The Reality of Ethan Brand's Unpardonable Sin

The Reality of Ethan Brand's Unpardonable Sin

The relentless obsession of one man becomes the theme of Nathaniel Hawthorne's

haunting tale, "Ethan Brand." A lime-burner by trade in the hills of Western

Massachusetts, Brand passes the lonely hours of the night staring into the

intense flames of the kiln, contemplating the theological doctrine of the

unpardonable sin. What sin could be so totally evil that even the great God of

Heaven could not forgive?

I remember as a child, listening to my father, as he

stood in the pulpit and expounded to his congregation the very same subject that

had so totally mesmerized Hawthorne's character, Ethan Brand. I remember the

many questions I had about this horrible sin. What was it? Could I commit the

unpardonable sin? Maybe I already had. That was the most disturbing of all. It

seems that literary critic R. P. Blackmur has experienced something of the same

when he writes: I do not know how it may be now, but when I was a boy the

unpardonable sin, the unforgivable sin, or--as I was taught in church, the sin

of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost--was a major though intermittent attraction

in the short times that seem so long just before sleep. It was a frightening

possibility that I might find what it was and how to do it: the frightening

thing was that I might then have to do it, as if discovery was actual commission

of the sin. The verse in St. Mark (3:19) contained as much potential horror as

anything I have ever read...so when I read "Ethan Brand" I knew where he

was....(179). Since that time, I have taken my place in the pulpit of a church

like my father before me. And on occasion, I too address the subject and receive

the same questions that I, and others like me, pondered so long ago: the very

same question that haunts, possesses, and ultimately ruins Ethan Brand. Driven

by his insatiable desire to uncover the deep truth of this frightening

possibility, Ethan Brand left his lonely lime kiln on a quest, a quest that

would send him the world over in search of the unpardonable sin. For eighteen

years he studied and researched the idea that slowly took him over. When his

search began, Brand was a kind and gentle man concerned for the well-being of

others. The narrator describes him as .