Brand (play)
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Brand is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It is a verse tragedy, written in 1865 and first performed in Stockholm on 24 March 1867. Brand was an intellectual play that caused many people to "think outside the box".
Brand is a priest who wants to take consequence of his choices, and is therefore deeply bound to doing the "right thing". He believes primarily in the will of man, and lives by the device "all or nothing". To make compromises is therefore difficult, or by his moral standards questionable at best. His picture of God is clearly derived from the Old Testament. His beliefs render him lonely in the end, as people around him, when put to the test, as a rule can not or will not follow his example. Brand is arguably a young idealist with a main purpose: to save the world, or at least Man´s soul. His visions are great, but his judgement of others may seem harsh and unfair.
At the beginning of the play, we find him in the mountains, and confronting three different kinds of people: a farmer, who doesn´t dare to brave an unsure glazier on behalf of his dying daughter, the crazy beggar-girl Gerd, who claims to know a bigger church in the hills, and hunts for a great hawk, and finally, Einar, a young painter with an easy-going attitude, and his fiancée, Agnes. Einar and Brand was in school together, and their conversation ends in a long discussion about the envisioning of God. Brand taunts Einar for portraying God as and old man, who "sees through his fingers", and wants to envision God as a young, heroic saviour. He means that people have become too sloppy about their sins and shortcomings, because of the dogma that Christ, through his sacrifice, cleansed humanity once and for all.
In the end, Brand wows to take a fight, mainly in his own soul, with those three "minds" he just met: The lazy mind (the farmer), the wild mind (Gerd), end the easy-goer (Einar). He ponders Man`s purpose, and the difference between what is, and what should be. Here, we find the famous sentence: What you are, be fully, not in parts and pieces.
Brand enters the valley in which he was born, and finds great famine and need. The local sheriff distibutes bread for the hungry in strict rations, and Brand questions the need for it. Meanwhile, a mother comes from the other side of the fjord, telling of her husband who needs absolvation, because he in dire need killed two of his children rather than seeing them starve. Then he laid hand on himself. Nobody dares to venture the high sea, but Brand goes in a boat, an to his surprise, Agnes follows him. Together, they sail across, and the man gets his absolvations. Brand muses over the remaining children, and what this experience might do to them, when a couple of farmers show up and demands that he stay with them as their priest. Brand is reluctant to do this, but they use his own words against him, and he gives in.
Agnes, sitting on the beach, looks into herself, and tells of an "inner world being born", in one of Ibsen`s most known soliloquies. She renounces her former fiancée Einar and goes with Brand. In the end of the second act, we meet Brand`s mother, and learn that he grew up under the glazier, in a dreary place with no sun. His mother robbed his father while he was on his deathbed, and as a consequence, Brand does not want her money, but she urges him to take them.
Some years later, Brand and Agnes lives together with their son, Alf, who is Grievously ill because of the climate. The local doctor urges him to leave for the sake of his son, and he hesitates. Meanwhile, his mother is dying, and Brand presses on her, that she will not get her priest unless she gives all her money to charity. She refuses to do so, and then Brand refuses to go to her.
On the question of his son´s health, the doctor points out that it is right to be "humane", whereas Brand answers: "Was God humane towards his son?" He states that by modern standards, the sacrifice of Christ would have boiled down to a "diplomatic heavenly charter", and no more. He clearly means there`s a difference between "being a human", and being a "humanist". In the end, he almost gives in, but the farmers come to him and pleads with him that he stay. Them Gerd shows up, and states that evil forces will prevail if he leaves. The final straw is when she points out that the son is his "false god". Then he gives in and stays, knowing this will take his son`s life. It is clear, however, that he wants Agnes to choose for him, and she anwers: "Go the road your God appointed for you".
After the death of his son, Brand schemes to build a bigger church in the parish. The old one is too small to cope with his visions. He has hardened somewhat, and refuses to mourn. Agnes comforts herself with the clothes of her dead child. The local sheriff is mostly opposing him, but tells him that he has rising support in the parish. He also tells him how his mother was forced to break bonds with her true love, and married and old miser instead. The boy then became father of Gerd, while Brand is the result of the other, clearly loveless affair. During the act, a beggar-woman arrives, demanding clothes for her freezing child (it`s christmas eve). Brand then puts Agnes to the test, and gradually, all her dead child`s clothes are given to the beggar-woman. As a result of this, Agnes renounces her life, and exclaims "I´m free". Brand accepts with effort, and Agnes dies.
Brand gets his new church built (in the 1860s, many old norwegian churches were replaced by newer and bigger ones), but in the end, Brand understands that his new and bigger church is too small, and rebels against the authorities, the local cleric and the sheriff. He throws the key into the fjord,then holds a great speech, and urges the local people up towards the mountains, in a kind of crusade. He is greatly loved and respected by the commoners, but the test is in the end too hard. They are lured down again by the sheriff, who fakes news of great economical opportunity (a great amount of fish in the sea). So Brand is left alone, struggling with doubt, remorse, and temptation, "the spirit of compromise". He does not yield to it, even when the spirit claims to be Agnes, something Brand doubts. The spirit says that the fall of man forever closed the gates to Paradise, but Brand states that the road of longing is still open. Then the spirit flees and says: "Die! The world does not need you!" Brand meets Gerd again, who thinks she sees the saviour in him, and Brand denies this, of course. At the very end of the play, Gerd takes him to the clacier, her personal church, and Brand recoils when understanding where he is, the "Ice-cathedral". He breaks down in tears. Gerd, being a hunter from the start of the play, fires a shot for a hawk, and lets loose a great snow-slide, which in the end buries the entire valley.
In his dying words at the end of the play, Brand screams out to God, asking, "Does not salvation consider the will of man?" The final words are from an unknown voice: "He is the god of love." What this line means, has been debated. One interpretation is that Brand left love out of his account (a popular statement). Another might be that, being the god of love, God does not forget Brand after all.
The play debates freedom of will and the consequential choice. The problem is further debated in Peer Gynt. A crucial point is the discussion about the absence of love, and the sacrifice of Christ. As a consequence, the following of Christ can be regarded as a theme of the play (cf. Thomas a Kempis)
One can also see a discussion in the play about what the christian message really means, and what God´s purpose with man really is. At one point Brand says: The goal is to become blackboards for God to write upon. A reminiscense of this is found in Peer Gynt: I was a paper, and was never written upon. The topics of the two plays are clearly related.
It was Ibsen`s breakthrough as playwright and author. Ibsen was himself fond of the character, and claimed that Brand was "himself in his best moments".
discussion
In recent years, the character of Brand has been fairly misunderstood, and often regarded as an unsympathetic, fundamentalistic and conservative man. In some ways, his view of life is rather too radical for his peers, who fails to understand him. Early in the play, he clearly wants to fight some fundamentalistic wiews of God and man. The fundamentalist, at the end of the play, is Einar, who returns as a gloomy missionary in the fifth act, and has a wiew of life that makes Brand shiver. Whereas Brand mourns the loss of his wife, Einar in the end thinks her death was righteous, because he regards her as a female seducer. Upon learning this, Brand shoves him off.
Recent productions of the play seldom gives Brand a fair chance. While Ibsen states an open ending, as he does in most cases, modern instructors often condemns Brand where Ibsen, or maybe even God, does not.
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