"I always wanted you to admire my fasting," said the hunger artist.

Despite his fame, the hunger artist felt dissatisfied and misunderstood.

In fact, the hunger artist in Kafka believes he can fast for more than 40 days.

Despite such precautions, many, including some of the watchers themselves, were convinced that the hunger artist cheated.

One day an overseer noticed the hunger artist's cage with its dirty straw.

The hunger artist was buried with the straw of his cage and replaced by a panther.

"But you shouldn't admire it," said the hunger artist.

"A Hunger Artist" is told retrospectively through third person narration.

The impresario's "perversion of the truth" further exasperated the hunger artist.

The impresario insisted that after forty days public sympathy for the hunger artist inevitably declined.