Destroy Manuscript

The destruction of the manuscript is one of the most violent and decisive actions the protagonist takes against himself in the course of his ordeal. It occurs late in the narrative, during the fourth and final part, after weeks of worsening hunger, homelessness, and repeated creative failure. The act is not a sudden impulse but the culmination of a long, grinding process in which the protagonist's ability to write—his only remaining source of income and self-respect—has been steadily eroded by starvation and exhaustion.

The Manuscript and Its Significance

The manuscript in question is a drama titled "The Sign of the Cross," a work set in the Middle Ages that the protagonist has been laboring over with desperate intensity. Writing has been his sole means of survival, both economically and psychologically. Earlier in the book, a successful story earned him ten shillings and a brief reprieve from starvation, and he has repeatedly pinned his hopes on new pieces. The drama represents his last, most ambitious attempt to break out of his downward spiral. He has been working on it for days, often in the cold anteroom of a lodging house in Vaterland, where he has been allowed to stay on credit. The landlady has lost faith in his ability to pay, and the pressure to finish the work has become unbearable.

The Moment of Destruction

The protagonist is sitting on a step near the railway square, having been expelled from the lodging house. He takes out his manuscript and resolves to force himself to complete the final scenes. He writes desperately, lying to himself that a new surge of inspiration has seized him, but the words will not come. The speeches he produces feel hollow and anachronistic; he realizes that "not a trace of the Middle Ages shone through the monk's words." In a paroxysm of fury, he breaks his pencil between his teeth, jumps to his feet, and tears the manuscript in two. He then tears each individual page in two, flings his hat into the street, and tramples upon it. As he does so, he whispers to himself, "I am lost! Ladies and gentlemen, I am lost!"

The Context of Creative Failure

This act of destruction is not an isolated event but the endpoint of a long pattern of creative struggle. The protagonist has often found that his thoughts desert him when he needs them most. He has sat in parks and churchyards, staring at blank paper, unable to produce a single usable sentence. At one point, while trying to write an article, he felt his brain "positively snap" and his head empty, leaving him "hollowed out from top to toe." Even when inspiration did come—as it did one morning when he wrote a story in a feverish rush—the success was fleeting. The editor later returned his subsequent work, and the protagonist destroyed that piece as well, "without even re-reading it again." The destruction of "The Sign of the Cross" is thus the most dramatic instance of a recurring pattern: the protagonist's creative powers, once his salvation, have become unreliable, and his frustration with them turns violent.

Consequences and Aftermath

Immediately after destroying the manuscript, the protagonist is observed by a policeman, who stands watching him from a few steps away. The protagonist picks up his hat, puts it on, and walks over to the policeman to ask the time, a gesture of bravado that masks his complete collapse. The destruction of the manuscript marks the point at which the protagonist abandons his last hope of rescuing himself through his own efforts. Shortly afterward, he wanders to the wharf and signs on to a ship, the Copégoro, bound for Leith and then Cadiz. The act of tearing up his work is the final surrender of his identity as a writer and the prelude to his departure from Christiania altogether.

Thematic Significance

The destruction of the manuscript is a powerful symbol of the protagonist's internal war. Writing has been his only means of asserting dignity and purpose in the face of poverty and hunger. When that faculty fails him, he turns his violence inward, destroying the very thing that might have saved him. The act echoes earlier moments in the book when he has torn up rejected work, but here the violence is more extreme and the stakes higher. It represents a kind of creative suicide, a deliberate annihilation of the self he had tried to build through words. The fact that he whispers "I am lost" as he does it underscores the finality of the gesture: he has exhausted every resource, and the manuscript's destruction is the last act of a man who has run out of options.