Themes of Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist include alienation and isolation, spiritual emptiness, art, voyeurism, exploitation, change and suffering. The unnamed artist does not hunger for food, but rather artistic recognition and spiritual fulfillment. When, as often happens, public tastes change, he has outlived his usefulness and is quickly forgotten. The story has variously been described as an allegory of the suffering of artists for the sake of their art, a metaphorical representation of the life of Jesus, and a reflection of the tortured final years of Kafka’s own life as an alienated artist dying from tuberculosis. More…
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In the Penal Colony
This Franz Kafka story is a study on what can happen when you put a psychopath in charge of a process (or country) in which they have unfettered power and can make decisions over life and death with impunity. The story deals with some heavy themes: justice, due process, capital punishment, torture, sadistic voyeurism, and the difficulty of institutional change (even if for the good!). Central to all this is the “machine”, which seems to know that its time has come and chooses to self-destruct along with the only person left who cares about it. More…
Metamorphosis
In this enigmatic story from Franz Kafka, a man who works hard as a traveling salesman to support his parents and younger sister wakes up one morning having metamorphosed into a giant bug. The father brutally confines the man/bug to his room, and for a period he/it is treated with consideration and compassion by the mother and daughter. However, as the family struggles to deal with their new financial situation, he/it gets less and less attention and ultimately suffers a rather cruel end. Themes include family, identity, self-sacrifice, alienation, transformation, isolation, betrayal, and the absurdity of life. More…
The Judgment (The Verdict)
On the surface, this story by Franz Kafka is about a troubled man’s relationship with his frail but dominating father. The father thinks his son is trying to ease him out of their successful business. The son communicates regularly with a ‘friend’ in Russia, who may be an imaginary alter ego. The father says the friend would be more a son after my own heart, and judges his son guilty of selfishness and betrayal. He sentences him to death by drowning, which the son promptly carries out. Themes: loneliness, insecurity, bachelorhood vs. marriage, patriarchy, father-son relationships, crime, guilt, punishment. More…