Franz Kafka's The Hunger Artist creates an allegorical situation with religious overtones, presenting the hunger artist as a religious martyr and suggesting through allegory the conditions and dilemma of such a figure. Fasting is one of the means used by the religious martyr to demonstrate his devotion and his religious fervor, and though fasting is being used here as if it were an art form, a means of personal expression for a performer not unlike a trapeze artist or a wire walker in the circus, there is throughout the story the sense that this artist is on a higher plane, that those observing him are to learn a moral lesson from his ability.
As an allegory. the story cannot be said to have a precise meaning, and instead it has multiple meanings according to how one arranges and considers the elements of the tale. This is noted in an essay by R.W. Stallman when he writes,
We cannot confine Kafka's meaning to a single circle of thought,. The plight of the hunger-artist in his cage represents the plight of the artist in the modern world. . . But we can also interpret the hunger-artist to represent a mystic, a holy man, a priest. By this reading the story allegorizes in historical perspective the plight of religion. A third possible interpretation projects us into a metaphysical allegory: the hunger-artist represents spirit, man as a spiritual being. . . (Stallman 62).
The opening line of the story points to the decline of religious fervor in the world, thus holding the hunger-artist up as one of the last of those seeking to maintain religious belief:
During these last decades the interest in professional fasting has markedly diminished. It used to pay very well to stage such great performances under one's own management, but today that is quite impossible. We live in a different world now (Kafka 120).
What used to attract the whole town, says the author, now attracts only the few visitors and those who are select...