A Hunger Artist
A professional faster sits in a straw-lined cage in the marketplace while butchers keep watch to certify that he eats nothing, permitted forty days at a stretch because impresarios have found that public interest expires on schedule. When the fashion for fasting collapses he takes a place with a circus, in a cage on the route to the menagerie, where the crowds push past him on their way to the animals. One of the four stories Kafka was correcting on his deathbed, and the clearest statement of his case against the artist's vocation.
Open A Hunger Artist in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.
Lineage
- parallels ↑ The Metamorphosis
Attributes
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Mode / tone
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 48% · 10 shared
- 48% · 8 shared
- 48% · 8 shared
- 46% · 9 shared
- 45% · 9 shared
- 45% · 9 shared