Talk:Growth of the Soil

Conclusion

The Conclusion section reads more like something you'd find in a review than an encyclopedia. The last sentence (...make it something unique and a work which should be revived, and far better known) particularly reeks of opinion rather than anything factual. Jrs044 (talk) 00:37, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

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I agree, but this can be said of the whole article. For instance, the character descriptions read as if none had any effect upon the lives/experiences the others. Isak, for instance, is a cold, un-affectionate husband who wanted a wife to gratify his personal manly needs as well as provide free labor. That is what really drove his wife to infidelity when she'd been "repaired", and it was the lack of love in her own life that resulted in her killing her own hair-lipped baby out of "mercy". Maybe Hamsun didn't intend to say this, he was after all a nationalist and would want to glorify Isak as a hero, but to any un-biased reader this is obvious. I also feel that the book isn't as relativistic towards evil and good as the article would have one believe. --64.46.3.66 (talk) 02:41, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

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The link to Lit React should be removed. It's a high school or early-undergraduate level essay; there is nowhere any reference to the novel's place historically among novels or its place in Hansun's development, and never once puts one concept of literary theory to use. Even the kind of analysis it does try - an apportioning of praise and blame for the characters isn't insightful - it does poorly — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.251.246.111 (talk) 13:46, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

update table

I think someone needs to update the table above on the talk page as the article has undergone some changes since it was last updated. I don't think it is of stub class anymore and doesn't need immediate attention but I don't want to change it because I don't know how to.NikolaiHo 18:09, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Growth of the Soil/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Comment(s)

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I noticed two problems with the article: 1) In the following paragraph about Inger, I was not able to make any sense out of the sentence fragment at the end: "She evinces sympathy because of her disfigurement, because of her unjust imprisonment, because of the way she selflessly toils to serve the man who has taken her into his life, but whom she does not love. She oscillates between a kind of puritan endurance and her latent, suppressed desires to love, be loved and indulge life to the full. However, like Isak, we can forgive her everything. and that is how you will never know the reality." It is stimulating to try to read some meaning into that, but I suspect that the last part is actually misplaced text. Perhaps someone can figure out where it belongs, if indeed it was intended as part of this article. 2) The two references at the end, to Thomas Hardy and George Orwell: There is no explanation there or in the text of how these works relate to the subject novel or to Hamsun. Are these works that were influenced by the novel? That allude to it? That treat related themes? I suspect that these references are incorrectly copied from a larger treatise of which this page about one novel is an excerpt.

Last edited at 02:57, 12 October 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 16:47, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Possible mistranslation

Hi, in the plot resume of book two, the Lendsmand's wife is referred to simply as "Fru" as if it were her first name. "Fru", however - cognate with German "Frau" - is simply the style of a married woman, like "Mrs." in English. I'll replace "Fru Heyerdahl" and "Fru" with "Mrs. Heyerdahl". T 84.208.86.134 (talk) 15:37, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Literature is given for an author, not a book. The opening sentence of this article states that Growth of the Soil won Hamsun the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. That statement is ambiguous, but the statement, "The novel Growth of the Soil was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920," in the section under "Nobel Prize," is unambiguous. Maybe it was different in 1920 or maybe Growth of the Soil supplied the impetus for Hamsun's recognition, but we ought to clarify or correct this. Maurice Magnus (talk) 21:59, 12 October 2024 (UTC)