The Scream

Have you ever seen a feeling? Not just felt it inside you, but seen it with your own eyes? Look at me. My sky is a dizzy swirl of fiery orange, blazing yellow, and deep, stormy blue. It twists and turns above a dark fjord, so deep you can't see the bottom. A long, wobbly bridge stretches across the water, and on it, you can see two figures in the distance, walking away calmly in their top hats. But I want you to look closer, right at the front. Do you see the main figure? It’s me. My head is shaped like a skull, smooth and pale. My hands are clapped tightly over where my ears would be, and my mouth is stretched open in a perfect 'O'. It’s a scream, but a completely silent one. It’s a sound so huge and powerful that it makes the whole world around me, from the sky to the water, wiggle and wave like jelly. I am not a person or a place. I am a feeling, captured in color and lines for everyone to see.

My story begins with the man who felt the colors, a painter from Norway named Edvard Munch. Edvard was a person who felt everything very, very deeply. His happiness was as bright as the sun, and his sadness was as dark as the deepest sea. One evening in the year 1892, he was taking a walk with two friends along a path that looked out over the city and the fjord below. As the sun began to set, it painted the sky with incredible colors. Edvard later wrote that the clouds looked like 'blood and tongues of fire.' Suddenly, while his friends kept walking, he stopped. He was overcome by a huge, powerful wave of anxiety and sadness. He said it felt like a great, infinite scream was passing through all of nature. Can you imagine hearing a scream that no one else can hear, one that comes from the world itself? He felt tired and worried, and this powerful emotion washed over him. He knew he had to show other people what that moment felt like. He wanted to paint the feeling itself. So, he created me. He actually made a few versions of me, trying to get the emotion just right. One time he used oil paints, another time he used colorful pastels, and he even made a black-and-white version with ink. I wasn't painted to be a pretty picture of a sunset. I was made to be honest about a big, confusing, and scary feeling.

When people first saw me in a gallery, many of them were shocked. They were used to paintings of calm landscapes or smiling people. My wild, swirling colors and my strange, skull-like face were not what they expected at all. Some people thought I was ugly or even frightening. But as time went on, something amazing happened. People started to look past the strange shapes and bright colors and they recognized the feeling. They realized that I showed something they had felt, too—that feeling of being overwhelmed, worried, or all alone in a big, noisy world. I became famous not for being beautiful, but for being true. By the 1900s, my fame grew, and today, people from all over the globe come to museums in Norway to see me. I show them that it’s okay to have big, messy feelings, and that art can be a powerful way to share them. My face has even appeared in movies, cartoons, and on those little emoji pictures you use on phones. I am a reminder that even a difficult feeling can be turned into something that connects us all, helping us understand each other without ever saying a word.