Robert’s hearing loss

Robert’s hearing loss is a lasting consequence of the blow he received from Aron of Nybacken, and a recurring feature of his experience aboard the Charlotta. At sea, the old injury brings pain, impaired hearing, and a persistent roar; Robert explains it through guilt about his former service even as he imagines that life in America will restore his hearing and free him from dependence on masters.

Origin and lasting impairment

Robert traces the problem to an incident nearly two years earlier, when Aron struck him on the ear. The injury remains with him as the emigrants cross the ocean: his left ear aches, his hearing has become much worse, and he sometimes feels nearly deaf on that side. The persistence matters to Robert not merely as a physical limitation but as a reminder of the authority he left behind at Nybacken.

His explanations combine a concrete memory of the blow with a moral interpretation of its aftermath. Robert tells himself that he became hard of hearing because he did not listen to and obey his master. The injury thus carries the old relationship into the new setting: although Robert has escaped service, he still understands his damaged hearing in terms of the obedience demanded of him there.

The ear at sea

Life aboard the brig intensifies Robert’s attention to his hearing. He wonders whether the captain’s medicine chest contains drops for earache, and reports that the roar in his ear grows stronger at sea. He imagines the sound as an enclosed sea inside his head, swelling and pressing outward, and wakes to find his ear and pillow wet. The account makes the impairment an intimate part of the voyage rather than a past injury left ashore.

The ship’s conditions offer little space for privacy or rest. The hold is crowded with the emigrants’ bedding and belongings, its air thick, and the bunks tightly arranged. Robert shares a two-man bunk with Karl Oskar in the unmarried men’s compartment; Jonas Petter sleeps above them and Arvid nearby. Against this compressed environment, Robert’s attention to the pain and noise in one ear gives the crossing a personal scale: the broad, dangerous sea is also something he experiences through a damaged body.

Hope, work, and the New World

Robert repeatedly links recovery to arrival in North America. He believes that the air there will be healthier for sick ears, and imagines that people hard of hearing in the Old World will regain their hearing in the New. When the earache grows severe, he wishes the ship would sail faster so he can reach the place where he expects the pain to vanish. This hope is not supported by any treatment or medical assurance in the account; it is Robert’s own expectation, sustained by the larger promise he attaches to emigration.

That promise includes independence. Robert sees each wave as bringing him closer to the United States and describes the voyage as an adventure through which he will learn the sea’s size. On shore, he expects not only freedom from the earache but freedom from old farmers who might call him their “little hand.” He plans to be his own master. The anticipated cure and the anticipated change in social status therefore travel together: America is imagined as a place where both bodily discomfort and the constraints of service will be left behind.

Narrative significance

The hearing loss is presented as a specific and continuing experience: an old blow, a recurring ache, worsening hearing, the heightened roar at sea, and Robert’s search for medicine. At the same time, Robert’s own interpretation binds these symptoms to his past as a servant and his hopes for escape. The contrast between the impairment he carries aboard and the healing he expects on arrival keeps the New World promise unresolved during the crossing. His ear has not yet recovered; for now, hope—not evidence of a cure—allows him to imagine a different life.