It is consolation he is looking for and never finds it. The misunderstanding of his very art is the cause of his exhaustion. Like Kafka, the Hunger Artist is trapped in a vicious circle, unable to see the light of understanding in the world's eyes. What was always the cause of misery for an artist? Being misunderstood in his art was the worst that could happen. No one could bring consolation in his life and he acknowledged it as a condemnation of his state not able to give up his art and bound to it to the very end.
The story is written two years before Kafka's death and it is also one of the few he did not want to be destroyed after his death. It may be considered a reflection on his condition as an artist, unable to find consolation and condemned to a gloomy existence due to the progress of its alienation.
The story in itself is depicting a dream, nothing real, but the details are very realistically described, as Kafka used to do in his other stories. The setting is real: Europe, even if the time is uncertain. Despite the long periods of fasting that make the story unrealistic, the main character appears to be human when described drinking water that allows him to survive, for example the artist even has an impresario who arranges for the details of the show. In the beginning the "small barred cage" (Kafka, the Hunger Artist) the Artist would never willingly leave seems to be set somewhere in the dark, away from the open space, a small cage in another closed space, just like Kafka often found himself in. The cage inside a dark space, away from the open air are symbols of both his own mental constraints and those physically imposed by the living world, he could not avoid or escape. One could imagine a cave, but further on, the author describes the cage as being covered in flowers (already a tomb?), inside an amphitheatre. As beautiful as they were, they kept light from coming inside the cage and were symbols of death rather than life.
In the end, the grotesque show only finds a place in a circus and even there his days are numbered.
The symbol image of a panther that will finally replace the Hunger Artist after his body was removed from the cage stands for Kafka's admiration for vitality and for a strong and healthy body he never enjoyed. The beauty of the beast comes from its strength and vitality and not from the mind. People watched and admired the beast in its beauty, after having ignored the poor weak creature that lived there for years, unknown, under a pile of straw. Both, Kafka and the Hunger Artist are condemned to a life imprisoned inside their own feelings and universe, unable to communicate with the world, kept prisoners by their inner universe, a microcosm inside a macrocosm. Again, like other characters of Kafka's literary work, the main character in this story is trapped by his own condition and by his lack of ability to escape it. Like his character, Kafka must travel across Europe, forced by the harsh pecuniary conditions he was in. Women are no relief, nor do they bring any alleviation to his troubled mind. He blames himself and the world for his impossibility to fit any natural order. The similarities are obvious.
Works Cited
1. Kafka, Franz. "A Hunger Artist." Johnstonia. 23 Mar, 2006. Retrieved: 13 mar, 2007. http://www.mala.bc.ca/~Johnstoi/kafka/hungerartist.htm
2. Nervi, Mauro. "Kafka's Life (1883-1924)." The Kafka Project. 3 Dec., 2006. Retrieved: 13 mar., 2007. http://www.kafka.org/index.php?biography
He is putting this starving artist on a plane above the regular person. These people cannot truly understand art, or the artist, because they do not have ability nor have they given up all for something they are passionate about. That makes artists better than anyone else that views their works. Are artists the only individuals who see reality of life as it really is? Are they the only ones
This is not a sign of power, yet a reflex derived from his alienation. We could even go further and affirm that the artist is an escapist, because he absolutely ignores the real necessity to get a decent job and he also ignores the clock in his cage, the ticking indicator that the time he went to work has come. He escapes in his own world of fantasy, where
And yet in his personal life despite the anguish he wrote about so eloquently he enjoyed modern novelties such as the cinema, aeroplanes, and motor-cycles. He went swimming and followed the vogue for nudism. He had his fair share of sexual affairs, and he complemented those with visits to brothels (Johnson, 2005). Doubts about his work caused Kafka before his death to ask that all of his unpublished manuscripts be
I can't do anything else," said the hunger artist." This conversation actually forms the crux of the entire story. The artist is looking for validation while the public is apathetic. A true artist on the other hand is consumed with passion for his work and public admiration is not his main concern. But in this story, the suffering artist is craving for attention. When that attention is denied him,
Without food and approval, he withered away into the closets of history. Ultimately, though, the freedom of death brought with it the escape from those things that defined the artist's life: rejection and applause. Kafka presented this final stage in the artist's life as liberation, but countered it with the injection of life. Into the cage where hunger had eaten the man alive went a young panther, full of zest,
.." (a Hunger Artist) the artist continues to fast until he eventually dies. In terms of narrative structure, the story follows a conventional pattern of success, decline, failure and death. However in the process we encounter the real feelings and the emotions as well as the areas of conflict within the artist's life. The conflicts in the story are the conflicts between society and the artist, which will be discussed in
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now