“For he alone knew, what no other initiate knew, how easy it was to fast. It was the simplest thing in the world." Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay "A Hunger Artist" by Kafka. What does it mean to voluntarily fast or deny hunger, the most fundamental of human drives? The short story "A Hunger Artist", written by Franz Kafka, explores the absurdity of a man's ability to fast indefinitely with unnatural ease. At the same time, his insatiable appetite for fame and success as the record-breaking hunger artist of his time is unmistakably contradictory to his state of physical starvation. Throughout the text, the futility of attaching meaning to our lives is demonstrated by the masochistic and paradoxical nature of the Hunger Artist's fasting life. The hunger artist, who paradoxically chooses to give meaning to his mortal life by making fasting his profession, is able to forgo the most basic of human comforts due to his masochistic beliefs. To begin with, his goal of immeasurably fasting is essentially a paradox, since the renunciation of food is incompatible with the human condition. Although the hunger artist feels “that there were no limits to his ability to fast” (884), the only possible ending to this life story may be death by starvation. Yet the hunger artist wants to receive the public's admiration for his unlimited fasting: "He was very happy at the idea of ​​spending a sleepless night with such observers..." (883). At the same time, Kafka writes, “nothing annoyed the artist more than these observers; they made him unhappy” (883). The observers' unfounded "suspicions," which understandably upset the hunger artist, are believed to be "a necessary accompaniment to the profession of fasting" (883). In essence, his misery is also the cause of his happiness and vice versa. This twisted relationship with his audience, where his sense of validation is based on the crowd's reaction, reveals a masochistic quality in our protagonist. His life's work is based on deprivation, self-denial and degradation in front of the public. A once enthusiastic audience quickly becomes restless after forty days and needs time to refresh their enthusiasm, demonstrating that the hunger artist's happiness depends on such fleeting capriciousness, a situation that highlights the absurdity of the world. As he strives to “become the record-breaking hunger artist of all time,” the hunger artist's thoughts after each forty-day fasting period reveal his addictive personality: “Why stop fasting in this particular moment...? Why should he be deprived of the fame he would gain for fasting longer…?”(884). This eternal ambition to continuously fast, ignoring the fact that it is an unattainable goal of happiness, describes the hunger artist as achieving gratification through pain and suffering. The final passage of the text, in describing the death of the hunger artist in such a banal manner, becomes the definitive commentary on the absurdity or meaninglessness of life. At this point, the terribly misunderstood hunger artist has lost favor with the public and has decided to become a circus monster. Here, his goal to impress the audience is literally insurmountable, because no one goes to the circus for high art. Set up in a cage like an eyesore next to the main attraction of the lively beast show, this is where the hunger artist goes on his longest fast ever and as a result.