A Hunger Artist, and Everyday Use - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages His temperament weakened due to starvation, he become too fragile that it disgusted the people who carried him out of his cage and his manager set certain rules to the fasting period that took the charm out of the performance for the hunger artist. People resorted to alternative acts and means of entertainment and gave up on staying loyal the act they had once supported immensely.
The hunger artist, not doing so well financially, becomes aggravated and fires his manager to join a circus himself. At the circus, he becomes a small part of the circus and not the main attraction. This bothers him greatly because he was once a one-man show that drove thousands to come and watch him. Now his cage was placed in between paths that led to the actual attraction of the circus, exotic animals. People now stole an uninterested glance at the hunger artist’s cage and carried on to pursue something that interested them more (Kafka, Crick and Robertson). The circus manager seldom cared about the hunger artist’s fasting and no one kept count. This lead to his depression and prolonged fasting that lead to his last breaths. When he was discovered dead by the management, he was buried and his cage was inhabited by a young panther. The story covers many themes of true art, one of the major ones being that of the seclusion of an artist from the outside world. Engrossed in the act itself and becoming selfless to an extent that it affected his own being, is one of the key themes of the story supported by the hunger artist’s life. The hunger artist made his art his world where he performed and remained in his own company. It also depicts that when an artist is bound and retracted even slightly the art loses its creativity and the charm that it holds. When the manager set the fasting period to 40 days the hunger artist became exasperated and lost the true essence of surprise and thrill of fasting for as long ...Download file to see next pagesRead More