George Orwell's Hunger

The entirety of the novel, Hunger, is set in the main character’s mind. It revolves around what he thinks, feels and how he acts. Every thought that goes through his head in every different setting is then portrayed through the novel. His emotions and his reactions are the main part of the novel. He is the sole focus of the story. However, while the novel revolves around the main character, his impact on the world the exists outside of his own mind is greatly limited and also prominently negative. His reactions to the people he interacts with is always the most minimal amount of contact and more often than not leads to a violent or aggressive outcome. Throughout the novel, Hunger, a man with no known name has a superiority complex, believing

He chooses a job that is known for being a hard way to make a living. He writes multiple times throughout the novel and tries to use what he gets payed from writing articles for a newspaper. He complains multiple times throughout the novel about his lack of money and lack of elite status and possessions. He loses his apartment at one point and begins to go hungry, nearly eating a pencil to sustain himself. However, even at his lowest point he refuses to be presented as such by others. He feels the need to have everybody around him believe that he is superior to others, he goes so far as to spend the night in jail, pretending to be man who had lost his keys, and then leave without the mean that is offered. He talks about why he leaves by saying, “But no one offered me a ticket, and I dared not demand one. It would have roused suspicion at once. They would have begin to poke their noses into my private affairs, and discover who I really was.” (pg. 47).He thrives off of what others think of him and how they see him. He refuses to let anyone see how poor and insignificant he is by posing as something more, no matter what he may be

He becomes someone that others would pity. He gets himself into these positions because of his own choices but refuses to acknowledge that. He ends up in denial as he blames God for what happens to him. He makes it known that he does not believe that any of his own bad luck or circumstances could possibly be because of what he has done, or even what others could have done to him. He does not believe that it is anyone elses fault but the fault of God that has made him end up in different and difficult circumstances. He says, “What was it that ailed me? Was the hand of the Lord turned against me? But why just me? Why, for that matter, not just as well against a man in South America?” (pg. 10). He believes that he was singled out by God. He believes that he is the only person in the with a life as bad as his own. He wishes that he could trade that life he has with someone else in hopes of getting a better one and would rather someone else suffer than himself. The main character refuses to take any responsibility for his own actions that lead to him being