Ethan Brand

One of the central conflicts in the story is Ethan Brand’s internal struggle with himself because of his abhorrent experiments. He believes—or convinces himself—that he has committed the Unpardonable Sin that he has sought for years and that he will face God’s punishment for it when he dies. However, while the narrator explores Ethan Brand’s inner thoughts, he but does not explicitly state that he has committed the Unpardonable Sin. In fact, the narrator implies that his belief that he had committed the Unpardonable Sin might be a manifestation of guilt, pride, or both.

The strongest evidence that Ethan Brand is in fact damned comes from the story’s supernatural elements. His laugh, for example, has a preternaturally chilling effect on other people and even on the environment. The villagers are disturbed by his laugh when they meet him on the hillside, and the narrator describes “the silent forest” as “holding its breath until some fearful thing should happen” (Paragraph 62). Conversely, after Ethan Brand dies, the mountains and forest seem to be at peace, with Mount Graylock being “glorified with a golden cloud upon his head” and the earth and sky becoming radiant (Paragraph 75). Furthermore, when Ethan Brand is about to jump into the lime-kiln, there are strange blue flames that “[dance] madly, as within a magic circle” (Paragraph 70). The image evokes a highly recognizable depiction of hell and echoes an earlier description of Ethan’s eyes “gleam[ing] like fires” (Paragraph 16), as though he has infernal flames inside him. The presence of the lime heart inside the skeleton also hints that Ethan Brand’s heart truly had become marble.

Nevertheless, there are many suggestions that Ethan Brand has not “succeeded” in his quest. The description Ethan Brand offers of the Unpardonable Sin is notably vague; he says it is “[t]he 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!” (Paragraph 38). This aligns the sin with a search for forbidden knowledge, echoing the “Original Sin” that Christianity teaches resulted in humanity’s expulsion from Eden. However, Christianity also teaches that Jesus’s death renders that sin void. Furthermore, the wording is ambiguous: Ethan Brand does not directly say that his sin was the amoral pursuit of knowledge but rather suggests that it flowed from that pursuit. The lack of detail as to the Unpardonable Sin’s nature renders it harder to determine whether Ethan Brand in fact committed it, but the symbolism of the old dog chasing its short tail suggests that doing so might not even be possible (again harkening to Christian ideas of mercy and redemption). Both of their tasks are futile and only end in needless exhaustion. Ethan Brand himself notices this parallel, moving afterward “as it might be, by a perception of some remote analogy between his own case and that of this self-pursuing cur, he broke into the awful laugh, which, more than any other token, expressed the condition of his inward being” (Paragraph 62).

This passage implies that Ethan Brand knows that his pursuit of the Unpardonable Sin was pointless and that this knowledge fills him with despair. In fact, what is clear throughout the story is that Brand wants to believe that he has committed the Unpardonable Sin. This may partly stem from feelings of guilt; he “quail[s]” when he encounters Esther’s father, implying that he is not actually so heartless as he claims. To admit that he did not “find” the Unpardonable Sin would be to admit that he abused Esther and others for no reason. However, pride also factors strongly in his insistence. His reaction to the ordinary foibles of his old neighbors suggests that he wants to see himself as uniquely evil:

No mind, which has wrought itself by intense and solitary meditation into a high state of enthusiasm, can endure the kind of contact with low and vulgar modes of thought and feeling to which Ethan Brand was now subjected. It made him doubt—and, strange to say, it was a painful doubt—whether he had indeed found the Unpardonable Sin (Paragraph 43).

Similarly, Ethan Brand earlier insists he would commit the same “sin” again despite his evident misery. This is notable because “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 12:31-32), the only sin that Christianity teaches is unpardonable, is usually interpreted to mean a stubborn, prideful, and knowing rejection of God—in effect, a mindset that precludes repentance. The irony of the story is that if Ethan Brand is damned, it’s not because of anything he has done; it’s merely because of his insistence that what he has done is unforgivable.