Seurat's the Circus and a Hunger Artist Analysis

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Seurat's The Circus and A Hunger Artist Analysis The Hunger Artist is a short story written by Franz Kafka in 1924, a German-language writer of novels and short stories, regarded by critics as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He tells the story of a starving artist who uses his fasting abilities as a way to attract the attention of the hundreds of people who would visit the circus. This circus has the hunger artist on display inside of a cage like an animal, wanting all to see his withering body and pencil like limbs. The painting to which A Hunger Artist is akin is one by a post impressionist painter named Georges Pierre Seurat. The name of the painting is The Circus. The Circus depicts a large tent that is filled with both circus performers, who seem to be in the middle of a performance, as well as spectators looking on with an intense focus. The excitement looks to be high and the viewer can imagine the tent being incredibly loud, filled with both the energy of the performers as well as the noise of the crowd. The focus seems to be on the woman in the middle of the tent as she is balancing on top of a horse while opening her arms towards the crowd. The similarities in the two different forms of art are apparent. Both are dealing with the circus and its performers. The content and the context of The Hunger Artist and The Circus relate by showing the difficulties of each circus performer’s lives while having to share the limelight and also connecting the similarities between both authors final pieces. The Hunger Artist had great joy in what he was for many years, the main attraction. He would go nearly forty days and forty nights without a single piece of food, which to him was seemingly well worth the attention of the visitors of the circus. At the beginning, as described by Kafka, "At one time the whole town took a lively interest in

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