Brand's a bleak and desolate play that challenges the notion of a stern and stoic faith in the will of God. The title character is a pastor who returns to his ancestral home to find the villagers on the verge of starvation. He believes ministering to these poor people to be his calling. Over the course of the play, however, he faces many difficult choices. The decisions he makes, based on his stark and idealistic view of morality, have dire consequences for all the people he touches and, ultimately, for his own embattled soul.