Marxist reading of Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist

Franz Kafka, novelist and short story writer, is known for his often absurd, puzzling and parable-like writing style. Often described as kafkaesque, his writings leave readers on a never ending quest for underlying meanings that he might have intended to convey. In his short story A Hunger Artist, he leaves similar suggestions, that points to a broader picture of the unjust world he tries to portray through his novels. With the protagonist starving himself to earn a living and to believe that his suffering is an art that he is conditioned to do, stands as a silent validation to the socialist society that demarcates duties and lifestyles and pushes mankind to the two extremes of a spectrum. Marxist literary theory, a conflict theory that states that there exists a constant conflict in the society, between its two layers, the bourgeoisie and the proletariats or between the rich and the poor. This will be the perfect lens that we can adopt inorder to analyse Kafka’s work.  

The story revolves around the central character, the hunger artist; a typical representative of the proletarians, starves himself inside a cage so as to entertain his spectators. This enclosed act wherein the protagonist confines himself in a cage and voluntarily starves himself under the authority of an impresario projects the image of a capitalist superpower exerting power, and the working class falling prey to the authoritative superior. The hunger artist sees his life as a performance that he is addicted to, he starves himself for his act. The extreme nature of the act shows how a particular strata of the society is forced to engage in gruesome tasks so as to sustain oneself. This portrays a typical capitalist society that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. The rich exert their power over the working class, only with exploitative outcomes in mind. They reduce the workers into hands that mend money and get their work done. This causes a kind of alienation in such workers. This can be seen when the impresario, treats the hunger artist well on the fortieth day where he is forced to end his fast, the impresario has realized that after forty days the crowd starts to lose interest on the fasting muse, hence he takes away the artists right to fast even when he wishes to do so. Here we see how the artist fails to realise that the goal of his act is only to amaze the spectators which in turn make the impresario rich, he fails to realise this destiny of his act and only concentrates on the brief part he has to play in the big process of earning money for the impresario. The hunger artist, once his profession is no longer trendy, is left with no other work option; another striking feature of capitalism that makes the workers de-skilled leaving them incapable of doing anything other than the small part that they are conditioned to do. This small part that they do mechanically diminishes their status in the work chain, which eventually happens to the artist as well. When moved to a new working environment of the circus, with no profound change in the revenue he was creating, the artist is once again lost. He is forgotten and is later on discovered in a haystack minutes before he dies.

 Here the cage that he is enclosed in constantly, can be seen as the capitalist box of entertainment, it confines the struggles and hardships of the working class and projects it as an entertainment for the bourgeoisie. It also shows the clear demarcation between the two classes existent in the society. The hunger artist stands as the metaphor for the struggling proletarians and the story is the most realistic portrayal of the existing class wars.