Events included in the novel, are important of the understanding of a psychological state of the narrator. Hunger has exacerbated internal vision of the narrator, and he notices the smallest external facts of life, inadvertently shifting and increasing their scale. The reason is a state of a long effect caused by hunger. Chronic hunger and a provoked consequent overstimulation allows the narrator of the novel to look at the world differently.
"Hunger" is largely an autobiographical work, and slightly raises the curtain on those terrible and bitter times that Hamsun experienced himself in Christiania during his hungry youth. The feeling of icy indifference, human cold callousness - what Hamsun faced in those days – are described in the novel. His narrator, who experienced severe physical torments of hunger, described with extraordinary expressiveness, is faced with almost complete disregard of others. Only somewhere at the bottom of life, in the miserable, dirty "rooms for visitors," among stupefied by needs people, the narrator finds something resembling sympathy or, at least, understanding of his position. A society, as it is, does not want to know anything about those who are thrown to the wayside of life, for everyone in this society is busy with themselves, their thoughts and deeds. Social criticism is Hamsun’s novel "Hunger” is vividly revealed.
The narrator of "Hunger", even in the most desperate moments of his life, blasphemes and trembling with anger, takes the world for granted, considering his own destiny as a private individual case without making far-reaching conclusions. The narrator does not infringe on the formed and existing world order. Moreover, he tries to hide from others his sorry plight. He is a closed in himself person, existing among the same closed-confident people. The motif of loneliness was introduced in the novel based on Hamsun’s outlook, experiences, and observations of life. This motif, introducing Hamsun’s "Hunger" to a range of issues specific to the literature of the twentieth century, preserves in his works for a long time.
The closed nature of a person in his individuality makes almost impossible the human understanding. This important for Hamsun opinion, that reflected the new, bringing to life by the social development boundary between people, almost unknown in former times, confirms in the novel "Hunger" dramatic episode of the meeting of the narrator with an unknown woman, who he called later Ylajali - a meaningless, musically sounding name, reflecting, to his opinion, her charm and mystique. But even love passion could not beat the human fragmentation and allow two people to comprehend intimate core of their being. This theme will also be significant in Hamsun’s works and its appearance in the novel showed that "Hunger" was a work that opened and included the mood and perspective that will be characteristic of the literature of the twentieth century. Some Hamsun’s artistic techniques in "Hunger" such as the depth and subtle psychology, a closer examination of movements and vibrations of the human psyche as an independent phenomenon, internal monologues of the narrator, his excited, impulsive self-comprehension, became prior to the introduction of "stream of consciousness" in narrative art as a way of more detailed transmission of human mental states.
