Hunger Mind Mapping

Attached is a mind map that links four ideas of the Knut Hamsun's novel Hunger: Existentialism, Christianity, Hamsun, and Literary Features. It includes some quotations from the novel, secondary sources and some of my own ideas.

Hope it's comprehensible.

The Susceptibility of the Human Mind

The Unpredictable Human Mind - The 'Big Idea' behind Hunger.

"Knut Hamsun's Christian Perversions" by James Wood

In his essay ‘Knut Hamsun’s Christian Perversions’ Wood draws connections between the characters of Hamsun’s literature and the author’s own extremist life. After reading Wood’s paper I came up with the conclusion that Hamsun’s novel Hunger has as one of its main themes the instability of the human mind and soul, conveyed by the protagonist of the novel.

What Wood has done in his essay is convey how important Hamsun’s life is when analyzing and understanding his own novels and his characters, comparing Hamsun’s mannerisms to those of his protagonists. In Hunger, Hamsun creates this demented and unstable man, character that falls into his own lies and insanity, and that lives with a constant lack of food and basic comfort, slowly guiding his mind to ruins. Throughout his essay, Wood discusses the nature of such characters in modern literature and the development and refinement of Hamsun’s “stream of consciousness”. These heroes “invent the scenes through which they move, and thus invent themselves afresh on every page”, seeming only “to be escaping from themselves”. Hamsun himself states he dreams “of a literature with characters in which their very lack of consistency is their basic characteristic”. This lack of consistency, also present in Hamsun’s character, is what makes them unstable and constantly overwhelmed and driven by their own emotions. Wood guides us into Hamsun’s life, describing how like his characters he “was addicted to unpredictability, and to self destruction”.

Wood’s essay develops the idea of one of Hamsun’s themes in Hunger, which he describes as a “deliberate perversion of the Christian system of reward and punishment, confession and absolution, pride and humility”. Furthermore, Wood’s essay has allowed me to conclude that one of the major reasons behind Hamsun’s novel is to describe the instability of the human mind and soul, theme conveyed by the behavior of the protagonist.

As mentioned previously, Hamsun’s life is extremely significant for the development of his unstable protagonist in Hunger. In a verge towards insanity, the protagonist is a result of Hamsun’s interest in the “infinite susceptibility of the soul, … the mysteries of the nerves in a starving body”, interest for which Hamsun himself decided to move to a poor district of Christiania (Oslo), to perhaps live through his characters own life. Moreover, during his stay in America, Hamsun experienced poverty, living in cold weathers and wearing newspapers for warmth. With this one must believe that Hunger is a novel based on Hamsun’s own life experiences, since both are “exuberantly confident, hysterical, skittish and often extremely eccentric”. The instability between these traits is what fascinates me the most about this novel. The psychology behind this must be even more complex in order to make the human mind dominate a person’s behavior so much to make themselves believe what they create, their own inventions, circumstance frequently shown by the protagonist in Hunger.

Hamsun’s own life experiences and interest for the susceptibility of the mind is what I believe as a “big idea” behind Hunger. The further deception of modern life and the parody of the Christian posture of martyrdom, of fasting and solitude, are also very key ideas behind the novel. Nevertheless, the vulnerability of the mind is what drives these characters to act the way they do, making them “sin for punishment, and instead of punishing themselves, they punish other people for not punishing them”, also making them believe that they control their own destinies, which is clearly a delusion.

Hunger Pastiche

Protagonist of Hunger comments about waiting in an airport. 

The morning had come with a brush of fresh air. The city became alive as I walked down the street, sunbeams heating my cheeks, warming my face and my body entirely. I paced into the airport, carrying in my pocket my only pencil and some paper. I sat there by myself observing those who passed me by. Oh how gaily and lightly they walked along these dull and cold corridors carrying behind their belongings. Not a single burden or pain in their eyes, no clouded thoughts, no dark hidden secrets. I saw them walk by, thousands of them, strolling around, taking their seats. How much happier could they be? I wandered through my mind and the terrible injustice and absurdity of my life, my thoughts suddenly drifting to the annoying ticking of the black clock above me. Each second now became an eternity of painful misery, and the incessant chattering of people serving as a loud concert of ceaseless maddening music.  They suddenly sat there, occupying the seats in front of me. They laughed loudly, their voices combined in a single infuriating high-pitched laughter. The noise irritated each one of my wretched nerves blocking my head from following even the simplest train of thought. 

'A Hunger Artist' and 'Hunger'

Commentary on 'Hunger' by Knut Hamsun and 'A Hunger Artist' by Franz Kafka

‘A Hunger Artist’ by Franz Kafka, and ‘Hunger’ by Knut Hamsun; have more in common than just the word hunger in their titles. Hunger itself does play an important role in both characters lives, linking both stories together. The effects however their strive for life under conditions of starvation is to me more significant than the act of starvation itself, leading them to continuous ‘mood swings’ and a constant spectrum of emotions.

‘A Hunger Artist’ by Franz Kafka is a short story that relates the life of a ‘hunger artist’, a man, whose job was to sit in a ‘small barred cage’ and fast for at least forty days, catching the attention of sometimes the entire city. Dressed in ‘black tights, looking pale, with his ribs sticking out prominently’ the hunger artist was observed by hundreds of spectators, witnessing his starvation; since for the hunger artist fasting ‘was the easiest thing in the world’. Slightly different is the hunger suffered by the writer in Hamsun’s ‘Hunger’, for his life as a writer has caused him to lack the money for food, walking around the streets of Christania slowly starving to death in the Street

What is interesting from both texts is the similarity of what the hunger they suffer causes both characters to do. In other words the psychological effects it has on them. In both texts, the author is able to convey the wide spectrum of emotions and reactions the characters have once in their fasting. They may once be happy and somehow content with their lives, but at another time burst in desperation, anguish, irritation and rage. Or end up feeling completely dissatisfied with the life they are carrying: depressed, gloomy, miserable. The impresario from Kafka’s ‘Hunger Artist’ would always concede that ‘only his fasting’ would provoke the artist’s rage, irritability and sadness, behaviors and moods that actually no one but the artist really understood. Similarly, the writer would go through a variety of emotions daily, letting them control his mind and actions.

Finally, it is their ending the most depressing. Somehow searching for a better life, the artist and the writer end up choosing paths of loneliness, with no one actually wanting to see them, case especially recounted by the life of the ‘hunger artist’ at the circus, place where he decides to work after leaving the impresario. One could discuss that the protagonist of Hunger has a happier ending, with a little bit of hope. The fact that he was able to overcome himself and decide to leave Christania, place that once made him so unhappy, shows to the reader that he still has some hope in himself and in life, and it is this determination that gives the reader a better sense of hope. The artist's ending is more depressing because it is of his own determination that is left completely ignored and lonely. 


It is at these times where they realize that maybe their fasting is ‘all they’ve got’, and the way their hunger make them feel is maybe even sublime. 

'The Distraction Society'

In response to Damon Young’s BBC article ‘The Distraction Society’:

I take out the article, open my laptop, and Facebook pops in immediately. I’ve got new notifications.
Several friends had commented on my pictures, others had written on my ‘wall’, some has replied my message, and so on. Obviously I start commenting back, responding messages, checking their new pictures, and seeing if anyone is online. The chat buzz sounds very loud; someone is talking to me. My cousin, sending me a video we made over the holiday. I watch it. Hilarious. I send it to my sisters. I check my school e-mail: high school announcements. That reminds me of something… I was doing this homework.

Damon Young’s article ‘The Distraction Society’ starts out more or else exactly like this blog; him trying to write the article but getting easily distracted by e-mails, videos, photographs, an ‘internet hit’, etc. Although technology and the Internet are here to make our lives somehow easier, nowadays it is causing us to drift our attention from working to simply ‘surfing’ the Internet, finding always some excuse to keep wasting our time. With his article, Young made me realize how true this issue is in our present lives, hence my decision to copy his manner and describe how often it occurs to me daily. Moreover, Young’s article relates to the latest novel from my English class, Hunger by Knut Hamsun.

Hamsun’s novel ‘Hunger’ describes the life of an unnamed writer (the narrator) who is in a constant attempt of finding a job and writing successful and perfect pieces as a way to keep from starving. Work and writing is his way of survival. However, just like Young or myself, when writing he is constantly distracted by whatever comes into his way or mind. There is a moment in Part I of the novel where the narrator is sitting in a bench trying to write, but instead gets distracted by some flies. He describes: “But write I could not. After a few lines nothing seemed to occur to me; my thought ran in other directions and I could not pull myself together enough for any special exertion. Everything influenced and distracted me; everything I saw made a fresh impression on me. Flies and tiny mosquitoes stick fast to the paper and disturb me.” The scene continues with the narrator focusing on the bugs, his shoes, his pulse and his feet, a band, people’s voices, etc. and not being able to write at all.

The entire novel focuses on the character’s mind distractions, which I think, are his manner of staying away from his pain and poverty and hunger. His mind ends up playing tricks on him. Somehow, we are the writer described by Hamsun in ‘Hunger’, distracted by technology; distractions that are “unfortunately less rewarding than they appear”. Nevertheless, Young states that it is not technology the one to blame but we, supporting his claim with philosophers Nietzsche and Blaise Pascal. Blaise Pascal describes that it is "The sole cause of man's unhappiness, is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room" and Nietzsche defines these distractions as “human, all too human.” With distractions we are seeking a way to overcome boredom, anxiety, pain, and finding a sort of “easy pleasure”, leading us however to unproductivity and weakening our strengths.

Distractions human’s “unwillingness to confront pain, boredom, anxiety”, and try to keep us away from them, avoid them. However, in the end they will trouble us even more. The Internet is our present major distraction; with millions of e-mails, videos, games, and social networking. But with or without it, we shall always find ways to ‘draw us away’ from ourselves.