Kafka’s "a Hunger Artist"

In Franz Kafka's "A Hunger Artist," the author speaks about his method of writing; his affliction that mirrors that of a person who fasts. Throughout his prose, he tells the story of a man who-- while others in his time flaunt their skills in living and in cheating death-- has mastered the art of dying. In his own time, Kafka was never famous for his writing. In 1922, around the time he retired from a Czechoslovakia insurance company for which he was a lawyer, he wrote "A Hunger Artist." He had been diagnosed with tuberculosis a few years earlier, and died just two years after penning the story. Throughout his lifetime he felt compelled to write, yet he believed that his work was unworthy of any praise. To him, his need to write drove him and pained him at the same time, much like the Hunger Artist's work propelled and tortured the character simultaneously. This connection is vital in understanding why Kafka writes this story the way he does: the contrast between necessity and pain in his life is also a major theme in "A Hunger Artist." Kafka's method of writing describes the plight of the Artist: the prose is anti-climactic and dreary; his thoughts run together like those of the faster and amount to an allusion to Kafka's own affliction with writing. In actuality, the Hunger Artist is Kafka, and the character's tortured, addicted, and frail body mimics Kafka's mind as a writer.

Early in the story, Kafka sets the dreary tone which doubly mirrors the melancholy lifestyle of the Hunger Artist. In the first paragraph, Kafka introduces the reader to the art of fasting and its place in society at that time. In the fourth sentence, he unloads 17 lines of streaming prose and discusses the details of a typical fast in its heyday: "At one time the whole town took a lively interest in the hunger artist," through "now and then taking a sip from a tiny glass of water to moisten his lips" (462). This sentence contains seven different thoughts-- each expanding on the last-- all separated by six semi-colons. Each one of these thoughts could be its own sentence, but Kafka chooses to run them all together. In writing about the fast this way, the reader gets a sense that fasting is, like the prose, dreary and anti-climactic. Since each thought builds upon the last in this sentence, the reader feels a sort of "stream-of-consciousness" that puts him or her into the same simple mindset as the story and its character. Although the prose does not reach out and grab the reader with more engaging tropes, it gently draws the reader's attention and fascination, as a Hunger Artist might gently draw a sympathetic, awed crowd.

After enticing a thoughtful audience, Kafka tells them about the Hunger Artist's dillema of suffering

, and through this character, about his own. He tells the reader that the faster is watched day and night to ensure that he will not consume any food, but explains it as a "formality" because, "during his fast the artist would never in any circumstances, not even under forcible compulsion, swallow the smallest morsel of food; the honor of his profession forbade it" (462). The Hunger Artist-- and in an allusion, Kafka-- will not allow nourishment, even forcible nourishment, becaused he thinks it is honorable to master his art, though it is killing him. He would rather be a success in dying and self-torture than happy in living. Furthermore, having literally starved himself of this happiness, the only joy that he can feel comes from fasting, from hurting himself. He is addicted to this dull feeling of pain and prefers it over feeling "full."