Literary Themes In A Hunger Artist

In “Young Hunger”, M.F.K Fisher uses food to express her lack of attention and love. For Fisher food represents comfort and helps her deal with her problems. Food is one of our three basic needs along with security and love. When Fisher writes about food she is actually writing about the hunger for love, being misunderstood by her godparents, and dealing with her problems with food. Fisher writes, “It was simply that [ her godparents] were old and sedentary and quite out of the habit of eating amply with younger people” (284).

Think about all the hungry animals (people) in the world who would love to have food. This people would fight over a crumb of bread which establishes a great proposal of making all the hungry fight in a war for food, but could not be able to get the food until the war has been won. Never fight or sweat over the small things.

“Hunger” is an article published in 1989 by social justice activist Maggie Helwig. In this article Helwig discusses the stereotypes behind eating disorders, and gives real life examples of the impacts an eating disorder can have on someone. She is able to incorporate many ideas that smoothly flow together to capture the audience’s attention, while also making the audience consider their thoughts and views on eating disorders. She ends the article by giving insightful information as to what it was like for her to suffer from an eating disorder, and why she chose to starve herself for eight years. Helwig uniquely incorporates logos, pathos, and ethos in her writing to completely gain the audience’s attention and influence their opinions on eating disorders.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is a reflection on how alienation and isolation begin and develop in a society by employing the characters in his novella as a representation of society as a whole. Using Gregor’s manager to demonstrate the initiation of isolation and alienation of a person, Gregor as the person being isolated and the inhabitants of the Samsa household as the other members of society, Kafka creates an effective model to represent the hierarchically structured effect of isolationism and alienation in society on a larger scale.

Franz Kafka’s trademark is ridiculing his and the society’s blatant stories in subtle manner. With the help of paradigms what can be seen is that Franz Kafka’s use of humour in oddly places to clarify the asymmetry of the organized world and heightens the tension. It was also used to create even greater gaps both in scene and story line, to further stress the blackness felt in many of his stories. Studying his works it’s evident that Franz Kafka saw humor not only as a defence against the pain and anguish he felt inflicted upon him by the outside world, but also against the pain he rained upon himself. This technique was used to stress on the horrors of the big bad world. Although there have been resemblances of the protagonists’ character traits to his own self, he has brought out not only his own problems but on how people magnify and in

“Bartleby, The Scrivener” is a memorable story, by Herman Melville, that is able to keep its readers captivated from beginning to end. How does the author successfully grab the attention of his readers? The author utilized his masterful command of the English language to convey the characters, setting, and plot effectively; and in the midst of all the detailed descriptions Melville have used food and the action of eating as powerful symbols. In the story three of the characters have names that are associated with food, and the main character of study, Bartleby, eventually dies of starvation by choice. Given the setting of the story was in the onset of the second industrial revolution, the coming of the big corporations where Wall

In the Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka bring out the character of a hardworking man, Gregor, who faces an incident where he soon is driven into complications to remain his once isolated life. Gregor’s alienation causes no gain for help from anyone even after the tragedy of transforming into a roach. Isolation removes all social interactions affecting the character of the persona by which can no longer seek help or gain itself being. Isolation in life, results in the expulsion of humankind partying from all social interactions, preventing contact with the world.

“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).

In two passages of Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, she describes a party at 124. Everyone become so full from the food that flows endlessly that they become angry at Baby Suggs extravagance. Baby Suggs thinks it was this overfullness that caused them all to not notice the coming of Schoolteacher and his sons. The narrator of one passage is Stamp Paid and he recounts to Paul D. what happened at the party – what they ate and how it made everyone feel.

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 Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung 1912), Franz Kafka’s best known short story, is a master work of incredible psychological, sociological and existential malaise. Although his points are simple and straightforward, this richly layered and textured story is open to many interpreta-tions, making it complex, yet critical to decipher. There is an incredible amount of theories based off of what this story could possibly symbolize or represent, but it is of the autobiographical in-terpretation that is undeniably the most enlightening. This interpretation allows the reader to gen-uinely understand the tale on an intense level that would not be able to be reached, otherwise. In order to gain true insight on the autobiographical approach to The Metamorphosis, a brief examination of his life is required; his thoughts, his beliefs, the acknowledgment of the cruel circumstances of his life, especially his home life, must be made clear that the anguish of his own world is the model for the themes in his stories.

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, which is how the nameless main character is referred to as throughout the story, traveled around Europe with his impresario. As the artist traveled through Europe, he would stay in each city for only forty days to avoid losing the interest of the fans. In each town, the hunger artist would choose a public landmark where locals could easily watch him display his “talent” of starvation. Kafka illustrated the artist as a frail, but strong minded man with pride living in a cage with a selfish purpose. The artist did not mind paying the price of comfort and dignity for the possibility of being acknowledged as someone legendary. With a strong passion for displaying this art of fasting, it was illustrated in “The Hunger Artist” that there was a deeper rooted reason for this choice of talent that the artist chose. As stated in “The Biography of Franz Kafka, HCCS.edu/ Library/ EBSCO” ,the author Franz Kafka, had a strange relationship with his parents, because they did not understand his passion in wanting to become a writer and lacked appreciation for Kafka’s work of art. Kafka took “The Hunger Artist” and emerged the factual past of his neglected acceptance from his family with the fictional character to retail his own personal story.

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.

The installation includes Kippenberger’s historical perspective, cultural criticism and social relationship. The installation seems like career fair or office furniture fair. There are all different types of 40 tables and 80 chairs setting up for job interviews on the green floor with white lines. The seating is placed in the usual arrangement for person to person negotiation. Two chairs face each other with a table. Noticeably, the two chairs with open umbrellas circling around a fried egg by cupboard and a tall stand with two slide projectors. It shows a connection with Kafka’s novel. Kafka never completed the novel, but Kippenberger believes that he leaves open the possibility for a happy ending. The hero in Kafka’s novel applied for a job at the theatre After the travel to across America. And also, it represents Kippenberger’s interest in society and idealism. Reflecting on the installation, Kippenberger’s extended his subject to life affirming, materialistic, concept of art and understanding of artists such as Andy Warhol and Sigmar Polke. The artists of the time have a connection with Modernism inspired by a mythology and violence in America. They substitute an irony and shared an exhilaration. Kippenberger used the novel, Franz Kafka’s Amerika. The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s ‘Amerika’ (1994) was made imagining a section of Kafka’s unfinished novel. Addressing criticism on the labour market, Kippenberger made the visualisation of Kafka’s novel. Kafka’s Amerika is the modernist literature which is critical of the capitalist system. Kafka described surrealistic work place, ‘the biggest theatre in the world’, showing his social cultural critique. In this theatre, the employer is welcoming everybody and proclaimed whoever wants to become an artist have only to sign up. It means the utopia of employment which our society should be direct.