SIN AND FORGIVENESS 43 pleted his quest returns at the end of the story–when he is alone with no one present to cast doubts–but how confident is he at this moment? One might consider whether his unsettling laughter here is spurred by the same thought as his laughter at other points in the story. What are we to make of the character of the traveling Jew? At first he seems merely a ridiculous figure, an old showman who ekes out a living through a mixture of obsequiousness and good humor. But it becomes clear that he has met Ethan Brand before. That their acquaintance was more than momentary is revealed by his knowledge of Brand’s project. In fact, he mocks Brand, eliciting an outburst of anger: “Peace!” answered Ethan Brand sternly, “or get thee into the furnace yonder!” The Jew coaxes Brand to look into his picture box; what Brand sees spurs recognition: “I remember you now.” What does he see? The qualified indication is that he sees nothing. This event seems to recall past mockery to Brand’s memory–mockery that the scoffer repeats: “‘Ah, Captain,’ whispered the Jew of Nuremberg, with a dark smile, ‘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.’” This remark, which provokes Brand’s anger, suggests that there is no such thing as the Unpardonable Sin. The Path to Pardon Whether we read this story in terms of traditional Christian notions of sin or according to a humanist conception, whether he found what he sought or not, “Ethan Brand” is a tale of self-destruction. Brand first throws his dark thoughts into the fire and then his own body; he cuts himself off from his fellow men and then embraces a death emblematic of that separation. Perhaps the message of the story is simply that the human intellect needs to recognize restraints–reverence for God, respect for fellow man–or it becomes destructive. From a humanist perspective, Ethan Brand’s fate is poetic justice. He perishes in a kind of Kantian revenge as he, who had used so many others as a means in pursuit of his ends, is himself used to enrich a lowly lime-burner.
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