NOTE: be sure to check your e-mail for your graded Paper #1s this weekend. It might take me until Sunday to get them all back, but I'm working on it! All papers can be revised for a higher grade any time this semester, so look over my comments and let me know if you have any questions.
Answer TWO of the following:
Q1: What does the Hunger Artist mean, at the end of the story, when he claims, "I couldn't find the food I wanted" (277)? This is his secret, the reason why fasting was so easy for him. What do you think this "food" could have been? What was he really wanting to "eat" that made him take a perverse pleasure in depriving himself?
Q2: Note that all of Kafka's stories are about people who are trapped and forced to perform for an audience (even Gregor is in a cage, and though no one watches him directly, they're constantly watching his movements and what he leaves behind). Why might trapped people be a form of entertainment, or better yet, an art? What might be the attraction in watching people in a cage? Are there ways we do this in real life, too?
Q3: The Ape makes it clear that "there was no attraction for me in imitating human beings; I imitated them because I needed a way out, and for no other reason" (257). If we see the Ape is a metaphor for humans in general, what might this say about the nature of education? How are we all a little bit like the Ape?
Q4: Though the Hunger Artist practices an extreme and dangerous form of art, he is still an artist: his goal is to perfect his art for an adoring public. How might this story be a metaphor for the problems that all artists face, in whatever discipline? How are all of them (or all of us, for those of us who create) "hunger artists" of one form or another?
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