Theme Of Food And Hunger By Franz Kafka

His boss tells him that he is causing his parents unnecessary worry, but his parents are not worried at all or they would have busted into his room to see if he was okay. Whilst in the middle of all of this Gregor is starting to get scared of what the change is bringing into his life and causing unnecessary worry. In chapter 2, Grete brings in food for Gregor and for a change he is being treated somewhat correct and they notice he has became a full time crawler. This causes the family to question what he is doing is not human and they are starting to fear his new abilities as a “bug”. As an example, his mother and Grete take out the furniture to give him more room to crawl. Losing all faith in Gregor they take the furniture out because the fear is too great they may never get their son back and they have to accept the fact Gregor is a nasty vermin.

When Gregor first turned into a bug, his sister Grete, showed him kindness by bringing him some food “She brought him, to test his taste, an entire selection, all spread out on a newspaper. There were old half-rotten vegetables, bones from the evening meal, covered with white sauce which had almost solidified, some raisins and almonds, cheese, which Gregor had declared inedible two days earlier, a slice of dry bread, a slice of salted bread smeared with butter… and out of delicacy of feeling, since she knew Gregor would not eat in front of her, she went away very quickly… Gregor could now make himself as comfortable as possible.” (Kafka 153) As the story progresses Grete becomes careless and no longer is sympathetic toward Gregor. In fact she hardly even feds him anymore “But even when the

While Fisher displayed emotional struggle with food, Goode’s disability forces him to struggle with food physically. Although Goode enjoys food, he finds himself testing all his abilities as a one handed person when he prepares a meal. JJ Goode begins the discomfort he

In the beginning of the novella, Gregor undergoes a transformation. Many readers view his transformation as he turns into a bug because of the way Kafka describes Gregor. Kafka may have been undergoing a transformation of his own. Kafka dealt with many issues growing up such as self doubt, issues with his father, and eventually, health issues. Like Kafka, Gregor deals with issues with his father and within himself and begins to feel less and less like himself as the novella continues. He awakes from his sleep to ask himself, “What’s happened to me (Kafka, 3)?” With the conflicts Gregor has with his family, especially his father, he begins to feel unwanted and unappreciated. Gregor also feels that he is becoming less sensitive when that used to be one of his main traits as a human (Kafka, 24). Seeing that Gregor is losing his sensitivity, that shows that he is truly losing himself since he is losing one of his main traits. Feeling less like himself, Gregor becomes more distant with his close

The deterioration of Gregor's life was in part due to the ostracism associated with his being turned into a bug. Once his family found out what happened, they banished him to his room, and his parents could not even bear to look at him. Prior to his metamorphosis, Gregor was an integral part of the family. He provided the money by which the family survived. Yet as soon as he changed, he was labeled an outcast, who was useless to the family, and therefore not paid any attention. He felt this ostracism, and it made him not want to continue on in life, he gave up because he felt unloved.

So concerned with ensuring his parents and sister were taken care of, he forgot his own needs. It was apparent to everyone that he was no longer thought of as a son or an extension of the family, but merely as a "support system." The tragic fact is that "everyone had grown accustomed to it, his family as much as himself; they took the money gratefully, he gave it willingly but the act was accompanied by no remarkable effusiveness" (Kafka 48). It appears that in the course of his hectic work schedule, he overlooks that in return for dedication to his family, he remains unloved and unappreciated. Yet Gregor still "believed he had to provide his family with a pleasant, contented, secure life" (Emrich 149), regardless of how they treated him.

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.

When Gregor inexplicably becomes an insect his family is primarily worried about how this will affect them, and their financial security. The morning Gregor awakes as a ‘monstrous vermin' is the first day he has missed work in five years; his family's immediate concern is for Gregor's job. His father begins to admonish him before he can even drag himself out of bed. When Gregor hears his sister crying at his door he thinks, "Why was she crying?? Because he was in danger of losing his job and then his boss would dun their parents for his old claims?" This is very significant to their relationship; he considers himself close to his sister, but feels her emotion spent on him is related to money. Gregor has been the sole breadwinner for years; working at a job he abhors only to pay his fathers debts. The family leads an extremely comfortable life of leisure; the father sits at the kitchen table and reads all day, the sister wears the best clothes and amuses herself by playing the violin, and all even take a mid-day nap. Gregor is extremely pleased and proud to provide them with this lifestyle; however, his generosity is met with resentment by his father and indifference by his sister and mother. Once the family grew accustomed to this lifestyle they no longer felt the need to be grateful, "they had grown used to it, they accepted the money, but no particularly warm feelings were generated any longer." At one point Gregor is deeply

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

The unnamed protagonists are woken up in the middle of the night due to “unbearable hunger” (p.36). The word unbearable shows insight on how the couple is desperate and craving. The hunger in this context is not a literal hunger; it is hunger for a more intimate relationship

The primary example of this is at the end of the short story, on page 579 where the hunger artist says, “’I have to fast, I can’t help it…I couldn't find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else.’ The fact that the hunger artist could never find any food that he liked shows that he is alienated from the rest of the world by nature—if the world had been a better fit for him (i.e. he liked food), he would not have chosen to spend his life fasting in a cage. The hunger artist is proud of his fasting abilities, but that does not keep him from being dissatisfied with himself and wishing that he could connect with the rest of the society. “He was quite happy at the prospect of spending a sleepless night with such watchers; he was ready to exchange jokes with them, to tell them stories out of his nomadic life, anything at all to keep them awake and demonstrate to them again that he had no eatables in his cage and that he was fasting as not one of them could fast” (pg.575). The hunger artist is constantly seeking approval from his spectators, but this quote suggests that, like any normal person, he wishes to have social interactions with people and form relationships. However, his alienation from society prohibits such

In the short story by Kafka the hunger artist demonstrates a character who is trying to find spiritual nourishment by fasting, but he’s unable to find it. This is primarily because he’s looking for a different type of nourishment, recognition from the public for his fasting and earning for his wavering audience to understand the sanctity of it. However the hunger artist receives the opposite from his people, they instead make a mockery of his art leaving the hunger artist outraged and empty. “And so he lived […] in apparent glory, honored by the world,

In the beginning of the novella, Gregor undergoes a transformation. Many readers view his transformation as him turning into a bug because of the way Kafka describes Gregor. Kafka may have been undergoing a transformation of his own. Kafka dealt with many issues growing up such as self doubt, issues with his father, and eventually, health issues. Like Kafka, Gregor deals with issues with his father and within himself and begins to feel less and less like himself as the novella continues. He awakes from his sleep to ask himself, “What’s happened to me (Kafka, 3)?” With the conflicts Gregor has with his family, especially his father, he begins to feel unwanted and unappreciated. Gregor also feels that he is becoming less sensitive when that used to be one of his main traits as a human (Kafka, 24). Seeing that Gregor is losing his sensitivity, that shows that he is truly losing himself since he is losing one of his main traits. Feeling less like himself, Gregor becomes more