What are the motifs in A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka?

The suffering artist is a recurring idea.The artist's sense of alienation is partly a function of his lifelong struggle over the feeling that no one but he himself fully understands and appreciates his art. As one critic has explained, the hunger artist represents "a symbol or allegory of the suffering artist in society." He alone knows the truth about his accomplishments: "to fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of nonunderstanding, was impossible."