The Protagonists in Hunger and Growth of the Soil: A Comparative Study

Abstract

This study compares the protagonists in the novels of Knut Hamsun's Hunger and Growth of the Soil, by investigating their situations as artist cum vagabond and peasant, respectively in the tensions of contemporary subjectivity. The analysis is concerned with alienation, artistic awareness, movement, labour, nature, solitude and identity, and uses existential and psychoanalytic points of view. The unnamed protagonist of Hunger is shown as deeply self-conscious, socially outcast and psychologically unstable. His experience in Kristiania, his physically suffering, his pride and his commitment to writing all speak to a broken way of life, in which creative knowledge may be both freeing and destructive. It is Isak, the peasant in Growth of the Soil who would seem to offer a new approach. His character is shaped by physical work, attachment to earth, continuity, and engagement with nature. Despite this contrast, they remain comparatively outsiders who resist prevailing social expectations and seek forms of authenticity beyond conventional social structures. The comparison also considers the autobiographical dimensions of Hamsun’s treatment of poverty, wandering, artistic ambition, rural life, and distrust of modern civilisation. The study argues that the artist cum vagabond and peasant are not opposing types but related configurations through which Hamsun explores the psychological and existential pressures of modern life. Their differing relationships with movement, creativity, nature, and community reveal a persistent tension between fragmentation and rootedness, individual freedom and social belonging.