Analysis of Franz Kafka’s “The Hunger Artist”

Franz Kafka’s “The Hunger Artist”portrays alienation as the major theme. This paper will analyze this theme basing arguments on Heidegger’s ideas from the existentialist perspective on self-estrangement and Marxist modern day interpersonal alienation. In the story “the hunger artist”strives in overcoming both alienations, but he does not achieve the objective because of death. The essay will account for human traits in human nature and also human beings of the modern days to alienation certain conditions.

Discussion

First, this story is set in an environment characterizing alienation, the cage. The cage socially isolates the hunger artist from the world. Because of his loves for fasting, he kind enjoyed the isolation within the enclosure, he desires to outcome interpersonal alienation. Evident from his longing for appreciation and continuous understanding. Examples of his desires include the passion for performing that changes the feeling of his spectators. Such as making jokes with wardens to “tell the stories”while listening to theirs. Despite the manager betraying him. Upon misunderstandings his “outburst of the cage,”shown in his act attempting to break the alienation by shaking bars (1, 3). Also, with decreasing audience on his fasting, he tries to volunteers his feeling, his agony, and thoughts. The story ending declares the failure of his attempt.

The market ruined the hunger artist career, leading to his final isolation. This career failure is a picture of how dehumanization in a capitalist society causes alienation. According to Marx, human lives in the modern society are subjected to market power, the human influence that “dominates and separates people… enslaves them through separating them”(Marx). He strives for appreciation and connection with others, but instead, he is dehumanized and alienated in the economy. At the beginning of the narration, there is a representation of an atmosphere of society, introducing the hunger artist unique. “The human-artist has suffered a decline in interest,”“putting up one’s production to acquire a great spectacle is profitable”this is evidence how people are dehumanized and become symbolic moneymakers (1).To put emphases on the effect of the market on the interpersonal relationship, Kafka twists the plot, by transferring interests of suffering on human through symbol capitalization to exotic animals. Alienation exaggerates the modern society “times have changed……, at least once a day, everyone wanted to see the hunger artist”(1). The witnesses confess that they failed in understanding themselves due to changes and they never cared to understand the reasons, which is because it was the presence of “inhuman power”in the market.

Despite the market promoting the hunger artist’s interpersonal alienation within the story, it is not necessary, as human mind causes isolation. Experiences differ from one person to another and the only present in his realization, leading to the separation of human beings and the society. According to Heidegger, alienation arises due to even though, but it means if from one’s project, “The society keeps its otherness.”The hunger artist misunderstands something, on projecting his values of artistic, honesty and individuality on the world, for example believing the audience admires his art, but for them, it was a show for “a little fun.”He does not know about marketing plan of the fortieth day that limits his purpose. He asks for forgiveness thinking that his fasting was a bother to others, but nobody cares for him being dead or alive. “Of course we forgive you,”the answer from overseer while tapping his finger on his brow an indication the hunger artist was mad (3, 5). That shows the difference in the real world with the hunger artist’s world.

From the experience of his performance, the hunger artist learned the inevitability of his alienation, “trying to explain starving art. It is a feeling. That one cannot explain”(4). This is an indication of misunderstanding between the society and the hunger artist, leading to his dissatisfaction. On expressing how fasting was easy nobody believed him, “they thought he was a public cheat, to who starving was an easy matter,”in case of wardens who left space for the hunger artist to sneak food made fasting difficult through “depressing his spirit”(1). The hunger artist was not supposed to eat anything in “the honor of his art”(1). Also, the hunger artist is depressed by the fortieth day causes dissatisfaction. The narrator outlines, the consequences of early finish of the fasting period is a paradox created manager aiming at profits that widen the misunderstanding rift between the hunger artist and his immediate audience.

Interpersonal alienation and capitalism dehumanization are inevitable in human situations, mostly in the modern society. Self-estrangement is another form of alienation; the hunger artist presents it in his struggle of the soul and body which lead to fasting failure. Self-estrangement is a concept where one forgets his possibility of being. From the story, we learn that it used this assumption to develop the hunger artist. In his fasting we learn his struggles of self-alienation, to get his freedom. Ideas such as the hunger artist putting himself in the cage and demand supervision from others. Secondly, “allowing everything to happen to him on a fortieth day; his head lied on the chest as if it rolled and come to a sudden stop there”(2). He never achieved the goal that is his freedom because of his soul and his body.

Conclusion

In The Hunger Artist by Kafka alienation is expressed in a double fold. From one perspective it can be interpersonal alienation where the playset created an emotional feeling that blocks understanding and communication between individuals and himself. From Heidegger view, separation is self-imposed, a stats that arises when one reconciles the body and soul desires within himself. The modern society supports alienation idea by defining roles and identities in the community representing exploitation and dehumanization that affected contracted workers between the late 19th and the early 20th century among capitalist nations. The hunger artist is not exceptional; while he struggles to find rages on himself, the cage hinders his communication with the world. Kafka goes deep into alienation idea using the hunger artist, therefore, trying to reinforce the inside reality ideas that could not match the outer reality and could not also, cope with its alienation.

Work Cited

Kafka, Franz. A hunger artist. Sheba Blake Publishing, 2017.

Kumari, Sunitha V. Anatomy of Alienation: A Critical Study of Heidegger and Sartre. , 2013. Print.

Sayers, Sean. Marx and Alienation: Essays on Hegelian Themes. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Internet resource.