30 pages • 1 hour read
Nathaniel HawthorneEthan Brand
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1850A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Allegory
Most of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works feature allegory with moral corruption and the positive and negative aspects of Puritan ideology at the center of the stories. “Ethan Brand” is a largely allegorical story about how pride and careless pursuit of knowledge can corrupt people and cause them to inflict harm on others. The story’s three key themes—The Dangers of Amoral Intellectualism, Spiritual Damnation and Pride, and The Loneliness of Social Detachment and Rejection—all appear in the form of allegory. As a work of Dark Romanticism, “Ethan Brand” also uses allegory to show humanity’s inherent dark side, with Ethan Brand’s own curiosity about the Unpardonable Sin leading him to growing it inside his heart.
Ethan Brand is a highly philosophical and inquisitive man whose desire for knowledge pushes him to commit horrible acts against his fellow humans and he separates from them, both due to his lack of empathy and his spiritual or psychological separation from them. His decision to do so, however, has severe consequences for him. He loses his connection to other people, causing him to grow cold toward them. In turn, they reject him, seeing him as strange and unfriendly. He also loses his connection to nature, which also treats him as an unwelcome guest.
Ambiguity
Ambiguity is a common literary device that Dark Romantic writers in the 19th century used. It leaves details and events to the readers’ imaginations and interpretations and creates tension and suspense. Nathaniel Hawthorne includes ambiguity in several of his works, including “Ethan Brand,” “Young Goodman Brown,” and “The Minister’s Black Veil.”
In “Ethan Brand,” the titular protagonist states that he is found the Unpardonable Sin and that is in his own heart, born from his pursuit of intellect over love for God or other people. The narrator, however, does not state whether Ethan Brand is actually guilty of the Unpardonable Sin or he merely suffers from severe guilt for psychologically manipulating Esther and hates himself so much that he refuses to ask for forgiveness and is willing to be barred from heaven for it.
The imagery also provides some ambiguity in that while the strangeness of Ethan Brand and nature’s reaction to him implies that he has truly been condemned, he still disturbs Bartram and Joe more due to his strange and unusual behavior than because they truly believe that he has committed an unpardonable sin that has automatically condemned him, even after seeing his marble heart in his skeleton.
Imagery
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works are rich with imagery, especially of nature. “Ethan Brand” is no exception, with vivid descriptions of Mount Greylock, the lime-kiln and its fire, the forest with its trees, and the wide, open sky. The imagery gives the story an immersive and suspenseful mood that makes the potential supernatural phenomena more intense and creates a folkloric environment for the characters, including the tragic figure of Ethan Brand. The story’s use of imagery highlights the central theme of Spiritual Damnation and Pride, with its vivid descriptions of the flames circling the lime-kiln as Ethan Brand is about to jump, the forest’s fear of Ethan Brand’s terrible laugh, and the mountains, forest, and sky all radiant and majestic the morning after Ethan Brand’s death.
Personification
Both the Light and Dark forms of Romanticism explore nature and its connections to humanity and the mind/soul. One common method of exploration is personification.
In “Ethan Brand,” the narrator gives Mount Graylock and the earth, sky, and animals a sentience that allows humans to connect with them, and vice versa. The narrator explains that before Ethan Brand’s pursuit of knowledge and the Unpardonable Sin, he was in touch with not only humanity, but nature as well. He beheld nature with awe as God’s creation and it, in turn, favored him and welcomed his presence.
After he had committed the Unpardonable Sin, however, he not only rejected nature, but nature also rejected him in turn. The mountain, trees, and sky all appear to receive Ethan Brand with the same terror and rejection that Bartram and the villagers do. When Ethan Brand dies, the natural world is at peace and Mount Graylock and the earth and sky appear radiant and peaceful. Bartram’s young son Joe notices this, telling him, “that strange man is gone, and the sky and the mountains all seem glad of it!” (Paragraph 78). Nature’s conscious responses to Ethan Brand’s presence elevate the theme of The Dangers of Amoral Intellectualism, as his detachment from the world around him causes even the mountains, sky, trees, and stars to reject him as a wicked sinner.
Metaphor
Metaphor is an equation of two things that are not literally the same; the figurative comparison typically reveals an underlying or unexpected truth. Simile, a well-known subtype of metaphor, uses “like” or “as” to associate two things. “Ethan Brand” uses metaphor to lend depth and nuance to its exploration of sin and isolation, as in this passage: “He was no longer a brother-man, opening the chambers or the dungeons of our common nature by the key of holy sympathy, which gave him a right to share in all its secrets” (Paragraph 67). This image of human nature as a series of rooms and sympathy as a key hints that Ethan Brand is not so different from other people after all. Their minds or souls also contain dark places—“dungeons”—but in his self-absorption, Brand no longer has the “key” that would allow him to recognize this shared propensity for evil.
One of the most significant metaphors describes Ethan Brand’s growth of the Unpardonable Sin within his heart “as the bright and gorgeous flower, and rich, delicious fruit of his life’s labor” (Paragraph 68). The comparison of his sin to a fruit doubles as an allusion to the biblical forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. In Genesis, Adam and Eve eat this fruit to become as knowing and powerful as God, who subsequently casts them out of Eden for their sin. The metaphor therefore links sin to the pursuit of knowledge, developing the theme of The Dangers of Amoral Intellectualism.
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