Franz Kafka A Hunger Artist Analysis

Hunger is defined as a feeling of discomfort or weakness caused by lack of food; in other words, the desire or craving to eat food. However, in Franz Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist,” this character gives a different, more compound definition to this term. As stated towards the end of the story, the Hunger Artist says that he was in fact never hungry, he just never found anything that he liked. With this being said, what does this character’s hunger truly insinuate? This insinuates that the Hunger Artist was not hungry for food, because instead he had a hunger for attention, fame, reputation, and honor. Franz Kafka was well-groomed to write a story about an isolated character, for he never married, his father detested him, and he was a Jew during

a time when anti-Semitism was growing dominance in Europe. “The Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka is actually an autobiographical representation of Kafka himself.
This story is about a hunger artist who fasts for the entertainment and amusement of the people in his town, but begins to struggle to withhold his reputation and maintain the town’s interest while trying to beat the fasting record. At the beginning of the story, people stayed with him throughout the night and watched him out of curiosity, but then slowly stopped visiting him and began to claim that he was sneaking food at night when he was alone. His manager limits his fasting for forty days, although the Hunger Artist believes he can last longer. In short, the audience deserts the artist. He then hires himself to a circus, where people only look at him because his cage is located on the way towards the most popular attraction, the menagerie, a collection of wild animals kept in captivity for exhibition. As many more days go by, the hunger artist battles his emotions of abandonment until one day an overseer asks him if he is still fasting, and when he plans to stop. The Hunger Artist asks for forgiveness, and then explains that “people should not admire his fasting because he could not help it; he simply could not find food that he liked, but if he had, he would have stuffed himself like everyone else did.” With that, those were his last words. Into his cage the circus placed a young panther, wild and full of joy.
Author Franz Kafka was born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, Bohemia. Kafka was the oldest of the six children, with two younger brothers, Georg and Heinrich, who both died at infancy, and three younger sisters, Gabriele, Valerie, and Ottillie. Kafka’s sisters were later on sent with their families to the ghetto and either died there or at concentration camps. Ottillie, the oldest of the sisters, is believed to have been sent to the death camp at Auschwitz. In college, Kafka first began studying chemistry, but two weeks later switched to law, which pleased his father. Kafka was engaged twice to be married with Felice Bauer, and their relationship finally ended in 1917, when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. It is generally accepted that Kafka suffered from medical depression, social anxiety, migraines, insomnia, constipation, and boils, all conditions usually brought about by excessive stress or strain. He died on June 3, 1924, requesting for his best friend Max Brod to burn everything that he left behind, unread, but Max published several of Kafka’s works posthumously.
It is known that Kafka had difficult relationships with his parents. His mother was a devoted homemaker who lacked the intellectual insight to grasp her son’s dreams to become a writer. Although he had a tough relationship with his mom, the relationship with his father was even more challenging. With a wicked temper and little appreciation for his son’s creative literature, his father had an overpowering impact on Kafka’s life and writing. Kafka claimed that most of his personal struggles, in romance and other relationships, originated from his complicated relationship with his father. In his literature works, Kafka’s characteristics were often put up against some sort of overbearing power, one so strong that it could effortlessly crush a man’s will and destroy his self-worth.
The character of the Hunger Artist represents Kafka himself as a “starving artist” which symbolizes the distress an artist must suffer to eventually gain success.

He struggles as an artist himself, as a writer, and as a human being. He feels misunderstood and tormented, perhaps exactly what this story is all about. The irrationality in the people that surround the Hunger Artist, and the inconsistency of the audience is reflective of this vision that Kafka wrote an autobiography of himself, as there is no reader who can truly understand what he is experiencing in life, his thoughts, ideologies, emotions, or intentions. Not even the remarkable admiration of the spectators for the Hunger Artist can, at least in the beginning of the story, be considered to be a success for him in Kafka's point of view because it is based on a serious misinterpretation of the artist's

intention.
The fact that the artist is locked inside of a cage is one of the biggest pieces of symbolism because it represents the isolated aspect, physically and mentally, that comes along with being a great artist, such as Kafka.

In the beginning of the story, the narrator tells the readers that “no one could possibly watch the hunger artist continuously, day and night, and so no one could produce first hand evidence that the fast had really been rigorous and continuous; only the artist himself could know that, he was therefore bound to be the sole completely satisfied spectator of his own fast.” This statement implies that the artist is the only one on his “team.” He is alone. When reading this story, you discover that the artist has an “impresario” who accompanies him on his journey. You immediately think that the artist has a partner, or friend, who is there to support and share the journey with him, but suddenly that idea is crushed when the narrator states “yet the impresario had a way of punishing these outbreaks which he rather enjoyed putting into operation.” Even the one person along his side enjoys his punishment, and this character is distinctly a representation of Kafka’s mother,

Julie.
Often shown in this short story, an artist’s talent, or genius, is not recognized until after their death, as there are endless examples of this in history. This is shown in the story through the people’s indifference towards the artist, as some people even identified his profession as “just a joke,” similar to what Kafka’s parents said about him dreaming to be a writer. Often times artists die young, suffering from mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, and insomnia, comparable to Kafka, which most likely stemmed from the life full of isolation and misery that he lived. This is shown in this story by the artist being locked in a cage and enduring extreme hunger, arguably one of the most painful experiences for someone to stomach.
The panther is one instance of symbolism that occurs at the end of the story that is significant. At this point in the story, the Hunger Artist had been fasting for so many days that even the managers quit counting. He was barely moving, exuding weakness and mortality, and covered in “dirty straw with sticks.” Finally, the Hunger Artist dies, and they cleared the cage out, “straw and all,” and buried the man. They replaced his spot in the cage with a young panther that represented everything the Hunger Artist was not: vigorous, noble, and most importantly well-fed. These royal qualities attract audiences that the Hunger Artist could never attract, most likely because the panther embodies power and vitality. I like to connect this righteous panther with how Kafka likes for his literature to be honored.
Author Franz Kafka used his literature to explore the human struggle for comprehension and security. He lived a life of seclusion and discontent. He had a very petite social life during his mature years. It was in these times of his life that he saw himself as discouraged and helplessly remote from the rest of world. With suffering through the many failed engagements and the despiteful relationship he had with his father, he left a deep imprint on this story, the suffering of the Hunger Artist, not out of famishment, but out of misunderstanding and lack of appreciation.