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Hunger

Knut Hamsun

Start date: January 1, 2019

Finish date: January 31, 2019

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Oct 14, 2021 Sara rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics, gutenberg-download, literary-fiction, scandinavian

Sadly, the afterward to this novel indicates that Knut Hamsun based this on his own experience of starving and struggling for a period of some ten years. This would explain, I think, why the torture of this man goes on and on and seems to find no relief or end.

Experience might well be the only way to truly understand the desperation of this character, a man who wishes to work and to be an honest contributor to society; a man whose pride works to his detriment and is perhaps exactly the reason he Sadly, the afterward to this novel indicates that Knut Hamsun based this on his own experience of starving and struggling for a period of some ten years. This would explain, I think, why the torture of this man goes on and on and seems to find no relief or end.

Experience might well be the only way to truly understand the desperation of this character, a man who wishes to work and to be an honest contributor to society; a man whose pride works to his detriment and is perhaps exactly the reason he is unable to get on his feet and stay there.

The last crisis had dealt rather roughly with me. My hair fell out in masses, and I was much troubled with headaches, particularly in the morning, and my nervousness died a hard death. I sat and wrote during the day with my hands bound up in rags, simply because I could not endure the touch of my own breath upon them. If Jens Olaj banged the stable door underneath me, or if a dog came into the yard and commenced to bark, it thrilled through my very marrow like icy stabs piercing me from every side. I was pretty well played out.

That would sound like the end was near, but this was fairly early in the novel and in the earlier stages of his physical and mental decline. I do think the protagonist/narrator is a rather unlikeable sort, but how much of this is a direct result of his physical hunger that is transformed into a hunger for life? We are shown glimpses of kindness and concern, but these are fleeting, and in truth, understandable. This man is an everyman, who, if he cannot survive on his own, will receive little or no help from outside. There are millions of him in the world.

Here I had, into the bargain, gone and kept straight and honourable all through my misery-- Ha! ha! straight and honourable to the heart's core. God preserve me, what a fool I had been! And I commenced to tell myself how I had even gone about conscience-stricken because I had once brought Hans Pauli's blanket to the pawn-broker's. I laughed sarcastically at my delicate rectitude, spat contemptuously in the street, and could not find words half strong enough to mock myself for my stupidity. Let it only happen now! Were I to find at this moment a schoolgirl's savings or a poor widow's only penny, I would snatch it up and pocket it; steal it deliberately, and sleep the whole night through like a top. I had not suffered so unspeakably much for nothing--my patience was gone--I was prepared to do anything.

The desperation of his situation is palpable, and even though he contends that he would be happy to die, he struggles still to remain alive. His hunger to be someone, in even this world of indifference, overshadows his physical deterioration and mental imbalance. There is something in him that, in fact, never gives up entirely. I could not help thinking of those who survived the death camps of World War II. One can only wonder how they did so, what motivated them day after starving day to continue to labor at jobs that were beyond painful in themselves, what essence of a man pushes him to survive such cruelty.

This novel is rather short, and yet, one cannot help feeling that the suffering goes on far beyond the point having been made. I began to feel his pains, his humiliation, his sorrow and wish for the end to come to him. Anything to stop this endless cycle of hanging on the edge between life and death and doing no actual living would have been welcomed.

A significant classic of which I was completely unaware, I feel indebted to the Catching Up On Classics group for always widening my experience. Hamsun is a skilled writer and has written a book that will not escape the mind easily, a little piece of torture in itself that would make our narrator very happy indeed. ...more

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Dec 29, 2011 Antonomasia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 19th-century, 1001-books, norway, 2011, nordic

It's easy to see why Hunger was so innovative, why it is a classic - but I'm sure the book is best read for the first time in your late teens or early twenties, and before the arrogant, unsuccessful young writer has become a protagonist cliche after reading countless later novels by other authors.

The overwhelming strength of the book is its unsparing detail in recounting inner thought and experience (in a way not seen in English until James Joyce) and the mundane day to day detail of struggling ...more

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