The Hunger Artist Analysis

Young Ju is held back by her fears, her consideration for image, and her desire to have a complete family unit; she does choose to take action at the end when she becomes more aware of her situation. On the other hand, The Hunger Artist is not able to navigate his predicament because he is not self-aware.. Through analysis of all three characters, it is apparent that successfully navigating environmental changes requires self-awareness, the power to take action, and taking action

In a world that has become immune to accepting all types of art, Marya Mannes believes we have lost our standards and ability to identify something as “good” or “bad”. In her essay, “How Do You Know It’s Good”, she discusses society’s tendency to accept everything out of fear of wrongly labelling something as being good or bad. She touches on various criteria to judge art, such as the artist’s purpose, skill and craftsmanship, originality, timelessness, as well as unity within a piece rather than chaos. She says that an individual must decide if something is good “on the basis of instinct, experience, and association” (Mannes). I believe that by using standards and the process of association, we will be able to judge what makes an art piece good in comparison to others. However, Mannes forces me to consider the difference between what may be appealing versus what is actually good, and when deciding which art we should accept, which is truly more important. I believe that “good” and “bad” are two ends of a large, subjective spectrum of grey area. It is possible for a piece of art to be good in some areas and bad in others, and if something does not live up to all of our standards, it does not necessarily mean it should be dismissed. Thus, I believe my personal standards for judging art are based on which my standards are largely based on the personal reaction evoked from a piece of art. Though I agree with Mannes’ standards to an extent, I believe that certain standards, such as evoking a personal response, can be more telling of if a piece of art is good as opposed to its timelessness, or the level of experience of an artist in his/her craft.

“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 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).

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 "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).

In “The Hunger Artist”, the artist was a man who knew he had a value of life and talent, but some of the locals felt differently. Some viewed the hunger artist as a joke, or even fraud, doubting his ability to go without food for a lengthy forty

Kafka also uses the existential idea that man's fate is sometimes beyond man's control. In his stories, chance or destiny rules man's life. Gregor could not control his metamorphosis, just as he cannot control his "new" legs which "waved helplessly before his eyes" (1). The hunger artist's fate is to die of starvation, since as he says, "I have to fast, I can't help it" (8). Gregor dies; the artist dies. Their lack of control over their fates emphasizes man's helplessness and "forlornness," to use Sartre's term.

In Franz Kafka’s short story, “A Hunger Artist”, Kafka introduces an eccentric man known as the Hunger Artist. The Hunger Artist has committed his entire life to the art of fasting, allowing himself to be caged and displayed to the public as if he were a painting (Kafka 198). Despite all the emotional turmoil he endures, he takes a great amount of pride in fasting and believes that he can fast for extremely elongated periods (Kafka 200). Unfortunately, his pride not only causes internal conflicts but also tragically leads to his unfortunate demise (Kafka 205). Through the setting and the character development of the Hunger Artist, Kafka illuminates the dangers of self-pride and depicts pride as harmful and detrimental to one’s existence.

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

An artist 's psyche can 't be placated by the ordinary or carried on by business as usual; it is parched to search out the human condition and to look profound into individuals ' characters.

felt that the frame of mind of the artist when he creates a work of

The most important trait in defining art is its beauty. As complex as the term “art” can be, the term “beauty” is nearly just as complicated. In order to understand art more clearly it is important to understand beauty. “We label an object beautiful because it promotes an internal harmony or ‘free play’ of our mental faculties; we call something ‘beautiful’ when it elicits this pleasure.” (Freeland 8). As defined above, beauty is not a direct message. It is something that subconsciously allows man to feel good and pleasurable. There is “an internal harmony” when we observe something beautiful that allows us to take away a deeper understanding of a work of art regardless of it being “nice looking” or “ugly”.

I think that the end result is truthfulness. Every artist must be sincere and truthful if he wants to be a great and true artist over and over again art is predictable to request and bond with human being feelings. Art can awaken aesthetic or ethical feelings. The amount of skillfulness that the artist has will influence over the capability they have so they can to generate an emotional response and by this means make available new insights. Art tends to smooth the progress of spontaneous slightly than coherent thoughtfulness, and frequently it is knowingly shaped with this purpose. Art calculatedly serves no other function. As a result of this forward motion, works of art are hard to pin down, refractive to attempts at arrangement, for the reason that they can be respected in more than one way, and are often vulnerable to many dissimilar interpretations. Even art that to every appearance depicts a commonplace proceedings or items may encourage manifestation upon prominent themes. Conventionally, the uppermost achievements of art make obvious a high intensity of ability or fluency within a medium. This characteristic might be considered a point of contention, since many contemporary artists (particularly, theoretical artists) do not themselves produce the moving parts they envisage, or do not even produce the labor in a straight, affectionate wisdom. Art has a capacity of transforming: predominantly confers