Franz Kafka's tales are full of mysterious elements that are rooted deep in human psychology and are often brushed under the rug for lack of general awareness.
The Hunger Artist is one such take on human nature(loosely inspired from Kafka's own life)
where the often subtle cues possessed by certain kind of people has been highlighted.
The Hunger Artist's setting lies in a town where the public has huge interests in one unusual act performed by the legendary "Hunger Artist", which one can guess by it's name, consists of holding long continuous fasts in open public. So as is tradition, the Hunger Artist, carries out the act in a "cage" with immense pride, where people walk by with murmurs of sympathy. Some even stopping by to offer food, but the Hunger artist stays undeterred.
Thanks to his "manager", the Hunger Artist's stunt, despite much backlash from his side, is limited up to 40 days after which the whole town gathers in the town square to celebrate the artist's work, and to see his deteriorated figure. There too the Hunger Artist refuses to break his fast, and instead much prefers that he stay on the course, to make a new record, but all his efforts in vain, his "fandom" is too large to let him starve for too long and pieces of nourishment are forced down his throat.
Now, that's just a rough overview of the whole plot, and some people may even find it stupid and completely irrational, I mean, I have never seen a person do something as obscure as a "fast" for an art, they are usually religious right? And who are these people who are so interested in watching a poor man starve to death!
Actually we are surrounded by "Hunger Artists" today, and although their art might not be fasts, it is nonetheless something that is eating them from within. You see, Kafka's life was plagued with mental illnesses, lack of emotional support, poor work environment, and a bureaucratic system that sucks the life out of the common man, which I hope we can expect to a certain extent, exists even today and will do so for a very long time.
So there are people in the system who are unwilling to break free , because they have accepted that somehow, the suffering that's there, they deserve it, and it makes them feel good, which in part is due to those who appreciate them for taking up the hard mantle as no one else can,
so even though they might start helpless, they soon transition into learned helplessness not because they don't want to rise, but because they are doing it to show others how tough they can be. Keep up this cycle of poor feedback on the wrong things and soon the boundary between suffering and self sabotage is blurred, and the "Artists" are further sidelined into
a state where they can neither seek help, nor they would want to, because like all "good artists" they must respect and worship their "art" which indirectly is a gateway to abyss.
So you might be wondering what happened with OUR BELOVED "HUNGER ARTIST", well as all things "good", his art soon lost public interest, as new Artists with genuine art began to flourish, he even lost his manager, which good for him left him free to fast for as long as he would love, but he also lost his beloved spectators, whom he so deeply craved to feel pity for him, or to see their faces when he would reject the food that they offered, and in the end, death came as a reminder, that he didn't fast because he loved to do so, but because he had considered everything and everybody else to be unworthy in comparison.
PS: My takes on Kafkaesque writings might not be entirely accurate, so here's a link to the original short story: https://www.kafka-online.info/a-hunger-artist.html
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