“The Hunger Artist”: A Critique of Plight and Pretensions (Literature & Language Essay)

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“The Hunger Artist”: A Critique of Plight and Pretensions
Universally, life prospers on growth. To opt out of life is to choose decline and, finally, demise. In “The Hunger Artist” (Kafka), meaning in life is questioned in several metaphorical and philosophical ways. Telling of a hunger artist, a profession common in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Kafka offers what is perhaps a condensed view of a whole bygone era yet, more interestingly, a semi-autobiography. The plight and pretensions of Kafka's hunger artist parallel, in a sense, personal experiences Kafka underwent in early life phases under a domineering father and was perhaps still experiencing in end-of-life phase (“Franz Kafka Biography”). The short story could, accordingly, be accounted for not only as an inspiring documentation of entertainments and attractions once popular in a bygone era – and, for that matter, a worldview becoming increasingly obsolete – yet also a documentation of Kafka's very own personal plights and pretensions. The attempts to identify, word for word, parallels between story's hunger artist and Kafka are, one strongly believes, doomed. Instead, underlying rationales story's hunger artist is made to rationalize, if not philosophize about, life could, if properly interpreted and contextualized, offer insights into Kafka's own insecurities not only as an individual yet, more importantly, as an artist preoccupied about certain issues of wide implications not only for his own era yet for modern life and humanity in general. To put matters into perspective, a closer examination is required of Kafka's manipulation of meaning-making,
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often converging on proverbial didacticism, to critique a bygone era's (and artist's) growing
ailments and dissatisfactions informed by personal experiences just as manipulative. This essay
aims, accordingly, to explore Kafka's hunger artist's plight and pretensions in what is perhaps a
subtle parallel to Kafka's own personal experiences particularly in end-of-life phase.
The everyday experiences and inner conflicts of Kafka's hunger artist are interchangeable in several masterful ways. The hunger artist has, as all artists, an ultimate aim to stay in limelight. The glory of fame, particularly if coupled by fortune, is every artist's dream. In “The Hunger Artist,” story's central character expresses in a diversity of subtle and direct ways gains and costs of staying under limelight for long. The crowds drawn to story's hunger artist are, more specifically, a representation of limelight attention artists often entertain. The halo created around artists, usually expanding by virtue of constant attention and almost always gratifying and sought by all is countered, however, by deep uncertainties, if not insecurities, about not only an artist's actual purpose yet of what art is. This conflict between an artist's elevated sense of self and inner uncertainties/insecurities is ideally captured in:
He lived this way, taking small regular breaks, for many years, apparently in the spotlight, honoured by the world, but for all that his mood was usually gloomy, an...