Franz Kafka's The Hunger Artist

There are many people in this world that enjoy being the center of attention. How about someone who just wants to show off their talents? Franz Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist” is about a man who is known only as “the hunger artist” that portrays these characteristics. He fasts for a living and travels from town to town with the impresario, his manager, in order to show audiences around the world his talent. In each town, the hunger artist chooses a public location and puts himself on display in a locked, straw-lined cage “sipping from a tiny glass of water to moisten his lips”, where he fasts for periods of up to forty days (Kafka par. 1, 5). The purpose of this essay is to describe the hunger artist and know the reason why he fasts for such long

4). He is a dull-minded man who wears “black tights, [looks] pale, with his ribs sticking out prominently” (par. 1). When the impresario does the ritual of ending the hunger artist’s fast, the doctors have to carry him out the cage and force-feed him because he is too fragile and weak from the long period of fasting. He will lay his “bony arms” in the overstretched arms of the ladies and shake his excessively heavy head on his feeble neck as a sign that he felt nauseous from eating while standing up straight and tall (par.

Although the hunger artist is famous, he is perpetually unhappy. Because of the townspeople’s incredulity, the hunger artist realizes that only he can be truly satisfied with his feats of self-denial. “It was impossible to fight against this lack of understand, against this world of misunderstanding” (par. 8). The hunger artist feels constrained by the fasting limits imposed on him. Although the hunger artist finds fasting feasible and can go much longer than forty days, the impresario always cuts the performance short because the spectators tend to lose interest. The impresario simply produces photographs that depict the hunger artist in bed, almost dead from exhaustion (par. 7). People are creating obstructions for the hunger artist that does not allow him to fully bring out his art and skills. Ironically, he depends on the spectators in order to receive the admiration he needs in order feel happy. This turn of events is a never-ending cycle of depression and happiness for the hunger artist, which evidentially leads to his death in the end. As fate would want it to be, professional fasting goes into decline, as audiences develop a taste for newer, more exciting forms of entertainment. The hunger artist has this constant connection with spectators and if this connection gets cut, his life is basically useless and