Knut Hamsun: Genius or Mad Man?

Knut Hamsun’s backgound as an impoverished boy who suffers at the hands both physically and mentally of his darkly religious Uncle seems to shape his novel’s character psyche. Hamsen, himself becomes an existentialist and despises his religious upbringing and questions the existence of God. And yet, he somehow portrays his protagonist in Hunger as a almost pitiful pious character who wishes to become closer to God by suffering. As Christ suffered he may feel he too can purge his sins and receive salvation by his self inflicted torture. He sins for no apparent reason so he can subconsciously design his own punishment. He actually seems to relish his own suffering like a self-inflicted masochist. His characters seem to have psychotic tendencies and schiitzphenic which all show the workings of a troubled past much like Hamsen himself. Hamsun affiliation with Nazi Germany and his hatred of England seem unclear but there is no evidence of anti Semitism, but it can be debated why his character on boarding the ship is enroute to England, a country that Hamsun clearly despises? Hamsun was considered a genius in his writings and was unique in that it was the character who himself would write his own plot as he goes along, “Yet, as if they were escaped convicts these heroes erase their tracks as they proceed, and this seems to be hapless rather than willed; they carry no continuous memory of what they have said or done from scene to scene. They seem only to be escaping themselves. “ Hamsun may have tried to escape from his own life through his character, and uses his novels as a form of  purposeful “Christian Perversion “His character walks around starving in a trance, talking to himself and inventing situations and lying to strangers and punishing himself for sins he has not committed. Hunger is a powerful, deeply disturbing and dark novel that explores the complex crevices of the human mind. There is a fine line between fantasy and realty and Hamsun’s character seems to be lost in the chasm in between these two states.