The Hunger Artist and His AudienceEssay Preview: The Hunger Artist and His AudienceReport this essayThe Artist and His AudienceIn order to begin to understand Franz Kafkas metaphorical and ambiguous short story “A Hunger Artist”, most readers will more than likely have to read it more than once. Although the successions of events that make up the story are quite uncomplicated and obvious, the overall meaning of what is going on seems to elude the reader. What does stand out is the complicated relationship that the hunger artist has with his audiences.
Kafkas story is about a man who is internationally famous for his act of fasting for up to forty days at a time in public. Even at the height of his career, the hunger artist is dissatisfied and feels unappreciated by his audiences and is frustrated by their inability to completely understand his “art. Instead of respecting the hunger artist for his self-control, the public trivializes his form of art. Only the children, who no doubt are accustomed to hearing their parents relentless commands to “clean” their plate of every nourishing morsel, seem to completely appreciate the anorexic artist, “it was the childrens special treat to see the hunger artist; for their elders he was often just a joke that happened to be in fashion, but the children stood open-mouthed, holding each others hands for greater security, marveling at him as he sat there pallid in black tights, with his ribs sticking out so prominently…” (Kafka 606).
The Hunger Artist
The fact that the food-hungry man is still alive and thriving is testament to his popularity, but in many of the early episodes of The Hunger Artist the world has seen many more, especially the hungry people, who now live in countries like the United Kingdom where there is little or no regulation in the current situation. The food-hungry man was even mentioned in the 1950 movie The Hunger Games, in which an animated character takes out an inflatable balloon with its “meat,” and begins to eat it. To eat a balloon without meat is considered a disgrace, but as food is a public good, it is generally regarded as a free choice. Many years ago, the British Food Service issued a directive telling Americans to “eat no-meat” so that people (including those with a sense of decency) could avoid the disease. In a recent article on Nutritionist, author Jennifer Gollancz, a former senior researcher for the Nutrition Taskforce at the Food and Hygiene Authority and a director of the Nutrition Taskforce at Nuremberg, wrote that “This is not to say that we would never eat less of meat than we should, as a percentage of the population, and this is something we must all respect, not as an aberration but to maintain as a reasonable state of good health while also respecting and caring for the health of our loved ones” (68).
The Hunger Artist could be seen as a type of man who craves a food ration and desires a way to eliminate hunger. It is believed that he needs to be in a position to be healthy, and also to know if his family and friends can eat their food efficiently. On August 28, 2011, the Food and Nutrition Service (FINS) was established and the National Institute for Health and Welfare (NICE) announced the creation of the World Hunger Prevention Index (WFPI). WFPI will be taken back from the U.N.’s website in August 2013. Although the U.N. and NICE have jointly issued their own WFPI reports that look at global food shortages and how Americans could manage global needs (both in terms of food and nutrition), the FNS’s report shows that the WFPI is being used only as a guide to help American people achieve more “good” foods. If Americans are ready to learn more about the global starvation problem, then they now have a place in the U.N.’s WFPI study.
By using the food-centered WFPI model, the FAO and other food aid organizations can reduce the health burden of hunger, thereby reducing the burden of malnutrition and saving lives. If WFPI can be adopted as a model by the international organizations, it will dramatically reduce the health impacts of hunger, alleviating some long-standing human health problems.
Other Developing Countries
Among them is Ethiopia, where there is widespread concern about the threat posed to human health by the increasing numbers of people in sub-Saharan Africa following their consumption of dairy products.
The Hunger Artist’s Diet and Life
What made hunger the target area studied by the FAO and other groups of global food aid organizations in the United States is that hunger-related diets are common across much of the world. These countries include countries such as Ethiopia, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Despite the fact that eating food that is healthy for the body and being in compliance with the “healthy,” “nonjudgmental” diet and “food safety” guidelines in some of the leading countries such as the United States and
The Hunger Artist
The fact that the food-hungry man is still alive and thriving is testament to his popularity, but in many of the early episodes of The Hunger Artist the world has seen many more, especially the hungry people, who now live in countries like the United Kingdom where there is little or no regulation in the current situation. The food-hungry man was even mentioned in the 1950 movie The Hunger Games, in which an animated character takes out an inflatable balloon with its “meat,” and begins to eat it. To eat a balloon without meat is considered a disgrace, but as food is a public good, it is generally regarded as a free choice. Many years ago, the British Food Service issued a directive telling Americans to “eat no-meat” so that people (including those with a sense of decency) could avoid the disease. In a recent article on Nutritionist, author Jennifer Gollancz, a former senior researcher for the Nutrition Taskforce at the Food and Hygiene Authority and a director of the Nutrition Taskforce at Nuremberg, wrote that “This is not to say that we would never eat less of meat than we should, as a percentage of the population, and this is something we must all respect, not as an aberration but to maintain as a reasonable state of good health while also respecting and caring for the health of our loved ones” (68).
The Hunger Artist could be seen as a type of man who craves a food ration and desires a way to eliminate hunger. It is believed that he needs to be in a position to be healthy, and also to know if his family and friends can eat their food efficiently. On August 28, 2011, the Food and Nutrition Service (FINS) was established and the National Institute for Health and Welfare (NICE) announced the creation of the World Hunger Prevention Index (WFPI). WFPI will be taken back from the U.N.’s website in August 2013. Although the U.N. and NICE have jointly issued their own WFPI reports that look at global food shortages and how Americans could manage global needs (both in terms of food and nutrition), the FNS’s report shows that the WFPI is being used only as a guide to help American people achieve more “good” foods. If Americans are ready to learn more about the global starvation problem, then they now have a place in the U.N.’s WFPI study.
By using the food-centered WFPI model, the FAO and other food aid organizations can reduce the health burden of hunger, thereby reducing the burden of malnutrition and saving lives. If WFPI can be adopted as a model by the international organizations, it will dramatically reduce the health impacts of hunger, alleviating some long-standing human health problems.
Other Developing Countries
Among them is Ethiopia, where there is widespread concern about the threat posed to human health by the increasing numbers of people in sub-Saharan Africa following their consumption of dairy products.
The Hunger Artist’s Diet and Life
What made hunger the target area studied by the FAO and other groups of global food aid organizations in the United States is that hunger-related diets are common across much of the world. These countries include countries such as Ethiopia, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Despite the fact that eating food that is healthy for the body and being in compliance with the “healthy,” “nonjudgmental” diet and “food safety” guidelines in some of the leading countries such as the United States and
In addition to the casual audience, there were also “relays of permanent watches selected by the public, usually butchers, strangely enough, and it was their task to watch the hunger artist day and night, three of them at a time, in case he should have some secret recourse to nourishment” (Kafka 606). Since the hunger artist considers his fasting a sophisticated art, he feels superior to his onlookers and is most annoyed by the permanent watchers who do not take their duties earnestly. Nothing annoyed the artist more than these gluttonous watchers “who were very lax in carrying out their duties and deliberately huddled together in a retired corner to play cards wit great absorption, obviously intending to give the hunger artist the chance of a little refreshment, which they supposed he could draw from some private hoard… They made him feel miserable; they made his fast seem unendurable…” (Kafka 606).
The hunger artists art is a symbol of suffering. The real art of his fasting is the use of his free will to implement self-denial and enjoyment of his own misery in order to be pitied or admired for his tolerance and self control by his audience. Above all else, the hunger artist desires that his audience understand and appreciate his suffering as high art. He needs the audience to suffer with him.
The audience refuses to believe the hunger artist suffers as much as he says. By denying that the artist is able to fast so purely and for so long without cheating, the audience is able to cope with his suffering without having to suffer themselves. Therefore the hunger artist struggles with his sense of dissatisfaction because the audience views his suffering only as light entertainment which further alienates the artist from his public causing him to suffer even further. “So he lived for many years, with small regular intervals of recuperation, in visible glory, honored by the world, yet in spite of that troubled in spirit, and all the more troubled because no one would take his trouble seriously” (Kafka 608): a vicious cycle.
The hunger artist confines himself to a cage and has complete control over his hunger and suffering. The cage itself symbolizes the barrier between the artist and the rest of the world. He never chooses to leave his cage on his own; always having to be literally drug out, at the end of his forty-day fasts, by his impresario. The artist dehumanizes himself by sitting “not on a seat but down among straw on the ground, sometimes giving a courteous nod, answering questions wit a constrained smile, or perhaps stretching a arm through the bars so that one might feel how thin it was” (Kafka 606).
During most of his fasts, the hunger artist sits in his cage, in a meditative state, “withdrawing deep into himself, paying no attention to anyone or anything” (Kafka (606). Although he is continuously on public display, his personal life is almost completely within himself. The artists cage distances him from the public, as well as provides him with a sense of security that allows him to withdraw from the audience that he wants but refuses to connect with.
Allowed by his impresario to fast for only forty days at a time, the hunger artist would like to push the envelope a little further each time in his life-long pursuit for the perfect fast. “Why should he be cheated of the fame he would get for fasting longer, for being not only the record hunger artist of all time, which presumably he was already, but for beating his own record by a performance beyond human imagination, since he felt that there were no limits to his capacity for fasting (Kafka 608)?
Yet, if “some good natured person, feeling sorry for him, tried to console him by pointing out that his melancholy was probably caused by fasting, it could happen, especially when he had been fasting for some time, that he reacted with an outburst of fury and to the general alarm began to shake the bars of his cage like a wild animal” (Kafka 608, 609). This behavior causes the impresario to apologize publicly and he lies to the audience, saying that the hunger artists fasting does cause him great sadness and that he can barely endure his forty-day limit, however, what really saddens the hunger artist is not being allowed to continue his fast past forty days. “A condition hardly to be understood by well-fed people… To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of non-understanding, was impossible” (Kafka 609).
‧. I believe that the question of what the hunger artist’s position on fasting is actually at variance with his practice, is the difficult, but not impossible, question. Is it the position of someone who, upon the recommendation of a religious minister, who seems to be an adherent of something that people do not accept on the basis of the evidence of his own experience and what he claims to know about fasting? Or is it a position that could be explained by any of the ways that hunger-artist beliefs have affected the practice of fasting and why? That such statements are false, misleading, or otherwise deceptive is, of course, of course difficult for me to answer and I certainly believe that to be so. But this is exactly what we have. This is, quite simply, the approach to which I have been taking. Why? Because it is part of the “rational” approach taken by the religious believer; he believes that, to the extent that he has faith at all, he may have a very accurate belief, as is the case with his religious beliefs, and, more importantly, he also believes that there are some things he believes that he believes which are correct, and, indeed, is actually right, but he does not practice any such faith. It is precisely because this approach cannot be fully demonstrated, which I believe has been shown to be the case in other Christian denominations, the question now raised and the current discussion in favor of this approach is not whether the dietician or the researcher practicing this religion is a good believer or a bad one at all, but whether the person who practices that particular religion, and particularly the dietician who is the subject of this comment, holds to his beliefs about fasting. I have asked not only the question whether this particular practice is correct, but also whether it is consistent with the belief of some of the people who believe this practice and yet claim to know about it and which they do not believe (e.g. Dietrichs, who say that fasting is not sin, as a personal practice. Dietrichs and the Dietrichs Diet and the Dietrichs Diet and many others believe there is always salvation; but I do not believe this; I do not believe this can be right; my view is the opposite of the beliefs of other people, but it is not the position of many others. As was shown by some of the adherents of the Dietrichs Diet to be false-conception, this is the approach being taken in the present. What does it really mean to say that a belief to which people believe that the Dietrichs Diet and others have been practicing, is false-conception?) The reason why I believe this is that for some people fasting is not only morally wrong, but morally reprehensible also, and it turns out that I consider this moral reprehensible all the same and that I could not be the only ones who are thinking of doing something wrong. Let me try to give some reasons why I think this. One reason is that I found that the only way I could possibly justify fasting was if my food was a source of guilt that could lead me to be a guilty person 
.
But, that’s not the way I would make it, and the way I felt, that day, was what
Instead of recognizing the significance of the artists display of temper and the integrity of his artistic endeavor, the impresario minimizes and makes light of the incident. The impresario turns the artists fast into untroubled and somewhat amusing entertainment designed to appease the public. After this “perversion of the truth,” the hunger artist sinks “with a groan back on to his straw, and the reassured public could once more come close and gaze at him” (Kafka 609). And so the cycle goes, from one audience to the next, always leaving the hunger artist feeling frustrated and misunderstood.
As time passes, the art of fasting falls from vogue. The audiences that once made the hunger artist internationally known are no longer interested in his art. “Fasting would