The Hunger Artist In The Glass Menagerie

Level II
#1: How does the hunger artist's performance with the impresario differ from that in the circus?

At the time the hunger artist and the impresario work together, the jib of the first is to promote the art to draw the audience to see it but also to care for the artist himself while in the circus he was left with his cage on the way to the menagerie, to stand like a road sign and wait for somebody to notice him. The impresario stops the fast after forty days because he wants to keep him alive which is why he doesn't allow him to fast endlessly while in the circus they forget about him, so he manages to fast to death. The impresario's attitude towards the fast is irritating the hunger artist because he doesn't perceive it as art but as

Both characters feel oppressed by the audience's attitude towards them, so their art is a reaction to it. The hunger artist fasts because society makes him feel miserable while they think that he feels miserable because he fasts, "And is some good natured person,…tried to console him by pointing out this melancholy was probably caused by fasting…he reacted with an outburst" (305). However, the actual reason for his fast is "because I couldn't find the food I liked" (309) through which Kafka infers that the artist could never find his place in society because it never fitted his taste. Compared to him, the ape is afflicted too; however, it reacts differently and manages to deal with the situation by coping with it rather than making protest demonstrations, "Press yourself against the bar behind you…for without it I could not live" (285). He sees the only "way out" of the cage and of an extremely miserable life by trying his best to become like a real

The hunger artist has full control over his fast, he know that he can give up whenever he wants, but he completes his aim; while the ape realizes its fate us predestined at the beginning of the story, so he decides to act like a human because he finds it to be his only way to the possible freedom in the circus. They both are kept in cages for wild animals, and while the cage of the ape's purpose is to make it obedient, the cage of the hunger artist is a part of the artwork that only highlights his feebleness. Both artists are challenged by the position society has put them in. However, the ape manages to cope with it in kind of a satisfactory way, while the hunger artist dies due to his