Known Professional Hunger Artist example essay topic

'y"U"u Synopsis Kafka's short "A Hunger Artist" tells the story of a once well known professional hunger artist. During the time before "the interest in professional fasting [had] markedly diminished", the hunger artist was a great source of excitement for people. Kafka describes the way people once used to gather around the hunger artist's cage and watch him as "he sat there pallid in black tights, with his ribs sticking out so prominently, not even on a seat but down among straw on the ground, sometimes giving a courteous nod, answering questions with a constrained smile, or perhaps stretching an arm through the bars so that one might feel how thin it was, and then again withdrawing deep within himself, paying no attention to anyone or anything, not even to the all-important striking of the clock that was the only piece of furniture in his cage, but merely staring into vacancy with half-shut eyes [. ]" This description of the artist gives one the impression of a sort of ascetic on-show for people. Kafka also tells us about people's true feelings about the performing ascetic. Though the children observed him in awe, the adults saw him "as a joke that happened to be in fashion".

People in general looked at the artist's way with skepticism and disbelief. Some of them, the special "night-time watchers" (butchers who did not understand the artist's fast), believed that the faster secretly ate: "Nothing annoyed the artist more than such watchers; sometimes he mastered his feebleness sufficiently to sung during their watch for as long as he could keep going, to show them how unjust their suspicions were. But that was of little youth; they only wondered at his cleverness in being able to fill his mouth even while singing". This disbelief however, did not bother the artist as he eventually got used to it as a fact of his life. Since no one could watch the artist continuously, his was the only true satisfaction gained after the fasting period was over. It was a sense of personal dissatisfaction that really bothered the artist.

Kafka hints that maybe fasting was not the only cause for his thinness. "The longest period of fasting was fixed by his impresario at forty days", he states. The artist longed to go on further as he found fasting very easy and thus when the time came for him to leave his cage and eat, he was reluctant. The reason for the forty-day limit was that " [e] xperience had proved that forty days the interest of the public could be stimulated by a steadily increasing pressure of advertisement, but after that the town began to lose interest [. ]" After living thus for some years, fasting in regular intervals and being applauded by the world, the artist finds himself "deserted" as the "amusement-seekers" found more attractive entertainment elsewhere. Faced with this reality, the ascetic is forced to leave the impresario and hire himself to a circus.

In the circus, his cage is placed, by his own decision, "outside, near the animal cages". The artist naively believes that there is still interest in his fasting, but soon finds out that people are more attracted by the menagerie at the end of the "narrow gangway" on one side of which his cage is placed. After a while, nobody wishes to stop at his cage as the circus-goers are all on their way to the menagerie. They forget how long the artist has been fasting, how many records he has been breaking, until finally the circus attendant prompted by a visitor, remembers him. The artist reveals why he has been fasting for so long. "I couldn't find the food I liked", he says, before being buried.

The circus replaces his cage with that of a young panther, which, in its eating and livelihood, holds visitors' attention forever. Thematic Analysis and Interpretation "The Hunger Artist" is a story about asceticism that has lost its meaning. Modernity, Kafka tells us, is not entertained by avoidance of life -- the hunger artist's mystic asceticism -- but by life itself -- the panther. It is a highly symbolic story in its use of the comparison between the hunger artist and the panther.

This contrast is the most important element in the story. The asceticism of the artist is mystic and religious; it is empty and propelled by a search for something better. But it is false, precisely because there is nothing better than life. Thus Kafka stresses the value of livelihood. The public lack of interest in the hunger artist is representative of the modern abandonment of spiritualism.