Bubbly

One And The Same

‘Knut Hamsun’s Christian Perversions’ by James Wood is discussion of Knut Hamsun’s writing style as well as his private life. In many ways, the author’s life is represented in his novels. It says that Knut Hamsun was a lot like the protagonist in Hunger, meaning that he had sudden mood changes. He was someone that lived on his own, excluded from the rest of the world. Even his wife wasn’t close to him. He went through a phase of hunger, where he was poor and didn’t have enough to eat. As a child, Knut Hamsun was abused and beaten by his uncle, and at one point he even tried to cut his leg of with an axe. We can see the similarities to the book Hunger, where the narrator tried to eat his finger.

It seems to me that the life of the great writer Knut Hamsun was rather painful and hard than easy. Imagining going through all the pain that he had to suffer, it is no wonder that he ended his life in 1952. What bothers me about his life is that he turned over to Nazism, even though he supposedly didn’t care about any other people on earth apart from himself. I don’t understand why he would even bother caring about politics then. It’s this unpredictability that Knut Hamsun loved. The article says that when he was staying at a hotel, he would refuse to pay a tip until the last days where he gave enormous tips. Here again there is a similarity to the narrator in Hunger. It is fascinating to see how much resemblance there is between the author and the narrator and to what point their stories are the same.

The main ideas of the text are that all Knut Hamsun’s texts display an amount of Christian perversions. Witnesses say that Knut Hamsun blamed God for his miseries but at the same time he didn’t believe in Him. He said that if God existed, he would curse him. In Hunger, we often see that whenever something goes wrong or disappoints him, he blames God. Then again, he says that God doesn’t exist. I see a contradiction in these statements and they confuse me. As a child, Knut Hamsun’s family was very religious, maybe that’s what shaped his strong negative feelings towards religion and God.

Another idea in the text is that the narrator of Hunger practically IS Knut Hamsun. I must say that there are connections that can be drawn that are significant, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they’re the same. It seems to me as though the author knows that some of the narrator’s actions are somewhat crazy, especially in the end. If it is true that Knut Hamsun was such an unstable person himself, it baffles me that he would make his narrator look crazy even though he’s acting the same way he is.

These Words Are My Own

A Pistache'

I opened the packet of chocolates and looked at the little chocolate balls wrapped in shiny red papers. I bought them from the grocery store that belongs to the honorable man named Carlson. God in heaven, what delicious treats I bought for myself! I placed the chocolates on the left corner of my bed, always keeping an eye on the red package. On the right side of the package there was a sign: open here! Why did it want me to open it so badly? What was it leading up to? Did it want me to get fat and grow pimples? I became angry and threw the package across the room. Smashing against the wall it must have ripped the ‘open here!’ sign, because the chocolates in the red shiny paper were lying all across the room. I was relieved.

Just give me some Candy, before I go

The hunger artist by Franz Kafka is an article that leaves you a little confused. It’s about a man whose job it was to fasten for forty days straight in a cage. It was a sort of a spectacle for everyone else to see and admire. Kafka describes the way the hunger artist perceives his duty. He says that for the hunger artist it wasn’t a pain to fasten, it was a joy. The man couldn’t do anything else to be happy. As the people don’t enjoy watching him anymore when the times change, he goes on and fastens anyways. He ends up dying because his supervisors and the rest of the world forgot about him. When he’s found, his last words are about food. He says that the reason why he had to fasten was because he couldn’t find any food that he liked. He article reminded me of Hunger by Knut Hamsun because of the way the hunger artist is described. It says that he’s got wild outbursts of rage and a feeling of nausea when he thinks about food. In the book, the man has to vomit every time he eats something. He wants food but he doesn’t. It almost seems like he wants to starve, and this is the part that I don’t understand, merely because I don’t know what it’s like to fasten.

The hunger artist’s last sentence saying that he never found a food worth good enough to eat reminded me of the book ‘The perfume’ by Patrick Süsskind. This story is about a guy named Grenouille that murders women for their smell. He finds them (their scents) to be so beautiful that he has to own them no matter what. He can’t stop because maybe he hasn’t found the right one just yet and needs to go on with his collecting of scents. I imagine a hunger artist to be someone that can’t get enough of starving, of hungering, of being in pain. It might even be relieving when they can’t even feel the hunger anymore and all they’re able to perceive is emptiness and their own thoughts. I wish that there was more in the text written about the feelings of the hunger artist. It would be interesting to know what drives this force of hunger. What does someone think about that hasn’t eaten in weeks? Could there possibly be anything else than food to think of?

Take A Minute

Right now, I’m on my computer planning on blogging about an article that I just read about distraction. I haven’t opened it yet, but I really feel the need to open facebook just to see if anything interesting happened. I’d also really like to continue watching season six of Lost, because I still haven’t figured out if the plane crashed in the end or not? (If you decide to comment on this, DON’T TELL ME THE ANSWER!) My phone is still in my bag but I’d really like to take it out. You never know when someone important decides to text you.  

As the name of the article says, it’s about distraction. This article by Damon Young was a little bit like a slap in the face. I do believe that everything he wrote pretty much sums up my ‘addiction’ to distraction. The fact that one can’t go without checking their mail (or facebook, phone etc) for more than a couple of hours probably has to do with the psychological explanation that people need distraction to relax and to take a break from their life. ‘Taking a break from life’. It sounds so cheesy and desperate but isn’t that what we all do? On facebook we try to distract ourselves by looking at pictures and wall posts just so that there’s something to gossip about the next day in school. We have trouble dealing with our own problems and hence we look for other people’s problems. At least we don’t have to solve them, right?

I watch so many movies. So many TV shows. One day a friend and I counted the TV shows that we’re watching and I came to an amount of seventeen (Of course not all of them weekly, but on a regular basis). I can’t stop myself from watching them, it’s like a power overwhelming me and even if I’d like to start my homework, it’s very rather hard to convince myself.

The same thing applies to movies. What are people looking for when they watch a romantic comedy in their free time? They’re looking for love- except they’re not really looking, since they’re on their couch in front of their TV or laptop. Someone that doesn’t have a special person in their life or just went through a break-up, searches for a little hope and decides to forget about their own loneliness and dives into the world of someone else. This concept sounds pathetic and probably is, but personally I love not to think about my life for a while, and I’m sure that’s why movies and TV shows are so successful.

This article relates well to Hunger by Knut Hamsun. The starving man in the story goes through the different stages of hungering. Reading the book you notice that a lot of the things the man’s doing are pointless just like watching a movie. One day he decides to scare a woman, one day he decides to fool a man and another day he wants to give a random stranger five kroner. Why? Maybe to distract himself from the fact that he’s o hungry that he’s vomiting on the streets.  Distraction. The man hates his life; he despises it, but still tries to make himself happier by making up these tasks for himself, like following two sisters in the street. He needs this just as much as a person nowadays needs some distraction that might involve technology. The man would have died if he didn’t have his inside jokes.

Men need distraction to be great.

What's My Name?

The article « Existentialism Is a Humanism » by Jean-Paul Sartre 1946 is an article that has as a purpose to offer a defense of existentialism against several reproaches that have been laid against it. Jean-Paul Sartre first lists the reproaches that are made against existentialism in his time, which appear to bother him. He states them:

      Existentialism has been reproached as an invitation to people to dwell in quietism of despair.

      It has been reproached for having underlined all that is ignominious in the human situation, for depicting what is mean, sordid or base to the neglect of certain things that possess charm and beauty and belong to the brighter side of human nature.

      Existentialists are reproached as people who deny the reality and seriousness of human affairs.

He presents his convincing point of view of the meaning of existentialism, as followed:

Existentialism is a doctrine that does render human life possible; a doctrine which affirms that every truth and every action imply both an environment and a human subjectivity. Sartre explains that there are two kinds of existentialism: The Christians and the existential atheists. He himself places himself under the category of the existential atheists. These two types of existentialism have in common that they both believe that existence comes before essence, that we must begin from the subjective. He describes an incredible theory that he underlines with the example of a paper-knife.   Its essence precedes his existence. The presence of the paper-knife is determined before our eyes.

This concept of understanding existence and essence is complicated to my eyes and I’m not sure whether I understand it properly.

A thesis that I do understand and would agree with, is that a man Is what he makes of himself. You can’t say that God decides who you’re going to be, or that destiny already decided what to do with you from the moment you’re born. I believe that we’re able to make our own choices that define our destiny. Whether there is such thing as God or destiny, I’m not questioning because I also believe that I’m no one to decide whether they exist or not. All I know is that I’ve made choices in my life that I regret, choices that shaped my life, choices that I’m proud of, choices that changed my life for the better or for the worse. Now there is a quote that a friend of mine often uses that says: it all begins… with a choice! We’ve talked about this in class, the fact that everything we do and everything we don’t do is a choice in itself. I would completely agree with this. A man is responsible for what he is. Now Sartre says that not only we’re responsible for ourselves, but we’re responsible for all men. I’m not sure what he actually means with this statement, even though he tries to explain it over and over again throughout the text. He also says that nothing can be better for us unless it is better for all. Does he mean that we wouldn’t consider it to be better if everyone else wouldn’t do the same? I do think that not everyone has the same beliefs and that some people have other ideas of what is ‘better’.

Jean-Paul Sartre also writes that nothing will be changed if God does not exist. What about the widows of the men that died in the war? What about the sister of a girl that has an incurable cancer?  A little hope is all they need, and there are many people in this world that claim that God has given them hope, that God helps them deal with their pain, their wishes, their hopes and dreams. If they didn’t believe that God exists, what helps them get back on their feet? I must say that considering the fact that Sartre clearly states that God does not exist, he talks an awful lot about Him.

To finish I’d like to post a quote from the text: I only know that whatever may be in my power to make it so, I shall do.