Theme of Food in a Poem, Short Story, and a Play - Essay Example

The number of days an individual can survive without food depends on his weight, genetics, and degree of dehydration. For instance, an old and weak man like Mahatma Gandhi survived 21 days of total starvation (Lieberson, n. p.). Other hunger strikes show survival of as long as forty days. The literary world is also somehow related to this concept of food (Peel, 829). The three poems would be further elaborated in this essay following their theme of food.
Deprivation of food can result in severe depression as cited in the poem, "The tropics in New York". In this poem, the writer is thinking about all delicious but very expensive tropical fruits like bananas, ginger roots, pears, tangerines, mangoes, and grapes displayed at a parish fair. Despite having love for them she cannot afford these fruits and therefore sitting by her window she admires nature and weeps out of hunger (Mckay, 31-32).
Some people starve just because they don’t find food to their liking. The short story "A Hunger Artist" is a story in which the writer sheds light on the life of a man that is deprived of joy and happiness. He spends all his life performing starvation acts. A forty days limit of starvation was set on him during which he gained public sympathy and after that, he was carried out of his cage and was made to eat. But Hunger Artist did not like this time limitation he wanted to starve unlimitedly thus was depressed and very frustrated. He joined a circus where he thought he’ll be able to perform his acts of fasting independently but over some time hunger artists started to lose their popularity and he remained no longer a source of public attraction, therefore, he was given a cage on the outskirts of circus with animals. He was frustrated with all the noise around him and watching animals feeding made him even more depressed. As time went by Hunger Artist was ignored and one day he was found weak and near to death in his cage with dirty straws around him. On his death bed, he confessed and realized that he is not to be admired as he fasted just because he did not find food to his liking (Kafka, n.p.).
Hunger and thirst for wealth can lead one to perform grave crimes and acts like playing with the emotions and the trust of good people. The Play "Six degrees of separation” depicts the character of an over-ambitious and ruthless young man named Paul. He starts his career with a lie by calling himself a son of a film director. He gained entry into the house of art dealer Flan Kittredge by calling himself a Harvard student who studies with their children and is in New York to meet his father, but in reality, he had wrong motives. He had an encounter with a hustler and was caught red-handed, but somehow he managed to escape the police. The next time he broke the trust of another young couple, he gained entry by calling him a son of Kittredge's. He tells the couple a lie about his dispute with his rich father, out of sympathy they invited him to stay over at their home. One day Paul seduced the husband and fled with his money. Later husband committed suicide and Paul out of desperation and guilt called Kittredges for help. The wife of flan Kittredge got emotionally attached to Paul during his stay with them she had poor relations with her children.