The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

“The main thing was being alive. That was the main thing.”

Brigge is a listless, lost young man, but he clings to the positives in his life. The act of living becomes defiant in a world swarmed by poverty, suffering, and difficult memories. Brigge does not like his own writing and he fears that he lacks a purpose in his life so he turns to the idea that simply surviving is his sole aim in life until he can find another, more profound meaning.

“This young, inconsequential foreigner, Brigge, will have to sit down, five stories up, and write, day and night: yes, he'll have to write, that's what will have to happen.”

Brigge refers to himself in the third person to burden himself with the responsibility of writing something insightful. The use of the third person creates a narrative space between Brigge the narrator and Brigge the character. Brigge the narrator feels overwhelmed by what he wants to accomplish, and he turns this anxiety on to Brigge the character, which, in theory, he can control.

“Sometimes I give them a couple of coppers and tremble in case they refuse them.”

When Brigge donates money to the poor, he is paying to have his social status reaffirmed. He comes from a wealthy family and wants to be assured that he has not lost the last lingering traces of social superiority that he believes he possesses. His fear that they will reject his donation represents his fear that the poor will see him as their equal, destroying his fantasy of specialness and forcing him to deal with the reality of his poverty.