The Hunger Artist is maybe the most popular parable written by Franz Kafka. In the story, Kafka introduces us an artist who wears black leotard and loves to hang out in a cage, starving himself to death for 40 days in order to make a show. At first, he had a very big audience who actually likes him to watch in the cage. He was not happy with his life, but at least he had the attention on him. However then, people started not to be interested in him. After he lost his all audience, he signs on a circus as an actor. Although he managed to be hungry more than 40 days, just because he has no one to display his performance, he is forgotten.
In this parable, Kafka made a lot of philosophical analysis about our nature, cultural norms and how changeable they are. In the story, the artist devoted himself to the ‘’act of starvation’’ which is not very ‘’common’’ among the other artists. He was hungry to the attention of his audience and actually the ‘’attention’’ was the was the thing which keeps him alive. After he lost his audience, he just couldn’t accept the fact that society is changed and no one actually cares about his performance and act, or in other words, he could no longer entertain people by starving himself to death in a cage like an animal. So, I think ‘’acceptance of changes in society’’ is the first motive of the story.
Moreover, I believe the artist’s disappointment and sadness was caused by his pride. He just couldn’t get over the reality, that people don’t care about his work anymore, which he is actually good at. He wasn’t aware of the fact that just because he is good at something doesn’t mean that he can influence the society and get the public validation from it. He wasn’t doing the whole starvation thing for his own fulfillment, he just wanted other people to recognize his ‘’success’’ which I believe is the second and maybe the most important motive we can get from the parable.
I also think that reason of the artist’s disappointment and sadness is his pride. If you said him that watching his art is not interesting, he would answer like that “I can survive 40 days without eating, you can’t even stand a day hungry.” I think doing extreme things cannot be counted as art. You just say “wow” and move on.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing i’d like to say is art is successful as long as it has audience. Success of an art is related to interest in it. Even standing on a feet can be more successful than that.