45 pages • 1 hour read
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
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Symbols & Motifs
The Prodigal Son
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge ends with a discussion of the biblical story of the prodigal son. In the story, a young man leaves his family to seek out his fame and fortune. After spending all his money and failing to find happiness, the prodigal son returns and is welcomed back into the family with open arms. Brigge sees his own struggles in this story. He has spent a long time searching for meaning in his life and attempted to satisfy this yearning through his writing, but his writing was ultimately unsuccessful and did not provide him the answers he sought. Instead, Brigge became more immersed in poverty and in his own anxious meditations on death.
While traditional interpretations of the story praise the family for welcoming the son back, Brigge shifts the focus to the son’s ability to allow himself to be welcomed. To Brigge, someone’s ability to allow themselves to be loved is more valuable than their ability to love another person. The act of being loved is a gift to another person, allowing them to express their emotions. The prodigal son had to overcome his sense of failure to receive his family’s love. He does not see himself as a person worthy of their love, but eventually, he sacrifices his idea of himself so that they can love him. Brigge has to take on the identity of Sophie to allow his mother to love the daughter she never had. The reinterpretation of the story highlights Brigge’s need to relinquish his identity to receive his mother’s love. Rather than focusing on the hurt and inadequacy that he felt in doing so, Brigge frames his experience as an opportunity to allow his mother to love. Tragically, unlike the prodigal son, Brigge does not have a home to which he can return. His mother is dead, the Danish castle has been sold off, and the family has been scattered. Brigge can only experience the homecoming he craves vicariously, which makes the inclusion of the prodigal son story in his notebooks a stand-in for the emotional closure he desires.
The Big Thing
In one notebook entry, Brigge describes how he is terrorized by the “Big Thing.” The Big Thing is a symbolic representation of the anxieties and fears that form a significant part of Brigge's mind. A lifetime fraught with emotionally instability, death, and failure has filled Brigge with self-doubt. These self-doubts manifest at moments when he is most vulnerable. When he fears his imminent poverty, when he is reflecting on his failure, or when he is struggling to convey the complexity of the world's suffering through his writing, the Big Thing appears to terrorize him.
Part of Brigge's problems as a writer is the sheer scale of his ambitions. He wants to put everything in his work, to the point where he is horrified by the idea of leaving anything out. He is his own worst critic, providing scathing evaluations of his past failures. These critiques only feed the Big Thing, providing even more material for the abstract symbol of his fears. The cycle becomes self-perpetuating: the more anxiety he experiences, the bigger his fears grow, and the more powerful the Big Thing becomes.
The Big Thing only appears in one entry in the notebooks. He never mentions it again, even though he never resolves or deals with the fears that it symbolizes. The unresolved way in which it disappears from the text is, in itself, symbolic. Brigge is haunted by many problems from his past: the deaths of his parents, visions of ghosts, alienation from society, his failures as a writer, and many others. All Brigge can do is document these experiences in his notebook, hoping that containing them within his words will tame or neutralize them. Instead, the problems only grow and fester in his subconscious. The symbol of his fears and traumas lingers in the notebook just like it lingers in his mind, without being fixed or resolved. The isolated nature of the Big Thing in the text is, in itself, symbolic of Brigge's struggles. His repeated failures are often due to his inability to confront traumatic experiences and his inability to deal with his own anxieties. Instead, he puts these problems in his notebook and hopes that this is enough.
Clothing
Brigge begins his notebooks by describing life in the poor areas of Paris. In his efforts to document the struggles of the impoverished residents, one of his key areas of focus is clothing. Shabby, torn, worn-out clothing distinguishes people as poor. It is not adequate for winter, which affects people’s health and ability to work and care for their families. Those who lack presentable clothing cannot enter the restaurants and the cafes that are enjoyed by so many of Paris's wealthier citizens. In this respect, clothing is a clear symbol of the class divide. Clothing is a visual indicator of wealth and, based on individuals' appraisal of this symbol, poor people are denied privileges and opportunities that are given to their better dressed peers.
During the time in which he is writing, Brigge is in a similar financial position to many of the people about whom he is writing. He has few job prospects and a seemingly doomed writing career. He has no money and lives in a cold, dilapidated apartment. The difference is that he clings to the belief that he is different because he comes from a wealthy background. He has a psychological need to maintain his distance from the poor: Ironically, the family experiences that caused him so much pain become his only source of self-worth once he is on his own in the world.
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