Frank Kafka's The Hunger Artist
He starved to show people his pain. It wasn’t all just for entertainment. He wanted people to know how he felt on the inside, it was kind of like a cry for help. The Hunger Artist wished for people to understand how he felt. He never got to feel that satisfaction
In “ The Jungle”, the author Upton Sinclair states that “ I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach”. This means that Sinclair wanted to muckrake the Meat Packing Industry to seek attention for the workers, but instead food became a bigger concern. The characters Jurgis, Ona, and Marija with fellow family members are Lithuanian immigrants who came to PackingTown in hope for a better future, however they came to realize that the whole town is run by capitalist. Although Sinclair intentionally uses metaphors and similes to depict the characters struggle in the horrible living and working conditions in Packingtown, his purpose is undermined and overlooked by his use of realism to depict the food process.
He feels like an outsider and different from the rest of society. The hunger artist fast, but society does not understand why he is fasting. They do not appreciate his fasting. Interpretation: The theme in this story is pride.
Catherine owns a number of caged birds in her chamber. The birds symbolise freedom and the cages she keeps them in symbolises lack of freedom. “I told all this to the cages of birds in my chamber and they listened quite politely. I began to keep birds in order to hear them chirping, but most often now they have to listen to mine”. Symbolism helps show how her perspective changes as she matures.
Hungry “In Thalia's world there is no need for food- everyone takes medication (or inocs) to ward off hunger. It should mean there is no more famine , no more obesity, no more food related illness, and no more war… at least that's what her parents think” (Goodreads.com 1). The book Hungry by H.A. Swain is about a teen girl named Thalia who is on the search for everyday food since all she has to eat is inocs (medication), but has troubles along way. On her journey, Thalia runs into a boy and they fall in love, yet she has to choose if she wants to stay with him or go back to her parents who she is fighting against. This is a great book and young adults to read because it has a real life connection with Hadrian's Wall, and it has an amazing story line showing how people should be able to be who they want.
In the short story “A Hunger Artist,” a hunger artist was not popular in the modern world. The people rejected him and his art of starving. He questions his existence and why do people who once loved him, now don’t respect his art. He signs a contract with the circus and no one glimpses at him and he loses faith and gives up. He dies a hunger artist in a cage.
I’m hungry...”. In this ceremony 3 men were hung right in front of Elie. Elie saw a life taken and the man hang limp, yet the only thing he could think of was eating. This hunger drove Elie from a person to a hungry animal. There was nothing left in his soul, no meaning and no purpose, just survival and starvation.
The word cage suggested unable to do something, animal-like, and powerless to break free; it expressed a morose and abhorrent feeling that showed Collier’s intense opinion. Another use of diction
Correspondingly, in “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Maya Angelou’s short story shows symbolism through the surroundings of the protagonist. To clarify, “black-crepe-dress gloom… black-dressed usher… woolen black clothes worn,” the color and clothing of the guests show that there was a ceremony happening for a fallen loved one. The protagonist shows the color black as a symbol of death, oppression, and bleakness. Also, “it was impossible not to record their roles in the drama,” this sentence from the story is quite interesting because it shows that the protagonist was being oblivious with her words. To enumerate, this a symbolism of grief.
Transforming and Romanticizing a Storyline The Metamorphosis, a novella written by Franz Kafka, attracted the attention of many of its readers due to the writing framework and shocking concepts. The story depicts a man named Gregor Samsa who has befallen the fate of a cockroach- literally. After being transformed into a large bug, Gregor goes through the struggles of misunderstanding, neglect, and loss of his family relationships.
Even children sat “marveling at him while he sat there pallid in black tights” (Kafka 347). The Hunger Artist began to be obsessed with his popularity. He knew that the people loved him, and he took great pride in that. Additionally, because of the ever-growing admiration of the Hunger Artist, people began to conform to the new fad. For instance, Kafka states, “There were people who bought
What is deconstruction in literature? According to Merriam Webster, a deconstructionist literary criticism is a “philosophical or critical method which asserts that meanings, metaphysical constructs, and hierarchical are always rendered unstable by their dependence on ultimately arbitrary signifiers” (Merriam). In other words, a deconstructionist literary criticism looks at the book as a whole and deconstructs the pieces of the novel and how they may seem unstable when compared to the whole meaning. This mindset is exhibited in that of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Franz Kafka leaves many aspects of the novel unexplained and he includes details that are unstable to the meaning of the novel as a whole.
The short story “A Loaf of Bread” had many themes depending on how the reader interpreted it. Some themes consisted of racism, capitalism, equality, having too much pride, and sacrificing things for the people you love. The overall theme I would come to in this story is putting yourself in others shoes before judging them. One of the main characters, Harold Green, was a grocery store owner who owned three different grocery stores in three different neighborhood. The story focuses on the grocery store he owned in a predominantly African American neighborhood.
Kafka illustrates in his novel the permanent conflict between an elusive law and a vain search for truth and justice. In The Trial, the law appears to be hidden and distant while still demanding, through its representatives, rigorous obedience. Society is thus divided in two groups differentiating the people incarnating the law to those who must obey it. This submission, however, can lead to the lost of what constitute mankind, the one element, according to René Descarte, that truly differentiates humans to animals: the possession of our souls. Indeed, Joseph K is ashamed of the despicable nature of human kind and dies, in submissiveness towards the law, “like a dog”
However, people have failed to find the ultimate solution in a constant cycle. On the other hand, some people find life meaningless. These people do not seek any element in life, nor do they search for the true meaning of life. . Kafka, the author of the story “The Metamorphosis”, illustrates the concept of meaningless of life through the usage of the character Gregor Samsa, who faces a crisis where he is transformed into a bug-life figure and gradually doubts his own existence.
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