History Theatre / Brand

** A case of TruthInTelevision: Herring was the greatest possible means of getting wealth for any Norwegian living in the western parts of Norway before the discovery of oil in the North Aea.

* SitcomArchNemesis: Brand's feud with the mayor. He even begrudgingly admits the mayor's many positive character traits, but all of these are used in service of a secular worldview that Brand despises.

* IllGirl: Actually a boy. Alf, the son of Brand, succumbing to pneunomia in the third act.

* ByronicHero: Brand UpToEleven. Coupled with the TragicHero trope.

* DroppedABridgeOnHim: UpToEleven: Ibsen drops a glacier on ''the entire set!''

* FriendOrIdolDecision: Stay as a priest for TheNeedsOfTheMany or save my sick son? Taken UpToEleven in the third act. For Brand, there is apparently no ThirdOption.

* TwistedChristmas. The pauper mother and her freezing child begging for clothes on Christmas Eve, [[TearJerker while Agnes mourns her lost child by cherishing what is left of him: his clothes]]. Moral Dilemma UpToEleven...

* DarkerAndEdgier: The tone of the play: Cold and callous. Probably the most dark and edgy play in the entire corpus of Ibsen.
** Do keep in mind that this is the only play he wrote where [[KillEmAll each and every character bites the dust]].

* BiggerIsBetter: Brand tries to convince the officials (the Bailiff) that the church is too small. He needs a bigger one. The bailiff disagrees, but gives in, CompletelyMissingThePoint though. At the beginning of the fifth act, the new church is ready for use, [[SurroundedByIdiots only for Brand to discard it]]. Total havoc ensues, and Brand goes haywire in the process.

* WorldOfSymbolism: Often played straight. The play is ''not'' intended to be realistic. A good in-universe example of CompletelyMissingThePoint is the rather literal-minded bailiff, who actually thought Brand meant a physical church when he probably thought of something else (see BiggerIsBetter above). This is most probably an in-joke in the play, as Brand strives with his ideas to the point where nobody follows them anymore. This could arguably make Brand a CloudCuckoolander}}, something that can explain the role of Gerd in his life. The last part of the play can be said to represent a MentalWorld occupied only by Brand and Gerd.

* AlwaysOnDuty: Brand chooses to stay on because of this. He reasons that he was a priest before he became a father, so the has obligations.
** The Bailiff also counts, being so into his job that he almost sacrificed himself to help save his archives. NotSoDifferent after all?

* NotSoDifferent: Brand and Gerd over the course of the play.

* TwistedChristmas. The pauper mother and her freezing child begging for clothes on Christmas Eve, [[TearJerker while Agnes mourns her lost child by cherishing what is left of him: his clothes]]. MoralDilemma UpToEleven...

* MoralDilemma: Stay as a priest for TheNeedsOfTheMany or save my sick son? Taken UpToEleven in the third act. For Brand, there is apparently no ThirdOption.

* GenreDeconstruction: Brand is arguably TheHero, and even lampshades his own heroic efforts. His view of God is also a rather heroic one, a [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Hercules]] lookalike and Old Testament {{Badass}}. But Ibsen would not have been Ibsen if he did not at least try to deconstruct the hero tropes. And seemingly Brand does not fit his actual environment at all, and his larger than life visions is almost, but not quite, lost on his fellow men. If not, someone with actual power is there to stop him. Hence, tragedy ensues.

** A moment of FridgeBrilliance to shape up the final part of the play occurs in the fourth act when Brand actually begins to think like her (although not realizing it at the time).

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Gerd. Emphasis on the "unwitting" part. She is the one calling Brand out on it, making his plight worse, and in the end, she fires the rifle shot that ends the whole community by [[DroppedABridgeOnHim burying the valley under a lavine]].