lime-burning “mused to such strange purpose” (Hawthorne 2) went wandering away from the town years ago in his quest to find the “Unpardonable Sin”.  Bartram, not unnaturally, is curious about where the unpardonable sin was found, and, gravely, Ethan Brand points to his own heart.

As Brand and Bartram sit by the far together, the readers learns a little more of this man who has “committed the only crime for which Heaven could afford no mercy” (Hawthorne 3), and also hears of the gossip that has sprung up in the village, that Brand used to converse with the Devil in the flames of his kiln.  While Bartram converses with him, he is still curious and finally asks Brand what, exactly, the unpardonable sin entails. At this point, the reader learns that Brand considers his unpardonable sin to be “the sin of an intellect which triumphed over the sense of brotherhood and reverence for God and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims!” (Hawthorne, 5). In other words, Brand, in the process of musing too long on the concept of sin, has forgotten the most basic commandment to love your neighbor as yourself and has turned his back on humanity for the sake of his own dark thoughts.  His lack of empathy for his fellow man is obvious when he looks at the visitors from the local tavern, men he knew before he left the village, and says abruptly, “Leave me!” (Hawthorne 7).

After the strange conversation with the men at the tavern and the passing Jew with his diorama, Brand requests that Bartram and his son retire for the night while he himself tends the fire, something that Bartram is happy to do.  Alone near the flames, Brand thinks again how he has lost his humanity in his essentially selfish quest for sin: “he remembered with what tenderness, with what love and sympathy for mankind…he had first begun to contemplate these ideas (Hawthorne 11) but he realizes that his quest for sin had “disturbed the counterpoise between his mind and his heart” and that his heart had “withered – had contracted – had perished!” (Hawthorne, 11).  It is by this process of becoming heartless and stony, essentially wrapped up only in himself, that Hawthorne pronounces “Ethan Brand became a fiend” (Hawthorne 11). Driven mad by his thoughts, Brand climbs up to the top of the kiln and throws himself in during the course of the night.  When Bartram checks in the kiln the next day, he finds a skeleton there with a visible heart inside it and asks in wonder “Was the fellow’s heart made of marble?” (Hawthorne 14). He then breaks the skeleton to pieces to for lime and “the remains of Ethan Brand were crumbled into fragments” (Hawthorne 14).

Is Justice Served?

Clearly, in Hawthorne’s mind, justice has been served to Ethan Brand, and it is a concept of justice that is as harsh and dark as the concept of the sin which Brand was committed. Hawthorne in his novels and short stories dealt largely with people who commit some terrible deed and then spend the rest of their lives paying for it, crushed by guilt which only some sort of atonement can ease them of.   Hester Prynne, for instance, opted to continue to wear her scarlet letter for the rest of her life, even after the community would not have forced her to; for Brand, his atonement is the harsher one of self-immolation in the very kiln where his strange journey started in the first place.

Whether or not the reader agrees with it, the important thing is that, in Ethan Brand’s mind certainly, the punishment fits his crime – he, who has become hard and stony to his fellow human beings, ends his life being literally stony, especially his heart.  This is where the comparison with Peter Kreeft’s “A Parable of Walls” comes into play: like the character in the parable, Ethan Brand, too, “hated all walls, especially the needs, demands and ‘interferences’ of other people” (Kreeft, 165).  Both characters decide to wrap themselves selfishly in their own beliefs and isolate themselves from others. Curiously, both come to a similar end. The character in Kreeft’s parable “realized that the logic of his philosophy of life necessitated suicide” (Kreeft 165) and this is more or less the same conclusion that Brand reaches before he throws himself into his kiln.  Brand ends of up in the hellish flams of the kiln, while Kreeft’s character “fell forever and ever through the wall-free infinity of empty space and time which some call Hell” (Kreeft 166). Both characters seem to wind up with what they want in the end.

This concept of punishment for sin is one which runs through all of Hawthorne’s work. His version of Christianity is a dark, Calvinistic one, of “sinners in the hands of an angry God”, so to speak. What is surprising, though, is that in Hawthorne’s works justice does not seem to come from God per se, but from the characters themselves and the guilt that drives them to their acts.  Hester Prynne, perhaps Hawthorne’s most famous character, punishes herself more harshly than even her very judgmental community does.  Ethan Brand was not pushed into that kiln by the hand of God – he jumped himself.  The punishment is largely internalized, characters like Prynne and Brand seem to suffer the most from the way they themselves feel about what they have done.   This perhaps is a reflection of Hawthorne’s own feelings on the matter of sin: his ancestor was one of the judges in the Salem witch trials who condemned several people to die, and Hawthorne appears to have felt intensely guilty about what his family had done in the past, going to far as to alter his name slightly to distance himself from these actions (Education Portal 1).

Conclusion

The concepts of sin and justice in Hawthorne’s somewhat dark and guilt-ridden world probably seem a little alien to people of modern times who have not been raised in the tradition of the kind of Christianity practiced by the Puritans in Salem.  The justice that Hawthorne has in mind is severe and ultimately fits the crime which his characters have committed: Ethan Brand, stony and distance, ends his life literally turned to stone. But the idea of this being a fitting end cannot be lost upon the reader with the way Hawthorne tells his tale.

Works Cited

Kreeft, P. “A Parable About Walls”.  [insert bibliographical information here]

Hawthorne, N. “Ethan Brand”. The Snow-Image and other Twice-Told Tales.  1850. Print.

“Nathaniel Hawthorne: Biography, Works and Style” Education Portal. 2013. Web. 27 April 2014.