When I Was a Child. Vilhelm Moberg

the head, body, or limbs that it hurt or felt good; it was the head, the body, and the limbs that worked and earned the food; it was they that became soldiers, or farmers, or shoemakers, or upper-class people, or traveled to America. This was the human body. But the human body died and turned to earth again, because, explained Carpenter-Elof: The body belonged to this earth.

      Now Valter wondered what remained to himself. His soul belonged to the Creator, his body to the earth. Neither soul nor body was his own. And there was nothing more. Nothing that he owned himself. Himself was nothing, nobody. Everything that he had to live with here on this earth belonged to somebody else, to God or the earth.

      But he was not satisfied with this explanation. He wanted to be someone himself, someone or something. He wanted to, he wanted to. He could not stop wanting to. He was not satisfied with a soul that God would take back, and a body that belonged to the earth.

      He could never, never be satisfied with this. He strove for something more. There must be something that was his own, that he could make decisions for—something that was he himself.

      When in the evenings he stood in the yard, his eyes following the mysterious twilight bird, or the woodcock which flew so swiftly across the sky and disappeared in its unhampered freedom, then he felt that there must be something more.