Many critics have interpreted Kafka's "A Hunger Artist" as an allegory in which the hunger artist serves as a symbol of "the suffering artist in society." His dying words, "I always wanted you to admire my fasting," express the hunger artist's inner torment and lifelong feelings of alienation. This stems primarily from the distance between his own appreciation for the purity of his art and a modern world concerned only with newer forms of mass entertainment. The hunger artist's internal vision of himself as a virtuoso "artist" is perpetually at odds with his public image. While his impresario limits his fasts to a maximum number of 40 days, he longs for the opportunity to "beat his own record by a performance beyond human imagination." Yet, even at the height of his career, his enthusiastic audiences all over the world fail to appreciate "the honor of his profession"; they...