Germany
6
The Hunger Artist
In “The Hunger Artist,” Franz Kafaka uses the cage and the Panther as symbols in order
to find the theme. The cage and the Panther are a very important part of finding the theme to this story. How does the cage ever tell us the theme, he was in a cage for 40 days and
longer, imagine what the theme was. And the panther had toke the hunger artists place, ask yourself why and if you keep reading on you will find out why the author had put these things in the story to make it the theme.
The author uses the cage as a symbol of the theme. The cage represents the divisions
between the hunger artist and the spectators on the panther side of the bars, he choose to
stay in the bars, he felt safe because he knows that some people don’t support what the hunger artist is doing. In the text it says, “Granted, not every watch men was capable of grasping this; some of the nocturnal watch groups were very lax in their watching: they
would deliberately assemble in a remote corner, absorbed in a game of cards, with the
obvious intention of granting the hunger artist some respite for a bit of refreshment that they assumed he could produce from some private cache. “They didn’t understand why he was fasting, thought it was stupid and that he looked ugly and sick. The text says “And the full, albert very meager weight of the body rested on one lady.who,panting and peering about forhelp ( this is not how she had envisioned her honorary assistance). Craned her neck as far away as possible to at least keep her face from touching the hunger artist.” The explanation for this would be the details and how it tells you how people feel when being around him, so he feels more comfortable in the cage. The theme is to tell us that there is more than one different type of art and many people can have their own ideas and not care what others think about themselves.