SOURCE: Sandberg, Mark B. “Writing on the Wall: The Language of Advertising in Knut Hamsun's Sult.” Scandinavian Studies 71, no. 3 (fall 1999): 265-96.

In the following essay, Sandberg proposes that although Hunger is often regarded as a subjective novel of private literary expression, it is equally valid as a text that links itself, via its language, to the public world of news, economics, and advertising.

Here is an opening scene: the unnamed main character of Sult [Hunger] awakens in his rented room. He hears the bells outside ringing six o'clock and people beginning to walk up and down the stairs. The walls of his room, papered with old issues of the newspaper Morgenbladet, provide him with his first reading material as he comes to consciousness. He notices in order, over by the door, “en bekjendtgjørelse fra fyrdirektøren” [an announcement from the lighthouse director] and then “et fett, bugnende...