Immanuel Kafk The Hunger Artist

Edgar Allen Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum uses horror and suspicion to build up not only the storyline, but the persona of the narrator in which is also the prisoner. The characteristics of the prisoner ties within the story to create trippy feelings of fear and unassertiveness of whether or not he is truly safe. From the trials that the prisoner has faced, his characteristic of resourcefulness, pessimistic, and terror are revealed and play a salient part of his slick escape.

Unexpectedly the hunger artist’s audience deserts him and he doesn’t react to that neglect very well. Therefore, the hunger artist signs himself into the circus in response to the disregard. Despite this change in atmosphere, people only watch him because he is near the animals, thus he remains neglected. Finally, an audience member inquires about whether or not he is still fasting; then the hunger artist asks for forgiveness and begs that people not admire his fasting. He admits that he simply could never find food that he liked.

In this short story, the author uses repetition, and unconventional detail to illustrate the different ways hunger can be manifested and differentiate them. In order to emphasize the various kinds of hunger he felt, the author uses repetition. In the story, he uses the device often as the term hunger is frequent in the entire passage. Hemingway also uses the word for emphasis on the significance and the meaning, which leaves the reader to apply syntax to comprehend the correct meaning (De, Baerdemaeker 65). A phrase such as, he was starving in a simple way, means that he feels hungry because he hasn’t eaten any food. Hemingway talks about hunger as being simple because its connotation is denotative of the word. In the book the work, the other kinds of hunger are at times intricate to decipher. In the instance that Hemingway questions Hadley about whether he is hungry, Hadley replies that there are various kinds of hunger. He says that spring has a diversified hunger, but that was in the past as memory is no hunger. There is repetition of the term hunger as evident in unconventional settings when Hemingway tells Hadley to define hunger.

“The food began to bother me, my stomach felt upset, and I would not be able to hold the food down very long.”(135) This suggests that, the narrator’s own physical body is refusing to settle with the food possibly serves as a metaphor that like the narrator, the food too doesn’t allow itself to adjust to the environment, and revolve around certain forces controlling their actions. The influence of society made the protagonist endure severe deprivation of food, the fact that living under a society that expects the protagonist to have a job and earn money forces the protagonist to live under a “cycle of life.” This being, the author represents the protagonist as with the irony of life, where the protagonists needs to work to eat, but has no food therefore works harder to eat more but continues until his sense of thoughts and his rational skills have been altered “but my brain sank deeper in chaos” (79).

Moreover, Schultz continues to complain that “he preached at others to live as he did not, while berating them for their own compromises.” It is true that was often condescending and insufferable, even advising his readers to eat one meal a day: “The fruits eaten temporarily need not make us ashamed of our appetites.” He suggests that people's appetites were otherwise disgraceful, and that food,

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.

The Cage is one of Martin Vaughn-James’s masterpiece where it is challenging to understand and classify the structures of the book. The Cage consists of two hundred pages where a cage, at first, is surrounded by barbed wires in a remoteness and empty desert, then with time becomes fuller with indescribable images. Through Vaughn-James’ choice of creating instability by not following traditional linearity of graphic novels with seemingly difficult imagery, he attempts to do more than just telling a story; he creates aesthetic response. Martin Vaughn-James’s The Cage does not have narrative or a character, but rather is just endless illustration of space without a story.

Franz Kafka uses the motif of food as a representation of physical and emotional dependency in the novel The Metamorphosis. By associating Gregor’s sustenance with rotten food, Kafka contrasts nourishment of the body with creating fulfillment in interpersonal relationships, demonstrating the detriment of using others only for personal gain. Kafka tends to use starvation or dissatisfying food as a way to show that that character is being used by another for personal gain rather than having a healthy relationship with that other character. Near the beginning of Gregor’s metamorphosis, he becomes dependent on his family to survive but does not continue a personal relationship with them, due to his circumstances and their disgust. In this instance he uses his family to survive as they are now required to pull their own weight, as well as Gregor’s.

Kafka is known for his highly symbolic and oblique style of writing. It is no surprise that several of his pieces contain the same major themes, just in different settings. The fact that he repeats his styles only makes the message that he is trying to convey much stronger. In both “The Metamorphosis” and “A Hunger Artist”, the main

“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

Kafka utilizes the setting to show how the Hunger Artist is prideful and how this pride creates nothing but self-inflicted harm. Throughout the story, the Hunger Artist is always present in the confinements of a barred cage (Kafka 198). The cage separates him from the rest of society and allows him to show that because he is locked away he cannot possibly obtain any food that can disrupt his fasting. This physical barrier shows how the Hunger Artist wants to make it obvious that there is no possible way for him to search for food. He is pleased to know that he can restrict himself from such things. Within the cage, there is little furniture and décor. Only the “striking of the clock” exists in the cage to allow the Hunger Artist a sense of

Throughout literary history, certain authors are so unique and fresh in their approach to the written word that they come to embody a genre. Franz Kafka is one such author; “Die Verwandlung” or “The Metamorphosis” is one of his works that helped coin the term “Kafkaesque.” Through this novella, Kafka addresses the timeless theme of people exploit-ing others as a means to an end. He demonstrates this point through showing that a family’s unhealthy dependence on the main character results in that character’s dependence on the family.

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