The Hunger Artist as a Christ Like Figure Nader Valian College

In A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka, one can argue the character of the Hunger Artist is an absurdist anti-hero parallel to the heroic figure of Jesus Christ in the Holy Bible. The Hunger Artist is a narration of a "starving, dying art", and one of the most relative interpretations for its time can be attributed to religion. Although Kafka was born Jewish and later devoted himself to atheism, he had no trouble alluding to things that were central to European society. That being said, "A Hunger Artist" is a Christ-like figure, or a martyr, as Kafka believed, who would absurdly devote himself to religion during the modernist age when there was a declining interest in religion.  

The story opens with "In the last decade, there has been a declining interest in hunger artists", which possibly may be a reference to the rise of atheism in the nineteen twenties, supported by Kafka's atheism. First, let's define what it means to be a hunger artist. A hunger artist in this story is a "an artist who masochistically starves himself for the pleasure of others as an art form", but could be extended metaphorically to mean "a starving artist of a dying art". Either way, "starving or pleasing others as an art and suffering for it" or "doing...