Work as a Source of Happiness in Growth of The Soil by Knut Hamsun

Growth of the Soil — a book wrote by Knut Hamsun in 1917 is a novel from Norwegian new
Realism, glorifying rural life in harmony with nature and praising work as one of the most important
occupations of man. This is a novel of two cultures, former represented by Izak — a main hero, and the
new symbolized by the robbery exploitation of mountainous mineral deposits and the mesmerizing innovations
of the traditional rural community, which ends with the triumph of the former. Eternal human
instincts and hundreds of years of proven solutions win with the new usurpations and trends. Hamsun
seems to say that, despite the fact that the decay factor seems to be overwhelming, power, stubbornness
and fidelity with a much longer pedigree of value are capable of making the instantaneous modern ethos
victory turn soon into its spectacular defeat.