Feeling your own body diminish away at the seams is a humbling affair.  I've known it myself.  In 2007 traveling South America I became quite ill after eating bad meat within a hot dish, (not long after a round of antibiotics to kill off an infection).  A half day after eating the hot dish I was on a 20 hour bus ride to Puerto Iguazu to experience Las Cataracas that border Brazil and Argentina.  For most of the trip sharp pains stabbed my gut like knives.  By the time I arrived in Puerto Iguazu, my head felt pressed by a vice, and my energy was gone.  Trying to eat and drink fluids was mostly futile for about five days as it all left from my lower end in a hurry.  Eventually I made it to a clinic, but with dangerously low blood pressure.  A doctor filled me with intravenously fluid, recommended soup, and promptly kicked me out of his office. 
 
One of the worst parts, after not eating, was the loss of mental functioning.  My mind was chaotic and rapid at times.  Decisions became confusing and taxing.  Simply making a decision required tremendous energy.  Yes, I made fresh soup every day at the hostels I stayed in during my recovery, but they wouldn't stay put.  Nothing was catching, you could say.  Soup gave me a jolt for 20 minutes, then I crashed.  A few hours later, it would come out the other side again, mostly the way it came in.  More desolation. 
 
Being alone in a foreign country with little help, no energy, and enough nausea to shy away from the most tantalizing meals, is disheartening.  It's a time when the only option is to "dig deep", and find an answer.  I asked a lot of emotional questions about how and why I ended up in a situation where I was losing weight fast, couldn't eat, and felt very ill for days - then into weeks.  At one point, the only answer was to pray, in a way, and ask forgiveness for...something.  I'm not particularly religious, but when you can't rely on yourself for answers, and no one is there to help, something has to give.  I tried to meditate too.  One night I had visions and felt a presence.  Maybe it was from the misfiring synapses - but it was powerful.  It was feminine, like a grand goddess - the perfect woman - gracing me with gentle reassurance.  She was light and bright and full of warm feelings.  She spoke to me: "Don't worry, you aren't alone.  You've never been alone because I'm always with you.  You will get through this and I love you unconditionally."  What was that all about?  Where did it come from?  My deep subconscious?  The spirit realm where the Daime mother resides?  Maybe I'll never know.  But whatever this energy was, or from wherever it came, she helped.  She gave me hope.

After a couple difficult weeks of more antibiotics and steadfast discipline eating hearty soups and yogurt, my strength seeped back in.  Many thanks to the people working at the hostels that helped me through my recovery.  I also met an Australian guy staying at one of the hostels who was one of the kindest most generous humans I've ever met.  I've lost his name, but I won't forget him.  I also ran into a girl I went to a high school dance with at the second hostel I stayed at in Montevideo, Uruguay.  I hadn't seen her for about 7 years.  Even with the gap, we didn't skip a beat.  Spending time with her was a bright light during a trying period of my life.  Angels take many forms.
 
The main character in Knut Hamsun's Hunger is a nameless man with no angels in his life.  For most of the simple story we see through the man's eyes, in first person, the pain from hunger withering him to his bones.  Somewhere in the middle of the novel, he can barely keep his food down, "When finished, I made at once for the door.  I felt nausea already.  The waitress got up.  I was afraid to go near the light - afraid to show myself too plainly to the young girl, who never for moment suspected the depth of my misery; so I wished her a hasty good night, bowed to her, and left.  
 
"The food commenced to take effect.  I suffered much from it, and could not keep it down for any length of time.  I had to empty my mouth a little at every dark corner I came to.  I struggled to master this nausea which threatened to hollow me out anew, clenched my hands, and tried to fight it down; stamped on the pavement, and gulped down furiously whatever sought to come up.  All in vain.  I sprang at last which gushed from my eyes, and vomited once more.  I was seized with bitterness, and wept along the street...I cursed the cruel powers, whoever they might be, that persecuted me so, consigned them to hell's damnation and eternal torments for their petty persecution.  There was little chivalry in fate, really little enough chivalry; one was forced to admit that."  As his body wilts from days of little to no food, we are drawn into his bleak view on existence and the world around him.  His trust in himself and others nearby, fades with his willpower.  

Later the main character resorts to begging for bones, like a dog, at the local butcher shop, "'Ah, will you be kind enough to give me a bone for my dog?' I said; 'only a bone.  There needn't be anything on it; it's just to give him something to carry in his mouth.'  I got the bone, a capital little bone, on which there still remained a morsel of meat, and hit it under my coat.  I thanked the man so heartily that he looked at me in amazement...
 
"It had no taste; a rank smell of blood oozed from it, and I was forced to vomit almost immediately.  I tried anew.  If I could only keep it down, in spite of all, have some effect.  It was simply a matter of forcing it to remain down there.  But I vomited again. I grew wild, bit angrily into the meat, tore off the morsel, and gulped it down by sheer strength of will; and yet it was of no use. Just as soon as the little fragments of meat became warm in my stomach up they came again, worse luck.  I clenched my hands in frenzy, burst into tears from sheer helplessness, and gnawed away as one possessed.  I cried, so that the bone got wet and dirty with my tears, vomited, cursed and groaned again, cried as if my heart would break, and vomited anew.  I consigned all the powers that be to the lowermost torture in the loudest voice."  At this point in the story, it seemed to me the main character was close to dying.    
 
Today, especially in the U.S., we rarely see anyone so decayed from starvation.  I want to believe that most people are good, and from this view, we'd lend a few dollars for a meal to those in need.  My former place of abode, Portland, is rife with transients begging on the streets and setting up camp under bridges.  There is no shortage of vagrants in my current home, either.  I suppose no system is perfect and on some level "the wretched" will always be with us, even if we turn our heads away.  In truth, any of us could be any of us.  No one has the right to judge.  Drug abuse and mental illness certainly dominate the down-and-out in society.  But, the revolving door swings both ways.  Sometimes all it takes is the wrong friends, the wrong girl, or the wrong job, and in short order dumpsters are grocery stores, and overpasses become shelters.  On the flip-side, sometimes when people are at their lowest they find God, or the "point of clarity", or a helping hand, and their life turns around.  Sometime that's all it takes.  We all need to keep this in mind and help when we can.  
 
For the main character in Hunger, by the end of his mostly wretched journey,  he finds a little energy from steadily nursing himself with food scraps.  Soon after, he finds work on a coal ship heading to Cadiz.  A simple, uplifting end after a tortured, unwinding of his health.  All he needed was a little nutrition and a worthwhile chance.       


Summary:  A personal and brooding trial of starvation complemented by moments of illness, insanity, and revelation.    
 
Rating:  6.0

-E.B.
 2019-02-22