A Hunger Artist Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 56 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of A Hunger Artist.

A Hunger Artist Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 56 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of A Hunger Artist.
This section contains 928 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the A Hunger Artist Study Guide

Many critics have interpreted Kafka's "A Hunger Artist" as an allegory in which the hunger artist serves as a symbol of "the suffering artist in society." His dying words, "I always wanted you to admire my fasting," express the hunger artist's inner torment and lifelong feelings of alienation. This stems primarily from the distance between his own appreciation for the purity of his art and a modern world concerned only with newer forms of mass entertainment. The hunger artist's internal vision of himself as a virtuoso "artist" is perpetually at odds with his public image. While his impresario limits his fasts to a maximum number of 40 days, he longs for the opportunity to "beat his own record by a performance beyond human imagination." Yet, even at the height of his career, his enthusiastic audiences all over the world fail to appreciate "the honor of his profession"; they...

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This section contains 928 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the A Hunger Artist Study Guide
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A Hunger Artist from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.