Franz Kafka an Artis Hungry for Pride

In our interactive Oral we discussed about Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, through point of time and place matter, the relation to the society, the culture and experience and the technique in the work, I learned about the society oppressive expectation can lead an individual to loss in identity

This article by Walter H. Sokel claims that the metamorphosis Gregor goes through gives him the chance to be rebellious. Sokel highlights that after Gregor is changed into a cockroach he also changes mentally, which affects his actions.

The audiences fascination with the Hunger artist's fasting is what the artist lived for. In the beginning of the story the hunger artist's desire for attention is illustrated when the narrator said " much more to his taste were the watchers who sat close up to the bars … He was quite happy at the prospect of spending a sleepless night with such watchers."(299) Even the guards who were appointed to watch over him were enough to quench the artist's thirst for attention. When the Hunger Artist was no longer a source of entertainment a circus hired him as a minor attraction. There the story says,

In his short story “The Hunger Artist,” Franz Kafka illustrates this prideful individual, who strives to starve himself to a disturbing and gruesome extent, losing his humanity. Kafka uses symbolism in order to fully create this idea of an individual’s, in this case the starving artist, estrangement from society.

In his novel The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka describes his own life through the life of his protagonist Gregor Samsa.  Careful study of Franz Kafka's life shows that Kafka's family, workplace, and reaction to the adversity in his family and workplace are just like those of Gregor.  So we might ask why Gregor was transformed into a bug since Kafka obviously never turned into a bug.  The absurd image illustrates how Gregor lacks self-respect and feels like he's a bug in the eyes of his family and society.  Franz Kafka was unhappy and never found his place in life, either.  Therefore, he might have felt just like Gregor, like a bug.  Furthermore the novel describes Kafka's expectations of his own future and he was partially

"A picture of my existence... would show a useless wooden stake covered in snow... stuck loosely at a slant in the ground in a ploughed field on the edge of a vast open plain on a dark winter night”. — Franz Kafka

In The Trial by Franz Kafka, the protagonist K. is going through what is often thought of as one of the most dehumanizing aspects of society. Even in the United States many criticize the justice system for being dehumanizing. People are forced to wear the same thing, act the same way, and are given numbers instead of names. In The Trial Kafka emphasizes the dehumanizing aspects of this process by exacerbating the bureaucratic steps that must be accomplished and adds more uncertainty and secrecy to the steps. Kafka’s writing shows the lack of information that K. is given, and the symbolic dehumanization that occurs during the whipping and with K. lacking a last name.

In "A Hunger Artist," the main character’s lack of fulfillment causes him despair. He reacts to this disparity by starving himself, almost as if showing resistance to the outside world. He views himself as separate from everyone else, thus confining himself in a cage (Bedford 636).

“The Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka, is about a man who self mutilated by starvation in attempt to be recognized, honored, and accepted while gaining fame. As noted on The National Center for Biotechnology Information, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ self mutilation by starvation was a common form of suicide in concentration camps for prisoners who wished to remove themselves from the severely harsh environment. The irony of “The Hunger Artist” is that Kafka wrote the story in the year of 1922. However, the Holocaust did not begun until the year of 1933 and ended in 1945. Decades later, the message from “The Hunger Artist” is continuously being retold with the existence of vanity and peer pressure included.

  Existentialism is a philosophy dealing with man's aloneness in the universe. Either there is no God or else God stands apart from man, leaving him free will to make his own choices. From this basic idea of man being alone in an uncertain and purposeless world, many related ideas have developed. One great worry of existentialist writers is that life is becoming too complicated and too impersonal. People become more and more involved with their work, which is taking them away from their friends, family, and culture. However, these provide the only "meaning" that life could possibly have. One author prominently known for his work with existential ideas was Franz

Hunger is a term that is often defined as the physical feeling for the need to eat. However, the Hunger Artist in Kafka's A Hunger Artist places a different, more complex meaning to this word, making the Hunger Artist's name rather ironic. The hunger of the Hunger Artist is not for food. As described at the end of the essay, the Hunger Artist states that he was in fact never hungry, he just never found anything that he liked. So then, what does this man's hunger truly mean? What drives the Hunger Artist to fast for so long, if he is truly not hungry? The Hunger Artist salivates not for the food which he is teased with, nor does he even sneak food when he alone. The Hunger Artist has a

In the opening lines of German author Franz Kafkas’ short story narrative “The Metamorphosis”, the protagonist Gregor Samsa a disgruntled traveling salesman who lives with and supports his parents and little sister, awakens from a night of unpleasant dreams to find that he has been metamorphosed into a cockroach he calls a “monstrous vermin” (Kafka, page 89). This particularly strange opening sets the stage for in my opinion, a very strange and very vague play. I say this because throughout the whole story we never find out much less are given any clue of how or why he managed to be metamorphosed into this insect. Not to mention what the moral of the story is or the fact that this whole book reads like one big

No person that leads a normal life is likely to write a metaphorical yet literal story about a man transforming into a bug. That being said, no person that leads a normal life is likely to alter a genre as much as Franz Kafka did. With the unusual combination of declining physical health and a resurgence of spiritual ideas, Franz Kafka, actively yearning for life, allowed his mind to travel to the places that his body could not take him. In his recurring themes of guilt, pain, obscurity, and lucidity, are direct connections to his childhood and daily life. His family dynamic, infatuation with culture and theater, and his personal illnesses all shaped his imagination into the poignant yet energetic thing that

In his parable Before the Law, Franz Kafka suggests that obstacles that one faces in life can either be used to mold one’s success or bring about one’s failure. If one can overcome challenges that they face they grow in a unique type of way, for every individual perceives each situation in a distinct fashion. That unique type of growth is what establishes a person’s character and perception of the world. However if one cannot overcome their obstacles, then they cut of their means for growth and are left uninspired, forgetting any dreams or aspirations. It is through the man’s interaction with the doorkeeper, and his inability to overcome this obstacle, that eventually leads him down the path of complacency and failure.

He is even referred to as a ‘suffering martyr’ and obsesses himself with the limits of suffering. The hunger artist wants a ‘performance beyond human imagination since he felt that there were no limits to his ability for fasting.” Moreover, the hunger artist complicates our appreciation of his art when he admits that fasting is easy to do. If we take fasting to be a metaphor for suffering, he is saying that suffering is easy. It could be argued that the artist as a suffering figure is nothing new. The hunger artist is merely revealing his suffering to the world. He is not conveying his suffering to a medium we are accustomed to, such as writing. His medium is his cage and the public