Sips of Water

Joseph Cooper
Mrs. Polly Watson
English 113-111
April 16, 2011


I have kept coming back to "A Hunger Artist" by Franz Kafka. It just always seemed too strange for me to leave it alone. One thing I've learned reading short stories is asking myself 'Why was this made?' and specifically for something shown in a school curriculum that question seems like something every person should ask themselves as the story seems far too strange when just left for face value. As I read into "A Hunger Artist" again I began to recognize connections and I feel it is an allegory for not only misunderstood artist but a criticism of the general audience.

To start, the Hunger Artist character is not fueled by depression which drives his fasting but simply that he was not accept the world for what it is. His fasting is his way of rejecting the world and, his own way, transcend it. Despite that, he was only rewarded for his acts on face value and his reasoning why he did it always went unheeded. I'd like to think that this is a comparison to how many people treat art. They take it for its face value and hold it up without fully understanding it, thinking it is beyond them in this lofty domain. Two things that are not uncommon with artists, and even philosophers, are having limitations put onto themselves to appease the people while defacing their work (poets now doing only short poetry because the people doesn't have the attention span for long ones, and also things like the death of Socrates comes to mind) and eventually being subjugated to trends. Both things that happen to The Hunger Artist. While the devotion to fasting drew people in to see his incredible will popularity had changed to exotic animals.

Exotic Animals gave a more immediate thrill than just seeing a mans willpower at work and in this internet age it is easy to tell that people are going more towards the immediate. Instead of researching the answer people just look it up on the internet; instead of reading books people are more drawn towards video games for their instant stimulation and even in games things are getting bogged down to the point where there is no worth anymore but only instant gratification and mindlessness. Due to this the Hunger Artist is left a broken man. It's shown through this that in his weakness even the one trying to transcend the average world around him it is shown that he is still in need of the most basic and childish human desire: Attention. This is a way to show that those artists so highly revered are still human inside and despite artistic pretensions they share the same weaknesses of any other person.

Upon the end of this story, however, it is shown that no matter how hard he tried the artist was a victim of his own society. Given limitations on his art so he may not explore it further, had to deal with people whose ignorance put him on a pedestal but forced themselves into thinking they could not follow suit, tossed away by the people as a more interesting thing appeared, and eventually left to die and insulted by having his space be taken up by 'the new'. The story is a sad view of the misunderstood artist, the change of trends, and the effect that the people have as a collection. I find that this Hunger Artist would have find a much better world if he had gotten people to understand his ideals and why he does it. A thinker does not enjoy being the smartest person in the room but rather being one amongst the collection of thinkers.

Kafka, Franz. "A Hunger Artist." http://records.viu.ca/. Vancouver Island University, n.d. Web. 12 Apr 2011. <http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/hungerartist.htm>.