Since I snapped at your previous comment, it's only fair I try to respond to this rather more thoughtful one. I agree with your assessment that the story is ab

Since I snapped at your previous comment, it's only fair I try to respond to this rather more thoughtful one. I agree with your assessment that the story is about "about ambition, about art, about being misunderstood, and about greatness". No argument there. The loneliness is all over the text, sometimes quite literally: * "withdrawing deep into himself, paying no attention to anyone or anything, not even to the all-important striking of the clock that was the only piece of furniture in his cage, but merely staring into vacancy with half-shut eyes, now and then taking a sip from a tiny glass of water to moisten his lips" And of course the hunger artist is lonely because he stands apart from the world (quite literally - he lives in a cage, after all) and does something no one quite understands (not to mention that after a while he can't even find an audience for his art anymore). It has nothing to do, I think, with winning or losing. The hunger artist wins, if you want, when he is at the height of his fame in the beginning of the story, but in the end he withers away in his cage, ignored by the public and ultimately is replaced by a panther, which if you want to put a label on it would be losing. So if Kafka is saying anything about winning or losing at all, it would seem to be that fortune is transient and has nothing to do with the drive to do something (the hunger artist is committed to his art regardless of the size of his audience). And even his commitment to his art is ultimately questioned: he has no drive to excel at fasting but rather has simply never come across food that he liked to eat. The great artist in the end turns out to be nothing more than a victim of his circumstances. Hardly an uplifting or inspiring message, I think. Which is not to say I don't like this story: I do. I think it's, like a lot of Kafka's work, fantastic. I'm not sure whether it belongs on HN, but I enjoyed reading it again and thinking about it. So thanks for posting.