Summary:

This well-known image has become one of the 20th century's most potent symbols of psychic agony. A lone emaciated figure halts on a bridge clutching his ears, his eyes and mouth open wide in a scream of anguish. Behind him a couple (his two "friends") are walking together in the opposite direction. Barely discernible in the swirling motion of a red-blood sunset and deep blue-black fjord, are tiny boats at sea, and the suggestion of town buildings.

The composition, colors and dramatic use of perspective, the undulating curves of the landscape and hollow figure personify alienation and anxiety. Munch described the event which took place on a trip to Ekebergsasen (view of Christiania in background) in his diaries: "I stood there trembling with fright and I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature."

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