Hunger Artistry

In A Hunger Artist, by Franz Kafka, the story of a hunger artist is told, from being famous to long forgotten. This short story has many parallels to the novel Hunger- not only because of the hunger aspect, but because of the thoughts and attitude of the artist.

Although the hunger artist and the protagonist in the novel are different in the fact that the protagonist wants nothing to do with being poor and starving, and is more ashamed of it than anything else, both characters have pride in what they do. The hunger artist loves to show "that he had nothing to eat in his cage and that he was fasting as none of them could": the protagonist also believes he is superior to others- that he can give money or food to those who are "worse off" than he is.

Both of them also have doubts about their life- the hunger artist believes that he is not truly fasting, believing that forty days is nothing, and how easy it is to fast. The protagonist is disappointed with himself also as he writes small, 5 kroner articles to survive. Neither one of them can do something else- and they both blame people and society for their lack of advancement. While the protagonist blames society for distracting him, the hunger artist feels as if he is being forced to eat in some elaborately false ceremony. He thinks one time: "It was impossible to fight against this lack of understanding, against this world of misunderstanding." The interesting thing is that both of them think they are capable of going on forever- the hunger artist believes "he could have kept going for even longer, for an unlimited length of time" and the protagonist keeps trying to right ten kroner pieces, from plays to articles. Neither of them seem to realize the fact that the hunger artist would surely eventually die, or that the protagonist in Hunger does not work hard and concentrate enough to write those wonderful pieces. They seem to think that they can still survive on things that are already failing. Is this concept something that either author is trying to point out that most of society does?

The author describes the hunger artist one time from his cage in the carnival that the artist tries to be stubborn, with almost deliberate self-deception: and this is what the protagonist does also. With the hunger artist, this ends up with starvation and death, and I would say an unhappy death. The protagonist, however, seems to break from this self-deception and is able to travel somewhere else out of his death cycle. This is much like existentialism, and how, I think it was Camus, describes how people will continue to do the same thing, not entirely happy with their existence, unless they reach a conscious awareness, in which they can help themselves, suicide, or go back into the cycle. For the hunger artist, I am not sure if he reaches that state of awareness. When he says at the end "Because I had to fast. I can't do anything else": is he realizing how his pride was all for naught and perhaps even understanding the lack of interest others had? Is it because he found no foot which tasted good that he did not enjoy himself and "eaten to his heart's content"- instead starving himself and blocking out his unhappiness? I am not sure... Moreover, I am not sure I understand the last paragraph, with the tiger: it is so vibrantly opposite to the hunger artist's story. What is the author trying to say here? In the novel, the protagonist moves on with his life- is this what is happening here? The tiger is so full of life, "equipped with everything necessary", is content to live its life in a cage. Perhaps the tiger has accepted its fate and found the good parts in its life, and therefore has chosen to be happy? Or is it just ignorance that is keeping the tiger content? Although the tiger's life seems much more enjoyable- fed, alive, and long remembered- I am not sure I would want to be this tiger.