“Ethan Brand” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a short story written in 1850 and published in his 1852 collection The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told Tales. The author uses allegory, ambiguity, and the literary devices of Dark Romanticism to explore the themes of The Dangers of Amoral Intellectualism, Spiritual Damnation and Pride, and The Loneliness of Social Detachment and Rejection.

Christian morality, spiritual anxiety, and the moral pitfalls of intellectualism and science appear throughout Hawthorne’s works. His most popular work, the 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, explores the religious landscape and moral dilemmas of 17th-century Massachusetts under Puritan governance. Both external and internal religious anxiety affect the novel’s protagonist, Hester Prynne, after she commits a moral and social taboo. Religious guilt and the nature of human depravity also appear in the later short story, “Ethan Brand.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne was inspired to write “Ethan Brand” after seeing a burning lime-kiln while taking a midnight walk at Mount Greylock in North Adams, Massachusetts. He originally titled the story “The Unpardonable Sin” and planned to write a longer story about Ethan Brand and his search for the Unpardonable Sin. However, he only published what would become the short story “Ethan Brand.”

This study guide refers to the version “Ethan Brand” that is freely available on Project Gutenberg and uses paragraph numbers for citations.

Content Warning: The source material describes suicide and alcohol abuse.

The short story begins on an August evening when lime-burner Bartram and his young son Joe hear a strange, unpleasant laugh on the hill near Mount Greylock. The sound frightens Joe, who senses that the laugh is not a gleeful one. Bartram chastises Joe, telling him that he will never be a man and that he is too like his mother. Despite this, Bartram also finds the laugh ominous. As they are walking, Bartram and Joe meet Ethan Brand, a wayfarer and the former lime-burner of the kiln. Ethan Brand has recently returned to Mount Greylock after wandering for years in pursuit of the “Unpardonable Sin” and claims that he has finally found it. Bartram sends Joe to summon the villagers with news of Ethan Brand’s return and achievement. Ethan Brand reveals that he discovered the Unpardonable Sin in his own heart as he grew so intellectual and desperate for deeper knowledge that he rejected the fellowship of men and devotion to God. He realizes the severity of this sin and has solemnly embraced his eternal punishment. Unsettled, Bartram calls him a madman assuming that Ethan Brand is just an ordinary “sinner like the rest of us” (Paragraph 39).

The news draws the entire village to the hill, including a former lawyer (now a soap-boiler), and the village doctor, both of whose lives have been destroyed through heavy brandy consumption. They look upon Ethan Brand with the same terror and curiosity as Bartram and Joe. A few of the villagers, including the village doctor, ask about Ethan Brand’s discovery. When Ethan Brand responds coldly, the doctor becomes angry, asserting that his claim of finding the “Unpardonable Sin” is delusional.

Another villager, Humphrey, asks Ethan Brand if he has seen his daughter Esther. Esther joined the circus and Humphrey has not seen her for years. The narrator reveals that Ethan Brand encountered Esther during his travels and made her “the subject of a psychological experiment” (Paragraph 49). Consequently, he corrupted and possibly destroyed her “soul.”

A traveling German Jew arrives and shows the villagers pictures in a diorama. Joe becomes frightened when he sees Ethan Brand looking at him. The German Jew recognizes Ethan Brand from his travels and criticizes him for scaring Joe. He claims to be carrying the Unpardonable Sin in his diorama, but when Ethan Brand looks inside, he sees nothing. Angry, the protagonist threatens to throw the German Jew into the lime-kiln if he does not leave. The villagers watch a dog chase his tail to the point of exhaustion before returning to the village.

Eventually, Bartram and Joe return home to sleep, leaving Ethan Brand at the kiln. As they depart, Bartram, who has been drinking, tells Ethan Brand to “call the Devil out of the furnace to keep you company” (Paragraph 65). Joe follows his father but looks briefly and sadly at Ethan Brand, sensing his loneliness.

Alone at the lime-kiln, Ethan Brand recalls his former reverence for God, compassion for his fellow humans, and wonder at nature. However, over time, he became fascinated, and then obsessed, with the idea of the Unpardonable Sin. Desperate to know what it was, he left to pursue this knowledge. This obsession with knowledge and intellect overpowered his love for God, humanity, and nature, leading him to perform unspeakable acts. His pride and coldness eventually caused the Unpardonable Sin to grow inside his heart. Ethan Brand is satisfied that he succeeded in finding the Unpardonable Sin and feels there is nothing more for him to do. He says goodbye to nature and humanity, which he rejected, and jumps into the lime-kiln, killing himself.

During the night, Ethan Brand’s dying laugh haunts Bartram and Joe’s dreams. In the morning, when they leave their hut, Mount Greylock and the surrounding landscape look peaceful and are bathed in sunlight. As they approach the kiln, Joe and Bartram note that Ethan Brand has gone and has let the kiln’s fire go out. Inside the lime-kiln, all the marble has burned down to “perfect-snow-white lime” (Paragraph 82). Amongst the lime is Ethan Brand’s skeleton and a piece of marble turned to lime resembling a human heart. Bartram observes that Ethan Brand’s body has made particularly good lime, which should be profitable. He breaks up the skeleton with a pole, allowing “the relics of Ethan Brand” to be “crumbled into fragments” (Paragraph 84).