A reader who has
even a passing familiarity with the 19th-century American author Nathaniel
Hawthorne understands he struggled with the theological concerns of his New
England forebears. The title character of Hawthorne’s story “Ethan Brand” began
his philosphical musings during long hours spent by his kiln on the slope of
Mount Graylock. Ethan Brand represents a type of individual who wrestles with
concepts like Unpardonable Sin. He says upon his return to the mountain after a
20-year quest for the Unpardonable Sin, that it was “the 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 character of
old Humphrey fascinates me the most. He, like both Ethan and the Jew of
Nuremberg who sells dioramic views to the local populace, is a wanderer. Hawthorne tells us Humphrey’s wandering has a
specific purpose: to inquire of people as to the whereabouts of his daughter,
whom Hawthorne calls “the Esther of our tale.” When Humphrey sees Brand, he
upbraids him for heisting his daughter away and pushing her into a life as a circus
performer. She was, Hawthorne writes, “the very girl whom with such cold and
remorseless purpose, Brand had had made the subject of a psychological experiment, and wasted, absorbed, and perhaps
annihilated her soul, in the process.”
Later, Brand sits
by the kiln by himself, and reviews his spiritual metamorphosis. He thinks about how the “Idea that possessed
his life had operated as a means of education,” but concludes, “So much for the
intellect! But where was the heart? That indeed, had withered – had contracted
– had hardened – had perished!” It turned him into an unfeeling observer, “looking
on mankind as the subject of his experiment,
and at length, converting man and woman to be his puppets, and pulling the
wires that moved them to such degrees of crime as were demanded for his study.” Hawthorne again means to tell us his sin-obsessed character viewed others, on whom he
sought to impose his beliefs, as unwitting experimental fodder.
The Wandering
Jew of Nuremberg also knew Brand’s reputation, and earlier in the story says
“I find it to be a heavy matter in my show box – this Unpardonable Sin. By my faith, Captain, it
has wearied my shoulders, this long day, to carry it over the mountain.”
Do we ever
discover what the Unpardonable Sin was? Based on our examination of Hawthorne’s
astonishing allegory, I can only conclude: IF Hawthorne believes in
Unpardonable Sin at all, it would be
the sin of imposing a heavy-handed belief system on other people whom you
intimidate intellectually. That would be enough to make anyone want to join the
circus.
