#iluvlit

The text I chose for this assignment is “A Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka

Initial response after reading: I remember a few years ago I read this story for the first time. At the time, “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka was my favorite book of all time, and I wanted to read his other work, so I started with this one. My initial thoughts were that it was equally as absurd in plot but lacked a resounding message or meaning like “The Metamorphosis” did. I felt like he was just trying too hard to make a story that is weird and disturbing with no weight behind it. I wanted to read it again for this class, though, and see if I liked it better this time. I definitely did enjoy it better, and I now can see that there is a message buried deep in this strange story. When I first read a story, I usually forget to think about what the author wants to say and end up focusing on what I got from it. For me, this story about a man who fasts for days because he can’t find a food he enjoys and parades his work as if he is so strong-willed, has self-control, and is able to endure suffering, and even demands attention and respect for it, just reminds me of so many people I have met in my life. The hunger artist, instead of going and finding a food he likes and being truly happy like the rest of us wants to just wallow in his suffering, maximize it to the extreme, and turn it into a spectacle. Whenever people doubt his abilities, he feels angry and tries to prove him wrong. When people take pity on him is what makes him the angriest, because fasting is no problem for him. He claims his favorites are the people who just watch him with respect and wonder, but at the end it is revealed that even that doesn’t make him happy, because he feels like a fraud. His art of fasting is not a miraculous display of self-control, it’s just because he can’t eat. I am not sure if there are many people like this across all generations, but in my experience, I have met so many people my age who think suffering the most and never fixing it is something to brag about. Having the most trauma, mental illnesses, unhealthy habits, sad feelings, and just generally being miserable is seen as something that makes someone special or better than others and deserving of attention. I was also like that when I was a child, and I know that you can choose to better yourself and be happier, and it takes a lot more willpower than just wallowing and accepting the way things are. The hunger artist really reminds me of those people who try desperately to achieve some sort of contentment while not actually doing anything substantial to improve their circumstances. Halfway through the story, the Hunger artist resides himself to being a literal circus act so he can keep fasting, because even that’s easier than finding something else to do with his life.

Second Read: For this re-read, I highlighted many parts and really tried to gather what the story could really mean. Instead of thinking about what I got from the story, I wanted instead to think about what Kafka’s real message was supposed to be when creating the story. Knowing Kafka and his background, I feel like this story was supposed to be about his relationship with writing. From what I know about him; he always had a complicated relationship with his work and writing in general. There were times where he called it “torment” and “suffering,” but he felt like he needed to write to live. After researching his relationship with writing again, I feel like I can say with full certainty that this story (which is about a man who fasts for weeks for the sake of “art,” but truly he does it because he can’t find any food he likes) represents how Kafka felt about his own art. Writing for him was incredibly painful, and he wanted to be loved and recognized for it, but the only reason he did it is because he felt like he needed to in order to live. This is extremely similar to how the hunger artists views fasting. If the story is truly supposed to represent how Kafka feels about writing, then it makes sense why he wanted all his work to be destroyed after death. It seems he believed literature, or maybe his style of literature, would someday become a thing of the past. Irrelevant, outdated, and only certain people would be able to appreciate its “true art” (even though this story also reveals how he did not see his works as art.) I think it is very ironic how Kafka believed this, only for his work to become more famous than ever after his death, and for it to still be read and taught in school today. Even as a fifteen-year-old girl in the 2020s, to me, The Metamorphosis written in 1912 resonated with me more than anything else ever had. For years I saw Kafka as someone who truly understood me, and it is very ironic that he believed his work would probably have no social or cultural significance. Anyone has to wonder what he would think if he knew how meaningful his work is.

Third Read: During this read, I decided to pay closer attention to particular details and word choices by Kafka. The first thing I notice is that the perspective is changed for one sentence, when the narrator goes from third person to saying “We live in a different world now.” The Hunger Artist’s downfall is already foreshadowed in the 1st paragraph when the narrator says “At one time the whole town took a lively interest in the hunger artist,” implying that interest has been lost. I also wonder, why must the hunger artist be kept in a cage? Obviously the cage symbolizes how his prison is his commitment to his art of fasting, but logically, why would he need to be in a barred cage like an animal? Possible foreshadowing to how in the end when he dies he is replaced by an animal in the cage he died in. That also makes me think, when he died, his entire body basically got so small he was unnoticeable among the straw. This likely symbolizes Kafka’s fear of being forgotten. The straw in his cage is also mentioned here. Why would a human being need a cage with straw? It is really strange and makes him seem like an animal. Maybe in the way that an animal’s basic instinct is to survive, and Kafka felt like he needed to write to survive. The story says there must always be three people set to watch him to make sure he doesn’t eat, but “strangely enough” are butchers. Why Butchers? It is established that this is “nothing but a formality.” It also says “the honor of his profession” forbids him from eating even the smallest amount of food, but we know in reality he does not want to eat. The sentences I find most telling are “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. But his happiest moment was when the morning came and an enormous breakfast was brought them, at his expense, on which they flung themselves with the keen appetite of healthy men after a weary night of wakefulness.” I think the first sentence reveals his true desire for friendship and companionship, but because of his desire for respect and attention, the second sentence shows he is made EVEN happier when they eat in front of him, and he just gets to sit there and show how good he is at not eating. It is a very sad existence, and he must be very lonely and doesn’t even realize it. The next paragraph talks about how nobody but himself will ever be 100% sure that he hasn’t had any food, so he will never be satisfied. Why keep doing this then? It also reveals that he can leave the cage any time, but chooses not to.

Then, we get to know all about the celebration that everyone throws for him after his 40th day of fasting, and he only feels sad that he can’t continue fasting. Again, a very sad way to live. He wants attention and respect, but can’t even be happy when people throw huge celebrations in honor of him. We also learn he is the only hunger artist of all time, and the only record there is to beat is his own. He also wishes he could fast for longer; “if he could endure fasting longer, why shouldn’t the public endure it?” He believes because he wants to do something, the rest of the world should endure it too. Another sign of self-centeredness. He almost stumbles as they take him to get his reward: food (which he does not want), and the lady carrying him is said to pull away as far as she can from him, and even began crying. The hunger artist doesn’t seem to find this very noteworthy. He apparently gets incredibly furious if anyone points out that perhaps fasting is what makes him so miserable, even though we know it is true. We learn the public lost interest in him overnight. It reminds me of how people will feel bad for you for a while, but eventually after you have done nothing to fix your issues, people will give up on you. The hunger artist reasoned to himself that “Fasting would surely come into fashion again at some future date,” and in a desperate attempt to cling onto his meaningless “art,” hired himself into a circus. “In order to spare his own feelings he avoided reading the conditions of his contract.” So, he doesn’t even care if he is signing his life away, he just wants to stay stuck in his ways.

The circus, unlike other places, agrees to let him fast as long as he wants instead of stopping him after 40 days. In his mind, he is happy about this, but it is just another sign that nobody cares about him anymore. He was so excited to break his own record that he forgot about this, until he found his cage would not be a main attraction, but would be set near the animal cages. Eventually, even the circus workers stopped keeping track of the days fasted, and they forgot about him. Even the artist himself stopped counting the days. People who did stop by to see the days fasted would call it a swindle, but “it was not the hunger artist who was cheating; he was working honestly, but the world was cheating him of his reward.” Eventually, the hunger artist went on so long that he was forgotten about, until someone remembered him and found him hidden in the straw. They asked if he was still fasting, and he just said “’forgive me.’” He reveals that he always wanted people to admire his fasting, and the man said they do admire it. The hunger artist tells them they shouldn’t, and the man just says “’Well, then we don’t admire it,’” showing how little care people have for him, and he asks the hunger artist why. The hunger artist here reveals his secret that the only reason he fasts is because he never found food he liked, and if he did he would have happily eaten like everyone else. So, he could have spent all his life finding something to eat, but instead clung onto this made-up “art,” and lived and died unhappy. The only thing the man says after the hunger artist dies is, “well, clear this out now!” The cage was cleared and replaced by a panther, large and full of life and happy to eat. A big contrast to the life of the hunger artist.

Fourth Read: For the fourth read, I was not exactly sure what more to notice or get out of the story. The only thing, is I wanted to try to really understand more about the significance of the panther, because other than the fact it is supposed to contrast with the hunger artist, I don’t know what else it is supposed to symbolize. When I looked at what other people thought of the ending, I saw someone say, “The Hunger Artist has turned against appetite, whereas the panther embraces it.” This really opened my eyes to a new view on the ending, because the last line of the story reads, about the panther, “the joy of life streamed with such ardent passion from his throat that for the onlookers it was not easy to stand the shock of it. But they braced themselves, crowded round the cage, and did not want ever to move away." The onlookers originally admired and felt they could not look away from the hunger artist as well. In paragraph 2 it states, “Much more to his taste were the watchers who sat close up to the bars, who were not content with the dim night lighting of the hall but focused him in the full glare of the electric pocket torch.” So, the hunger artist dedicated his life to gaining attention, but interest in him disappeared overnight, and people moved on to the very opposite of him. I also saw some people who believed that the real message of the story is that humans in general are slaves to their impulses. Knowing Kafka, who really thought of himself as a failure, I still believe my interpretation of it is more likely, but I do enjoy entertaining other possibilities. I can see why some people view the message that the hunger artist was displaying a “failure” to control his human impulses by not eating, but I never understood why the act of restraint of harmless and natural desires (such as nourishment) was seen as something to respect. I feel like even if the hunger artist was truly displaying a miraculous show of restraint and willpower, it is still a waste of his life to dedicate himself wholly to it. What does he get other than attention and temporary respect? How is that better than friendship, love, or even a good meal with your family? Kafka, who was mistreated and rejected by his own father, and felt his own writing to be an act of survival, I believe was not trying to shame humanity for having a “lack of restraint” like some people believe.