Physical pain and self-punishment

Physical pain and self-punishment form a recurring pattern in the novel: pain is not merely a symptom to be relieved, but a bodily experience that gathers mental suffering, returns traumatic memory, and becomes something Sofia Zetterlund deliberately tests herself against. From the merged distress of nausea and constricting shoes to the deliberate alternation of hot and icy water, her body registers what she cannot simply put aside. A nightmare involving Victoria Bergman gives the pattern a parallel image: chafing shoes make pain part of a person’s identity and a source of alertness, even as the desire for revenge perpetuates harm.

Pain as a Single Condition

After months of little appetite, Sofia reaches a point where she can no longer distinguish kinds of pain. Physical nausea makes her vomit several times a day; it has merged with mental anguish and the torment of tight shoes. The passage presents suffering not as separate complaints that can be sorted and treated one at a time, but as one encompassing condition. As summer proceeds, the darkness within her grows denser, and pain becomes the bodily form through which that worsening state is felt.

Her distress also alters the texture of ordinary life. Things she once found interesting become harder to appreciate, while things she used to like begin to irritate her. She repeatedly washes but remains convinced that she smells of sweat and that her feet stink soon after a shower. Watching people around her for signs that they notice, she interprets their lack of reaction as evidence that the problem belongs to her alone. The mismatch between her persistent perception and other people’s apparent indifference makes bodily discomfort isolating: washing does not settle it, and scrutiny offers no reassurance.

The Body as a Site of Returned Memory

When Sofia sits in her car and reluctantly reaches for the gearstick to put it into neutral, the action brings a childhood memory into sharp focus. She remembers being ten when a man turned off the motorway shortly before Bålsta, on the journey to Dala-Floda; the roll of toilet paper beside the gearstick and the man’s breath are especially clear. The ordinary object is therefore not neutral in this moment. Touching the stick links a present action to a remembered experience, and the resulting dizziness shows that the memory is not only an account of the past but a bodily disturbance in the present.

Sofia feels the gearstick’s cold leather against her palm and the ridges against her skin before taking a firm grip. Her resolve follows that physical contact: she has made up her mind, and the hesitation has gone. The scene distinguishes reflection from action. She believes analysis is no longer what she needs; the memory presses through sensation, and her response is to proceed despite the dizziness and reluctance. The sequence does not make pain a cure for what happened. Instead, it shows how a charged sensation can return the past at the very moment the body is being asked to act.

Deliberate Endurance

In her apartment, Sofia turns on the hot tap and keeps her hands beneath it as the heat tightens and stings her skin, making it red. She is explicitly testing herself, forcing herself to remain with the sensation. When she pulls away, she switches to ice-cold water. The cold initially soothes, then becomes painful in its own right; again, she makes herself endure it. The movement from heat to cold gives the scene a clear physical progression, but neither sensation resolves the distress that precedes it. Instead, Sofia makes endurance the immediate task.

This self-imposed trial occurs alongside a decision to end her relationship with Mikael. Sofia recognizes that she began it to take revenge on Lasse, and now judges that purpose empty and pointless because she believes Lasse is dead. Mikael has become less interesting to her while away, though she feels tempted to tell him who she really is. She also recognizes the contradiction in their roles: she is his stepmother and his lover, and she cannot tell him the truth. The scene sets a relational impasse beside the controlled, physical ordeal. She can force herself to stay with burning heat and biting cold, but that bodily determination does not make disclosure possible or settle what the relationship means.

Pain, Alertness, and the Continuation of Harm

A nightmare associated with Victoria Bergman offers a distinct image of pain. Its figure wears a cobalt-blue coat and carries a little bag; its red shoes are too small and chafe its heels. The wounds have become part of its personality, and the pain keeps it alert. Here pain is represented as an adaptation as well as an injury: it sharpens vigilance, but the description also suggests how suffering can become bound to a person’s sense of self. The parallel with Sofia’s tight shoes is not a simple equivalence between their experiences; it is a recurring bodily image through which the novel makes distress concrete.

The nightmare connects the hope of freedom with the difficulty of forgiveness. Victoria believes that if she can find it in herself to forgive, both she and those forgiven will be free; for years she has tried to forget and failed. Yet she cannot see that her revenge is setting off a chain reaction. Read beside Sofia’s deliberate endurance, this image complicates the idea that mastering pain means escaping it. Pain can focus attention and offer a test of resolve, but neither enduring it nor turning it outward automatically ends the suffering. The motif instead traces how bodily pain, traumatic return, and revenge can keep one another in motion.