Freedom of Will

The concept of Freedom of Will appears in Hunger not as a philosophical treatise but as a symptom of the narrator's deteriorating mental and physical state. It is one of several grandiose intellectual projects he conceives during his wanderings through Christiania, each one a desperate attempt to assert his intellectual worth and to earn the money that will stave off starvation. The narrator's repeated failure to execute these projects reveals the central irony of his situation: the very hunger that drives him to contemplate the nature of free will is the force that systematically destroys his capacity to exercise it.

The Concept as a Desperate Intellectual Gambit

The narrator first considers writing an article on "Freedom of Will" early in the novel, during a moment of relative optimism after pawning his waistcoat. He feels himself "fired with a desire to set to work immediately and to draw from the contents of my overflowing brain," and he imagines producing something "worth reading, something for which I would at least get ten shillings." This ambition is immediately undercut by his physical reality: he has forgotten his pencil in the pawned waistcoat, a trivial obstacle that derails the entire project. The narrator's grand philosophical ambition is thus revealed as a fragile fantasy, dependent on the most basic material resources he lacks. The concept of Freedom of Will is not a subject he genuinely explores but a talisman he invokes to ward off despair, a promise of future success that never materializes.

The Collapse of Will into Mechanical Production

As the narrator's hunger intensifies, his relationship to writing changes. He no longer chooses his subjects; they seize him involuntarily. In a rare moment of inspiration, he writes a story that is accepted and earns him half a sovereign, but this success is described as a passive experience: "It was as if a vein had burst in me; one word follows another, and they fit themselves together harmoniously with telling effect." He writes "as one possessed," and later attributes the work to divine intervention, crying, "It was God! It was God!" This episode suggests that genuine creative production, for the starving narrator, is not an act of will but a form of possession, a temporary suspension of his conscious agency. The concept of Freedom of Will is thus inverted: the narrator is most productive when he is least in control.

The Failure of Will as a Survival Strategy

In the later parts of the novel, the narrator's attempts to write become increasingly futile. He struggles to complete an allegory about a fire and a drama titled "The Sign of the Cross," but his efforts are repeatedly thwarted by his physical weakness and the hostile environment of the lodging house where he stays. He tries to "persuade himself that a new supreme moment had seized me; I lied right royally to myself, deceived myself knowingly, and wrote on, as if I had no need to seek for words." This conscious self-deception marks the final stage of the narrator's relationship with Freedom of Will: he can no longer even pretend to choose his creative path. He tears his manuscript in two, tramples his hat, and admits, "I am lost!" The concept of Freedom of Will, which once promised intellectual and financial salvation, has become a cruel joke, a reminder of the agency he has lost.

Thematic Significance: The Paradox of Choice in Extremity

The narrator's engagement with the concept of Freedom of Will is a central paradox of Hunger. He is a man who, in his poverty, is forced to make constant, agonizing choices—whether to pawn his waistcoat or his blanket, whether to beg or to steal, whether to sleep in the woods or the guardhouse. Yet these choices are not expressions of freedom but responses to necessity. The narrator's intellectual ambition to write about Freedom of Will is itself a form of bad faith, a refusal to acknowledge that his own will has been hollowed out by hunger. The novel suggests that freedom of will is not an abstract philosophical problem but a material condition, one that is eroded by the relentless pressure of physical need. The narrator's inability to write the article is not a failure of intellect but a testament to the power of hunger to reduce a human being to a creature of pure, involuntary reaction.