Hans Pauli's Blanket
Hans Pauli's Blanket is a borrowed object that becomes a central symbol of the narrator's moral struggle and physical survival in Knut Hamsun's Hunger. Loaned by the student Hans Pauli Pettersen, the blanket is the narrator's only source of warmth in his barren attic and later in a tinker's workshop, and its repeated near-pawning and eventual preservation mark the narrator's wavering commitment to honor amid extreme poverty.
Identity and Origin
The blanket belongs to Hans Pauli Pettersen, a theological student and peasant-farmer's son whom the narrator knows. The narrator has borrowed it several weeks before the novel opens, and it is one of the few possessions he has not yet pawned. In his first attic room, the narrator uses the blanket at night, lying on his socks to dry them by morning, and the room itself has no stove. The blanket is also the only bedding in the tinker's workshop where he later lives, a loft so dilapidated that snow blew in the previous winter. The narrator is acutely aware that the blanket is not his own property, and this awareness becomes a recurring source of inner conflict.
The Blanket as a Burden and a Temptation
Throughout the novel, the blanket is both a practical necessity and a moral test. When the narrator leaves his first lodging after being unable to pay rent, he rolls up the blanket and takes it with him, along with a red handkerchief containing a few clean collars and crumpled newspapers. He carries the blanket through the streets, feeling conspicuous, and stops at Semb's shop to have it wrapped in paper so it will look less shabby. The shop boy's contemptuous shrug when he sees the blanket provokes the narrator to claim it contains "two costly glass vases" destined for Smyrna, a lie that restores his dignity momentarily. Later, when he sleeps in Bogstad's Wood, he uses the blanket as his only bedding, pulling off his shoes and putting them under his head with the paper from Semb on top. The blanket is his sole protection against the cold, damp ground, and he wakes shivering and feverish.
The most severe moral test comes when hunger drives the narrator to consider pawning the blanket. He walks to the pawnshop but stops outside the door, shakes his head irresolutely, and turns back. The consciousness that he has resisted this temptation fills him with a "splendid sense of having principle, character, of being a shining white beacon in a muddy, human sea amidst floating wreck." He tells himself that pawning another man's property for a meal would brand his soul with "the first little scar" and force him to cast his eyes down before himself. Yet the temptation returns. Later, when he is even more desperate, he actually takes the blanket to a pawnbroker at No. 5 Stener's Street. He first offers his eyeglasses, then presents the blanket, but the pawnbroker refuses, saying he has a whole store full of bedclothes and that the blanket is worthless. The narrator tries to show the better side, then asks for threepence, but the man will not take it at any price. The narrator returns home, spreads the blanket over the bed again, and smooths it out, trying to wipe away every trace of his action. He tells himself he could not have been in his right mind, and rejoices that he did not have the opportunity to carry out the fault.
The Blanket and the Narrator's Physical Decline
As the narrator's condition worsens, the blanket becomes increasingly inadequate. In the tinker's workshop, he lies fully dressed at night, shivering with fits of icy cold, and the old blanket cannot keep out the draughts. He wakes with his nose stopped by the sharp outside frosty air that forces its way into the dilapidated room. The blanket is also a reminder of his dependence on others. When he considers stealing a handful of oats from the stable, he remembers that the stable is shut, and the blanket is his only resource. The blanket's failure to provide warmth mirrors the narrator's failing body: his hair falls out in masses, his back and shoulders cause him the worst trouble, and he develops a sore on his stomach from wearing the same shirt for weeks.
The Blanket as a Symbol of Honor and Survival
The blanket's ultimate fate is tied to the narrator's decision to leave Christiania. After he is expelled from the lodging house in Vaterland, he wanders the streets, hungry and desperate. He thinks of the blanket again, but by this point he has already given away the half-sovereign he received from Ylajali, and the blanket remains with him. When he signs on to the barque Copégoro, bound for Leith and then Cadiz, he leaves the blanket behind, along with his old life. The blanket, which he never pawned, becomes a testament to his struggle to maintain his honor, even as he sinks into degradation. It is the one object he did not sell or steal, the one line he did not cross, and its preservation is a small, quiet victory in a novel otherwise defined by loss and surrender.
