Sleep in Woods

After a day of fruitless wandering and humiliation, the protagonist finds himself with nowhere to sleep. His pride prevents him from returning to his former attic, and a visit to an acquaintance, C. Zacharias Bartel, is rebuffed because the artist has a woman inside. With no money for an inn and the city offering no refuge, he resigns himself to the open air, setting out for Bogstad's Wood, a journey that feels like hours. He turns off the road, gathers heather and juniper leaves to make a bed on a dry declivity, and opens his parcel to take out the green blanket he has been carrying. His ear, slightly swollen from a whip-lash delivered by a passing hay-cart driver, prevents him from lying on that side. He pulls off his shoes, puts them under his head with the paper from Semb's wrapping the blanket on top, and lies down.

The Night in the Forest

The great spirit of darkness spreads a shroud over him, and everything is silent. Yet up in the heights, he hears the everlasting song, the voice of the air, a distant, toneless humming that is never silent. He listens so long to this ceaseless faint murmur that it begins to bewilder him; it seems a symphony from the rolling spheres above, stars that intone a song. He abruptly exclaims, "I am damned if it is, though," and laughs aloud to collect his wits, telling himself they are night-owls hooting in Canaan. He rises again, pulls on his shoes, and wanders about in the gloom, only to lie down once more. He fights and wrestles with anger and fear until nearly dawn, then falls asleep at last.

Consequences and Aftermath

He wakes in broad daylight with a feeling that it is going on towards noon. He pulls on his shoes, packs up the blanket, and sets out for town. There is no sun to be seen; he shivers like a dog, his feet are benumbed, and water commences to run from his eyes as if they cannot bear the daylight. It is three o'clock when hunger begins to assail him in earnest, and he is faint, retching furtively. A singular sense of confusion suddenly darts through his head; he stumbles on, determined not to heed it, but grows worse and is forced to sit down on a step. His whole being undergoes a change, as if something has slid aside in his inner self, or as if a curtain or tissue of his brain is rent in two. This experience of sleeping in the sodden fields directly precipitates a physical and mental crisis that deepens throughout the following day, leaving him more vulnerable to the hallucinations and desperate schemes that characterize his ongoing struggle for survival.