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    A Study Guide for Franz Kafka's "Hunger Artist"
    A Study Guide for Franz Kafka's "Hunger Artist"
    A Study Guide for Franz Kafka's "Hunger Artist"
    Ebook39 pages26 minutes

    A Study Guide for Franz Kafka's "Hunger Artist"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Franz Kafka's "Hunger Artist," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 6, 2016
    ISBN9781535825184
    A Study Guide for Franz Kafka's "Hunger Artist"

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      A Study Guide for Franz Kafka's "Hunger Artist" - Gale

      1

      A Hunger Artist

      Franz Kafka

      1924

      Introduction

      Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist was first written in 1922 and published in a collection also entitled A Hunger Artist. Although Kafka died in 1924, as he was still in the process of correcting the galley proofs, the collection was nevertheless published that same year. A Hunger Artist is one of the few manuscripts which Kafka did not request that his friends burn or otherwise destroy after his death.

      A Hunger Artist, which takes place in an unspecified time and place, is about a man world-famous for his public performances of the act of fasting, for as much as forty days at a time. Even at the height of his career, the hunger artist is unsatisfied with his work and frustrated by both his manager and his audiences, who never fully appreciate his true talent or the purity of his art. The hunger artist struggles internally with his sense of dissatisfaction with himself and his feelings of alienation from the world outside the cage in which he fasts. As the years go by, the hunger artist’s profession goes out of vogue, while audiences move on to newer trends in mass entertainment.

      Kafka’s stories are often described as fables or parables, and A Hunger Artist certainly shares this quality. It is just absurd enough to suggest that its meaning is symbolic rather than literal. As in many of Kafka’s stories, A Hunger Artist also explores themes of self-hatred, inadequacy, and alienation. Hunger becomes symbolic of both a lust for life and a spiritual yearning. The circumstance of the protagonist confined in a claustrophobic space is also a common motif in Kafka’s work. The hunger artist’s cage functions as both a refuge from the outside world and a barrier between the artist and the rest of humanity.

      Author Biography

      Franz Kafka was born into a Jewish family in Prague in 1883. He earned a law degree in 1906 and worked for the Workers Accident Insurance company for most of his adult life. His writing was first published in 1909, and he continued to publish short stories, all written in German, until his death in 1924, shortly before his forty-first birthday. Kafka’s literary style is

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