Point of View

Hunger is written from a first person perspective, from the point of view of its unnamed narrator. The story is more concerned with what goes on in the narrator's mind than with the world around him. In a way, the first person perspective, so closely tied to the narrator's thoughts and psychology that it often ignores people and events outside the narrator's narrow vision, represents the narrator's fascination with the ideal. He lives in his own fantasy world; he lives inside his head.

The novel doesn't give the main character a name, except a fictional fantasy name, and it doesn't give the main love interest a name, either (except another fictional fantasy name). Some of the characters remain unnamed and anonymous, including the friend who rescues the narrator after he has truly pawned his last item of any worth, having failed to pawn his borrowed blanket...