The Scream: A Bridge at the Edge of the Soul

The figure on the bridge in Munch's Scream tells the story from inside the painting: a face that has become a mask, an opening for air and a throat without a voice, under a sky that is an open wound the color of burning copper. He describes the architecture of fear, a bridge as straight as a cold law beneath a sky and sea that refuse straight lines, and the figures in the distance who walk calmly on while a human being collapses, so that a whole world can shatter while everyone else keeps walking. He presses his hands to his ears to catch the sound of color burning and of the world turning inward to confess that it is afraid, and finds the city, the sea, the sky and even silence screaming with him. He asks the bridge of Oslo whether wood remembers the weight of fear, then is questioned by the scream itself, which opens a circular door that keeps returning him to where he began until he understands that he is trapped within himself. The viewer is drawn in to complete the bridge and asked who is screaming, and the book ends with the scream calling itself the world's inner bell and revealing that the face was never Munch's own: it was the face of us all.