Hunger artist rewrite

The prestige of and interest in Hunger Artists had slowly declined over the past decade. The true artists could no longer make any real money by starving themselves in front of the large crowds. Most had toured Europe in their prime. The whole city used to come out and watch. Some of the local men were put in charge of making sure that the artist didn’t eat anything during his fast. Most of those whom were put in charge weren’t very careful about watching him. They thought that they were being nice by letting him sneak a little food into his locked cage. The assumption that he would cheat hurt the artist, especially since he thought that fasting was easy. The guilt that he might be deceiving people by making them believe that it was hard made the artist want to fast longer, but the Impresario never let him. He could only fast for 40 days, because after that interest tailed off and the Impresario would lose money.

The Impresario was always concerned about the profits. That was the main reason he always dramatized the pains of fasting. He gave long speeches for the crowd about the difficulties and sold dramatic looking photographs of previous performances by the artist. The artist would shake the bars in frustration, but the Impresario would just claim that his little fits were caused by the hunger. The worst was when the Impresario dragged him from his cage at the end of the 40 days. It turned into a huge spectacle, with hundreds of audience members. The artist would protest and try not to cooperate, but this was always taken as proof of the difficulty involved in fasting. After he was helped by two of the women from the crowd he was forced to eat dull hospital food.

But, eventually, there was no more money to be made in the big productions. The artist left Impresario and joined a small circus. He was not the main attraction so he did not get a lot of audience members. No when remembered him or forced him to stop, so he pushed himself to fast as long as he could. Since no one kept track of the number of days he was denied his full credit. When the circus owners finally remembered about him they found him lost in the straw of his cage. He finally told them the reason he didn’t eat was because he hadn’t found anything he liked. If he would have known of a food that he liked he would have eaten it as often as he could and gotten fat. Unfortunately, he had fasted so long that after he talked to the operators he died. His cage was cleaned out and a panther was put into it. The panther had been recently captured, but he did not mind his imprisonment. He was fed his fill of food without having to hunt. He was content, and unlike the hunger artist, his cage was always surrounded by curios onlookers.

Meaningful questions

1. What or whom does the Artist represent in the 20^th century?
2. Why is it significant that the Artist fasts but doesn’t do anything else?
3. What is the food a representation of?
4. What is the Panther, and why is he a panther and not a goldfish?
5. Why did the Impresario try to hurt the artist (when he talked about the difficulties of fasting?)