Essay On The Character Switch In Franz Kafka's A Hunger Artist

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Character Switch Revision Four Character changes often have a large effect on the outcome of a story. For instance, a character that would not be motivated to work in their new situation would have a significant effect. These variations between characters are the types of things that cause changes within a story’s plot. Specifically, Jing-Mei’s stubbornness and inability to accept defeat would have been the source of change in Franz Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist” had the two main characters traded places. To begin with, Jing-Mei’s neglectfulness would have caused a quicker downfall for herself. For example, she wouldn’t have contacted others and traveled across Europe in order to find different locations where she could perform. When Jing-Mei “learned that [she] could be …show more content…

Jing-Mei merely wished that she “could shout back and cry and blame her [Mother] for all [her] misery…” , not that she could take the responsibility upon herself and strive to do better next time. This allows us to see that in the world of “A Hunger Artist”, Jing-Mei would have blamed her crisis, on the audience for not appreciating her work and by comparison, keeping her from being successful. Moreover, Jing-Mei would have condemned her manager, saying that he didn’t properly do his job of finding her good performances. Shown through the way that Jing-Mei whines, “Why don’t you like me the way I am?” it can be seen that she believes that she should be able to put in little to no effort and receive praise. With this mindset, she’d be more likely to blame her manager for not booking good performances, when in reality she just didn’t put in the effort. These accusations cause Jing-Mei to further reinforce her poor behavior, but also show people that she isn’t a responsible and hardworking person, which would hinder her ability to be a working, functioning member of