Sunday, December 6, 2009
More symbols?!!
As Andrea said, Kafka's writing treats everything as if it is factual, if a shade fantastic. But that does not mean that there are not implications in his writing of meanings beyond the literal. Review your reading of "The Hunger Artist" and comment on some aspect of the story that takes you beyond the literal meanings in the story. Consider the images we mentioned in class: the impresario, fasting as a profession or art, the watchers or audience, the cage, the circus, the panther. Or comment on some other aspect of the story that held additional meaning for you or respond to one of the comments made in class. Just push yourself to look past the literal.
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I think that the cage that the hunger artist stays in during the story has great symbolism to me. First of all, I think that the cage symbolizes how the impresario holds the hunger artist back and prevents him from reaching his potential. The hunger artist has not found any food he likes and does not care to eat, so he would like to continue fasting forever, but the impresario tells him that if he fasts more than 40 days people will lose interest and will not let him. Also, the cage sybolizes how the hunger artist is held back in life as a whole. He is not ever able to reach his full potential in his "profession" nor is he able to reach a point of contentment with himself or his identity.
ReplyDeleteI think Jordan brings up very valid points about the symbolism of the cage. The cage represents basically the Hunger Artist's life as a whole--he has never been able to (or allowed to) do the things he wants in his life. Literally, the cage is the Hunger Artist's place of dwelling, because nobody actually trusts the fact that he is fasting. But symbolically, the cage is the impresario's wrath of exploitation that keeps the Hunger Artist from doing the only thing he can do well in his life--fast. The Hunger Artist has no other means of feeling good about himself aside from fasting and showing the world that he can do it. The cage, or Impresario, holds him back from fasting to the farthest extent that he can go, and thereby keeping him in an unhappy state.
ReplyDeleteOn a separate note, I think that the audience symbolizes the skeptics in his life. They do not know anything about him other than his appearance and the placard outside the cage, yet they still judge him in saying that he is not actually fasting.
ReplyDelete-Nick G.
I found it interesting that he refers to himself as an artist. Obviously, since people observe his fasting, he is a performing artist. The goal of the performing artist is usually to entertain the audiance. Certainly, the experience is satisfying for the performer as well, but the emphasis is not placed upon the performers happiness. The hunger artist, however, seems to perform for himself. Even after he is no longer viewed as entertaining, he continues to fast, therefore proving that he does not starve himself to entertain others, but to achieve his own personal goals. Also, unlike a performing artist, the hunger srtist is not creating an illusion by pretending to be a character. I believe that he calls himself an artist to prove that, like an artist, he has a rare gift. Kafka may have been trying to show that performers need to focus on pleasing themselves rather than performing to please others.
ReplyDeleteI think the panther seems to symbolize everything the hunger artist is not. The hunger artist appears to choose not to live his life because he wants no part of anything. His refusal of food and inability to accept his 'art' is dying out makes him weak and ultimately kills him. He is basically refusing society. The panther, on the other hand, takes as much from life as possible, eating huge amounts of food and being, overall, healthy.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with Emily and was going to say basically the same thing. On a different note, I think that the circus workers symbolize and summarize the public's generaly feelings toward the hunger artist. At the very end, they arbitrarily check out the artist's cage and find him near death. The artist wants to tell them something really important to him, but the workers view him as crazy, tell the artist whatever he wants to hear, and then dump his body into the ground without even bothering to separate it from the straw. I think that these workers symbolize the public because they probably thought he was crazy, they gave him brief, insincere attention, then dumped him in the back of their minds, labeled as completely worthless.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with Emily and was going to say basically the same thing. On a different note, I think that the circus workers symbolize and summarize the public's generaly feelings toward the hunger artist. At the very end, they arbitrarily check out the artist's cage and find him near death. The artist wants to tell them something really important to him, but the workers view him as crazy, tell the artist whatever he wants to hear, and then dump his body into the ground without even bothering to separate it from the straw. I think that these workers symbolize the public because they probably thought he was crazy, they gave him brief, insincere attention, then dumped him in the back of their minds, labeled as completely worthless.
ReplyDeleteThe panther symbolizes the hunger artist's art. The panther itself is a thing of beauty, majesty, and power, while the hunger artist himself is a thing of pity, irrelevancy, becoming out f touch with the modern world. His type of entertainment has become not an art form, but a commodity. People like to see the human body pushed to its limit, and that is what the hunger artist provides. The contrast between the panther and hunger artist is very powerful.
ReplyDeleteI also wanted to talk about the panther, becasue we didn't really get into it in class. As Emily said, the panther is everything that the hunger artist is not, eating lots of food, being healthy, etc. He is also everything that the hunger artist has ever wanted. The public accepts and even embraces the panther, specificaally the ones attending the circus, and people stop to pay attention. It is sad that at the end of the story the life the Hunger Artist always wanted is finally shown, but in the lifestyle of the panther instead of the hunger artist.
ReplyDeleteI think that the panther is another strong symbol. Like Emily and Andrea both said it shows everything that the hunger artist is not. I also think that the juxtapositioning of the panther on the ground help by the hunger artist is extremely symbolic. The hunger artist's view on himself as an "artist" is also something unique to this story. In the way in which he tells it, Kafka leaves this idea up to the reader, with no clear inclination as to wether or not the hunger "artist" is what he claims to be. By leaving this seemingly small title open to questioning, Kafka may also be questioning many other roles and titles that society views as important.
ReplyDeleteI think the audience and the watchers are a symbol of the distrust society has in artists and skepticism in general. Kafka wrote just after and during WWI, and many people in Europe were unsure of the future and of what their leaders were doing at the time. The hunger artist could represent to the audience a mystery that they don't quite understand. The people obviously know that he is fasting, but they do not know why, just as they may have felt about the events going on in the world around them.
ReplyDeleteI think the way the crowd moves past the Hunger Artist's cage could represent the way people in general move on, not just from fads but from periods in life. The way that the artist is buried and forgotten reminds me of John Keats' poem "Ozymandias" which is all about impermanence and being left behind. The way Ozymandias' legacy is buried is similar to the Hunger Artists. Maybe Kafka was trying to say that the concept of legacy doesn't exist at all because of how quickly we are forgotten by the larger population.
ReplyDelete