.." (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 the following section.
2. Symbolism and metaphorical meaning
Like many of Kafka's other stories, a Hunger Artist is highly metaphorical and makes use of symbols to suggest the central meaning of the work. In this case the central motif is the artist, his suffering and his alienation or difference from society. The difference of the artist from the other people around him is clearly exemplified in the characterization of the hunger artist. He is a symbol of the artist who is outside of the norms of society and in a sense always in conflict with that society because he is different. The hunger artist states that he finds fasting "easy" and the fact that he is able to go without normal nutrition makes him strange and "other." He is therefore a symbol of the suffering artist who finds himself, like Kafka, outside the acceptance of society.
On the other hand it is his very difference from the society that makes him special and important as an artist. However this also leads to other issues such as suffering and the need for acceptance.
The gap between the hunger artist and the society is shown in the final section of the short story. While he is dying the artist reveals why he was able to fast so easily. He states that that it was because"... I couldn't find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have...
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
As he becomes frustrated by onlookers' questions, he shakes the bars of the cage like some wild animal. The artist's cage is literal and figurative in this case. He is confined to his life of suffering and his is a prisoner of it. His psychological cage is just like his physical one. He willingly accepts both. He was never appreciated and this led to even more dissatisfaction. The artist
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