How does The Scream express anxiety and spiritual anguish?

Edvard Munch’s The Scream serves as a profound representation of spiritual anguish and modern anxiety through the use of abstraction.12

Munch expressed these internal states by distorting the environment to mirror the subject's psyche. He utilized undulating, swirling lines that press in on the central figure like shock waves, visually manifesting the sensation of a scream passing through nature. The figure itself is reduced to a swaying, corpselike form with a face composed of gaping ovals, emphasizing a state of existential dread.231

The artist further highlighted that this trauma is internal rather than external by contrasting the figure's distress with two companions walking calmly away on a straight path, appearing entirely unscathed. Inspired by a personal experience where he felt overwhelmed by anxiety as the sky turned blood-red, Munch sought to capture the raw experience of human emotion—such as despair and grief—rather than a realistic depiction of the world.23