Narrative Variation and the Mood of Freedom in Fear and Trembling

Abstract Kierkegaard is famous for his use of narrative set pieces to illustrate and make vivid his ideas to his reader. Less famous is his use of narrative variation, a technique deployed twice in Fear and Trembling, in which he takes a given narrative and introduces a series of variations on the narrative to explore the possibilities of selfhood made available to the narrative’s protagonist. In this paper I explore this technique, help determine the ends it serves, and then apply this understanding to the use of the device in the text to see how it functions to advance its argument.