Barabbas by Pär Lagerkvist
Published 1950 · 39,129 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · literary fiction, biblical retelling, existentialist novel, philosophical novel
How hard is Barabbas to read?
Barabbas scores 60 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 42 out of 100
- Lagerkvist writes in a deliberately spare, almost biblical register. The English translation by Alan Blair preserves this plainness, with vocabulary drawn from everyday life and scripture rather than literary ornamentation. Occasional terms from Roman and Jewish contexts (Golgotha, Messiah, medallion) are familiar from cultural literacy rather than specialized knowledge.
- Sentence structure: 40 out of 100
- Sentences are short, declarative, and stripped of subordination. Lagerkvist favors parataxis over hypotaxis, stacking simple clauses with dashes and semicolons. The prose reads closer to parable than to the elaborate periodic sentences of European modernism.
- Abstraction: 72 out of 100
- The novel operates as sustained theological inquiry disguised as narrative. Every encounter Barabbas has with Christians, darkness, and crucifixion loops back to the unanswerable question of faith versus doubt. Concrete events serve primarily as vehicles for existential meditation on the meaning of belief and its absence.
- Information density: 38 out of 100
- At roughly 150 pages, the novel moves through Barabbas's life in broad strokes, lingering on mood and internal tension rather than accumulating detail. Scenes are spare, dialogue minimal, and historical context provided only as needed. The reading pace is brisk; the interpretive demand is where the density lies.
- Narrative indirection: 68 out of 100
- Lagerkvist never resolves Barabbas's inner state through direct statement. The third-person narration maintains careful distance, reporting actions and speech while leaving interior meaning for the reader to construct. The final line ('To thee I deliver up my soul') is addressed to darkness, and whether this constitutes faith or its absence remains entirely the reader's problem.
- Symbolic density: 82 out of 100
- The novel is built on layered symbols operating simultaneously: darkness as both divine mystery and nihilistic void, the slave medallion with Christ's name scratched on then scratched out, Barabbas himself as inverse Christ figure. The crucifixion that opens and closes the book frames the entire narrative as symbolic circuit.
- Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
- Lagerkvist maintains a cool, parable-like tone that resists emotional identification without tipping into satire. The irony is structural rather than tonal: Barabbas, freed so Christ could die, spends his life unable to access what that death was supposed to provide. The narrative sympathizes with Barabbas without endorsing or condemning his doubt.
- Resolution withholding: 85 out of 100
- The novel's final ambiguity is its defining feature. Barabbas dies on a cross, speaking to 'the darkness' words that could be prayer or could be surrender to nothingness. Lagerkvist refuses to clarify whether faith arrives at the last moment or whether Barabbas dies as he lived, outside belief. The 'as though' in the final sentence is the hinge on which the entire novel's meaning swings.
- Structural complexity: 35 out of 100
- The structure is linear and chronological, following Barabbas from the Crucifixion through his years of wandering, enslavement in the mines, and death in Rome. There are no timeline disruptions, POV shifts, or formal experiments. The simplicity of form is deliberate, matching the parable-like mode.
How Barabbas is regarded
Barabbas holds a literary regard score of 66 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.