Metafiction questions the relationship between fiction and reality. It is used as a way to ask the reader what does this fictional story say about reality, without literally stating the question. Challenging thoughts about the reality of the story, Franz Kafka and Danny Santiago are both authors who have utilized this technique. Through the stories the suffrages endured at the hands of art are made visible. “A Hunger Artist”, Franz Kafka, and “The Somebody”, Danny Santiago, are both stories in which the protagonist seeks public recognition and artistic individualism due to their separation from society.
“A Hunger Artist” is a short story narrated by an artist who publically starves himself as a form of art. He is separated, by his own will, from society by a cage, which is symbolic of the divide between an artist and his audience. While the separation may help the artist be more appreciative of his accomplishments, spectators doubt his commitment and assume that he is sneaking food because of their lack of understanding due to the division. There are always different perspectives, and the reason that any artist creates something is often perceived differently. Art is a freedom though; it allows the artist a release and the spectators an escape into their thoughts and feelings. Therefore, art cannot be limited, but for the hunger artist, it is. The artist’s “impresario”, similar to a producer, limits his fasting; despite the artist beliefs that he can fast for longer. The period of fasting is limited because after forty days “the town [would begin] to lose interest [and] sympathetic support [would] notably to fall off.” Therefore, on the fortieth day the artist was forcibly stripped of his pride and commitment to his art...
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...alive. Chato disconnects himself from society when he tries to gain a community by receiving recognition for his illegal, artistic cries of help.
In conclusion, both “A Hunger Artist” and “The Somebody” are short stories depicting the struggles of an artist. Both the Hunger Artist and Chato craved recognition and compassion in their lives and for their art. Their individualism led to their separations from society and ultimately their isolation. Franz Kafka and Danny Santiago demonstrate the hardships artists endure in reality through their fictional stories. Both utilize the skill of metafiction to stress the importance of recognition to the artists concerning their art.
Works Cited
Kafka, Franz. A Hunger Artist. Cambridge: ProQuest Information and Learning, 2002. Print.
Santiago, Danny. The Somebody. Logan, Iowa: Perfection Form Company, 1979. Print.
This story progresses through the artist’s life as he fasted for many days, doing this eventually led to his death. The artist starts in a cage that is on display for everyone to see and does this for forty days at which point the impresario would force him to come out and eat some food. After the artist was done eating, he would relocate to the cage for the reason that he wanted to prove to people that fasting is easy. After a while of doing this the people grew tired and decided not to come and watch him. After the impresario and the artist then went around to other places to see if anyone would watch him and wonder why he did what he did. After a while the artist went to a carnival too fast for people who visited. He requested the carnival to place him next to the animals instead of being the center of attention. He requested the carnival to keep the number of days that he fasted, but after a few weeks the carnival stopped keeping track and so did the artist. At the end of the story the overseer asked why the hunger artist did what he did and the artist answered “because I couldn’t find the food I liked,” (Kafka 334). This shows that he was imprisoned himself due to the fact that he didn’t have the right kind of
Since its emergence over 30,000 years ago, one of visual art’s main purposes has been to act as an instrument of personal expression and catharsis. Through the mastery of paint, pencil, clay, and other mediums, artists can articulate and make sense of their current situation or past experiences, by portraying their complex, abstract emotions in a concrete form. The act of creation gives the artist a feeling of authority or control over these situations and emotions. Seen in the work of Michelangelo, Frida Kahlo, Jean Michel-Basquiat, and others, artists’ cathartic use of visual art is universal, giving it symbolic value in literature. In Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,
In conclusion, “The Hunger Artist” successfully supplements “The Secret Society Of The Starving”. It shows their isolation in many ways. It shows their it in relation to the cage. It shows it through physical appearance, and it tells us why they remain isolated. Anorexia in both texts is important and while it may be underplayed in the fictional novel, it is very serious in reality.
Art and literature work independently of each other, however, they can be linked together to help a reader or observer understand in new ways and create new possibilities. Within this context, the perspective of Jacob Lawrence and the authors address that it takes work to build the ideal society and family. However, the authors give the stark reality of both society and family demonstrating that our reality is nothing like the ideal.
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. Ed. Stanley Corngold. Trans. Stanley Corngold. New York: Bantam, 2004. Print.
There are many parallels and differences between Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” and "A Hunger Artist". Kafka portrays these differences and similarities very effectively through his utilization of elements such as transformation, dehumanization, and dedication to work. Through his works, Kafka communicates with the reader in such a way that almost provokes and challenges one’s imagination and creativity.
In the novel, The Metamorphosis, Kafka writes about a man who one day transformed into a bug. Kafka’s own feelings of nothingness caused this story to shape into this unique story. Kafka writes, “The dream reveals the reality, which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life – the terror of art” (qtd. In Kennedy and Gioia 299). Kafka said this as a rebuttal to a friend trying to pry information out of him about The Metamorphosis. Kafka meant that the true burden of art is that a person’s experiences will always heavily influence their creations, and that is horrifying. It is clearly shown in his writings that his personal experiences helped shape the story The Metamorphosis. Every little detail about Gregor’s life is a reflection of Kafka’s own life. Gregor’s family, job, and dreams all were influenced by Kafka’s personal experiences. His father was domineering just as Gregor’s father controlled him after he turned into an insect. He had a horrid job just as Gregor did, and he lived at his parent’s house for most of his life. Gregor’s dreams of being free from his job and parents were also Kafka’s dreams. Kafka’s reality is shown in his story, The Metamorphosis, through Gregor’s family and dreams of freedom.
Stephens, J. “Franz Kafka’s personal life reflected in the Metamorphosis” The Kafka Project. 1999-2002. 13 November 2002. .
In “A Hunger Artist” Kafka portrays the artist as an obsessed person with starving himself. Not even death matter as long as he gets that attention he wants from society. Kafka wants society to be the reason that artist became they way he is now. “He worked with integrity, but the world cheated [the artist] of his reward” (Kafka 144). The Hunger Artist no longer has anything significant in his life but the only thing that makes him the way he is because he wants the public’s attention. Society demands are high and not easy to achieve, to the point where the artist was the center of attention in big cities with beautiful girls waiting to help him come out of his cage. But now he is in small cage, neglected by everyone, even when it comes to fasting “no one [counts] the days, no one, not even the hunger artist himself, [know] his extent of his achievement” (144). In the end, the hunger artist body could no longer sustain himself after the long-lasting fast, however society was moving on and he was not. Society was the downfall of his life, wanting public attention is not easy with a cruel society that demands change and new entertainment.
The Metamorphosis is said to be one of Franz Kafka's best works of literature. It shows the difficulties of living in a modern society and the struggle for acceptance of others when in a time of need. In this novel Kafka directly reflects upon many of the negative aspects of his personal life, both mentally and physically. The relationship between Gregor and his father is in many ways similar to Franz and his father Herrman. The Metamorphosis also shows resemblance to some of Kafka's diary entries that depict him imagining his own extinction by dozens of elaborated methods. This paper will look into the text to show how this is a story about the author's personal life portrayed through his dream-like fantasies.
...p from the world they live in, a world of separation and indicate themselves with their own realities. Art is handed over into society’s hands, as in one movement it is suggested - to fixate what is real, live like you create and create like you live; in other – abandon media’s proposed ideas and take the leadership of life in our own hands.
"For some, Life is rich and creamy ... while Art is a pallid commercial confection ... For others, Art is the truer thing, full, bustling and emotionally satisfying, while Life is worse than the poorest novel: devoid of narrative, peopled by bores and rogues, short on wit ... and leading to a painfully predictable denouement."1
This was the case of Franz Kafka; his inability to physically express his opinions to his family in reality, lead him to intellectually pursue his thoughts and relationship into the imaginary, his writings, as displayed in his short novella, “Metamorphosis.” Due to Kafka's life background and the nature of his society in the beginning of twentieth century in Prague, his only and main outlet in expressing his thoughts were to put them down onto paper. As a result, Kafka utilizes these two elements to satirize his internal thoughts into fiction. Although his stories are label as fiction, beyond its contextual interpretation, his stories are a reflection of his life. Needless to say, the most apparent factors that bleed through “Metamorphosis” are Kafka’s life relationship with his family and how he saw himself within that dynamic. Therefore, we can imply that the protagonist Gregor Samsa in “Metamorphosis” can well be the embodiment of Kafka himself. However, because the novella was written in fictional form, where taking the impossible of reality and making it possible, it can be hard to relate the interaction among characters to Kafka real life relation to his family. None the less, through the lens of biographical criticism in the analysis of “Metam...
Kafka, Franz. ?A Hunger Artist.? Literature and its Writers. Ed. Karen S. Henry. 3rd ed. Bedford/St. Martin?s, Boston/New York 2004. 255-262
Foragers, the people who live in hunter-gatherer societies, have no artists. It is only when society becomes complex enough to support a division of labor do artists emerge-first as shamans, then as the painters, singers, writers, etc., that we usually think of today. Society, then, creates the artist, but it can also destroy him. In A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man, James Joyce describes the particular development of Stephan Dedalus that led to his becoming an artist. Pink's development in Pink Floyd's The Wall, mirrors that of Stephen yet concludes in the destruction of the artist.