The Hunger Artist and His Audience

The Artist and His Audience

In order to begin to understand Franz Kafka's metaphorical and ambiguous short story "A Hunger Artist", most readers will more than likely have to read it more than once. Although the successions of events that make up the story are quite uncomplicated and obvious, the overall meaning of what is going on seems to elude the reader. What does stand out is the complicated relationship that the hunger artist has with his audiences.

Kafka's story is about a man who is internationally famous for his act of fasting for up to forty days at a time in public. Even at the height of his career, the hunger artist is dissatisfied and feels unappreciated by his audiences and is frustrated by their inability to completely understand his "art.'' Instead of respecting the hunger artist for his self-control, the public trivializes his form of art. Only the children, who no doubt are accustomed to hearing their parents' relentless commands to "clean" their plate of every nourishing morsel, seem to completely appreciate the anorexic artist, "...it was the children's special treat to see the hunger artist; for their elders he was often just a joke that happened to be in fashion, but the children stood open-mouthed, holding each other's hands for greater security, marveling at him as he sat there pallid in black tights, with his ribs sticking out so prominently..." (Kafka 606).

In addition to the casual audience, there were also "relays of permanent watches selected by the public, usually butchers, strangely enough, and it was their task to watch the hunger artist day and night, three of them at a time, in case he should have some secret recourse to nourishment" (Kafka 606). Since the hunger artist considers his fasting a sophisticated art, he feels superior to his onlookers and is most annoyed by the permanent watchers who do not take their duties earnestly. Nothing annoyed the artist more than these gluttonous watchers "who were very lax in carrying out their duties and deliberately huddled together in a retired corner to play cards wit great absorption, obviously intending to give the hunger artist the chance of a little refreshment, which they supposed he could draw from some private hoard... They made him feel miserable; they made his fast seem unendurable..." (Kafka 606).

The hunger artist's art is a symbol of suffering. The real art of his fasting is the use of his free will to implement self-denial and enjoyment of his own misery in order to be pitied or admired for his tolerance and self control by his audience. Above all else, the hunger artist desires that his audience understand and appreciate his suffering as high art. He needs the audience to suffer with him.

The audience refuses to believe the hunger artist suffers as much as he says. By denying that the artist is able to fast so purely and for so long without cheating, the audience is able to cope with his suffering without having to suffer themselves. Therefore the hunger artist struggles with his sense of dissatisfaction because the audience views his suffering only as light entertainment which further alienates the artist from his public causing him to suffer even further. "So he lived for many years, with small regular intervals of recuperation, in visible glory, honored by the world, yet in spite of that troubled in spirit, and all the more troubled because no one would take his trouble seriously" (Kafka 608): a vicious cycle.

The hunger artist confines himself to a cage and has complete control over his hunger and suffering. The cage itself symbolizes the barrier between the artist and the rest of the world. He never chooses to leave his cage on his own; always having to be literally drug out, at the end of his forty-day fasts, by his impresario. The artist dehumanizes himself by sitting "not on a seat but down among straw on the ground, sometimes giving a courteous nod, answering questions wit a constrained smile, or perhaps stretching a arm through the bars so that one might feel how thin it was" (Kafka 606).

During most of his fasts, the hunger artist sits in his cage, in a meditative state, "withdrawing deep into himself, paying no attention to anyone or anything" (Kafka (606). Although he is continuously on public display, his personal life is almost completely within himself. The artist's cage distances him from the public, as well as provides him with a sense of security that allows him to withdraw from the audience that he wants but refuses to connect with.

Allowed by his impresario to fast for only forty days at a time, the hunger artist would like to push the envelope a little further each time in his life-long pursuit for the perfect fast. "Why should he be cheated of the fame he would get for fasting longer, for being not only the record hunger artist of all time, which presumably he was already, but for beating his own record by a performance beyond human imagination, since he felt that there were no limits to his capacity for fasting (Kafka 608)?

Yet, if "some good natured person, feeling sorry for him, tried to console him by pointing out that his melancholy was probably caused by fasting, it could happen, especially when he had been fasting for some time, that he reacted with an outburst of fury and to the general alarm began to shake the bars of his cage like a wild animal" (Kafka 608, 609). This behavior causes the impresario to apologize publicly and he lies to the audience, saying that the hunger artist's fasting does cause him great sadness and that he can barely endure his forty-day limit, however, what really saddens the hunger artist is not being allowed to continue his fast past forty days. "A condition hardly to be understood by well-fed people... To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of non-understanding, was impossible" (Kafka 609).

Instead of recognizing the significance of the artist's display of temper and the integrity of his artistic endeavor, the impresario minimizes and makes light of the incident. The impresario turns the artist's fast into untroubled and somewhat amusing entertainment designed to appease the public. After this "perversion of the truth," the hunger artist sinks "with a groan back on to his straw, and the reassured public could once more come close and gaze at him" (Kafka 609). And so the cycle goes, from one audience to the next, always leaving the hunger artist feeling frustrated and misunderstood.

As time passes, the art of fasting falls from vogue. The audiences that once made the hunger artist internationally known are no longer interested in his art. "Fasting would