Everybody has a different opinion on what it means to be in pain. The Hunger Artists, in Franz Kafka’s “The Hunger Artist” is famous for his forty-day fasts, but is his hunger his source of misery? Shepherd in Flannery O’Connor’s “The Lame Shall Enter First” believes that Rufus Johnson’s clubfoot is the cause of Rufus’s suffering, and his son’s is selfishness, but is this true? Both short stories explore what it means to suffer, and what may be the cause of such discontent.
Kafka and O’Connor seem to make a particular point in relative suffering to want. The Hunger Artist does not desire food, instead he aches for recognition, for someone to understand his art. No one, not the children he terrifies with his starved frame, not the men who doubted
Kafka and O’Connor seem to make a particular point in relative suffering to want. The Hunger Artist does not desire food, instead he aches for recognition, for someone to understand his art. No one, not the children he terrifies with his starved frame, not the men who doubted