Czech Republic Jan. 2014 | Page 6

The Hunger Artist Review

“The Hunger Artist,” is a story about a man who goes on fasts for forty days as a form of entertainment. A fast is when you go long periods of time without eating any food. The reason the hunger artist fast is because he wants people to see what true suffering looks like. He is kind to all the people that come to see him, and he lets them touch him to see how skinny he is. Most people are very impressed with his fasting, but others do not think that he actually starves himself. In “The Hunger Artist,” Franz Kafka uses tone and diction to make you feel the pain of the hunger artist. In this essay you will read about the tone and mood of the story. You will have a better understanding of why the story was written, and what the author wants you to feel when you read the story.

In the story “The Hunger Artist,” the authors tone is contemptuous. Contemptuous means someone is being disrespected, and is treated like they are worthless. For example, “In the past few decades, the interest in hunger artists have greatly declined,” (Kafka 870).The reason the author includes this is to show the reader that at one point in time the hunger act was very popular, and now nobody has the urge to go see the man suffering.

The watchmen would purposely eat in front of him to make the hungering harder. Lastly, “…people refused to believe him; at best some regarded him as modest, but mostly they considered him a publicity hound or even a swindler…” (Kafka 872). This quote shows that people did not respect what talents he had and choose not to believe what he was doing.They said that hungering, “…was easy because he knew how to make it easy for himself and who then had the gall to practically admit it,” (Kafka 872). No respect is give to the hunger artist; because everyone believes what he is doing is easy. The quotes above from the story explain what the tone is, and why it is the tone. It explains that no respect is shown to the hunger artist, and he is treated like he is a worthless human being.

The author puts this sentence in the first paragraph as background information, so the reader knows about the past of the hungering act. Second, some of the watchmen that were supposed to make sure he didn’t eat anything would eat in front of him and, “…they made him feel wretched, they made hungering dreadfully difficult for him,” (Kafka 871). This example show that he did not get the respect he deserves, and he was treated like he was worthless.