A Hunger Artist

This slightly creepy short story is about a man that fasts for other peoples entertainment. This is both creepy, and extremely interesting. It talks about the affects that audience and change have on a persons mind.

The story starts off with the man being adored by people all around, people come flocking to him to marvel at the sight of him, a man who is able to not eat for days on end. They look at him simply as a circus attraction, which he is, and use him for their own personal gain, something that probably makes him feel happy with himself, as he is an artist, somebody that performs so that others may take emotion from it.
This happiness is why the hunger artist got into the job in the first place, a way to share his emotion with the many people that come and watch him.

However, as the story goes on, people get bored of the Hunger Artist. I can't blame them, honestly. Once you've seen a man starving himself, I'm fairly sure you've seen them all. It can't be that exciting. Of course, when people are bored with something, they stop watching it. And this of course means that the people watching the Hunger Artist would stop. And as I said at the top of this blog, having people be happy with his work is what makes the main character happy with himself. Therefore, he feels upset.

This is similar to Hunger, where the main character is constantly trying to make other people happy, so that he can feel happy about himself. Examples include when he tries to give money to those that are less fortunate than himself. In Hunger Artist, the main character eventually gets replaced by a young panther, something that takes the attention of the people that come to the circus, and something that makes the Hunger Artist feel as if he has failed at his craft. The main character in Hunger feels the same way, when his articles don't get published, because nobody can read them, and he is unable to show people his fantastic writing.

Christian Perversions

Slightly late, but here it is:

In Hamsun's Christians Perversions by James Woods, he talks about how the main character from Hunger becomes angry when he meets a man that changes his mind extremely quickly. A common seen from Hamsun's works, this shows the most vital part of the novel, the character. The character is a very hateful person, and is always looking for a fight. This is essentially the direct opposite of Jesus. The only similarity between the two figures is that they both give charity to people. However, can you even call it charity if you give it to feel good?

For example, at the school here we have a variety of 'service' clubs. Yes, they are clubs made to perfome service towards less privelaged people. I'm part of one of them, the Animal Shelter. However, these clubs are supposed to be charity. But, I can assure you, if you go around and ask people in the club what they are doing the club for, you will mostly hear a variation of this response: I need the hours.
Is it charity if you do a charity club for your own personal benefit? I say no, because charity means you get nothing out of it. However, this doesn't mean its bad. You are still helping the group out, only you are getting something out of it. Besides, the IB virtually makes it impossible to do something for service. They say that you need 50 hours of service to pass the IB. Therefore, they force you to do it. What is the point in trying to teach somebody to do charity, and making them get something out of it? Its akin to me telling somebody to go and paint a building. Yes, they do it, and they get the hours out of it. They don't get the joy out of it though, the main reason for doing charity.

This whole argument applies to the main character of Hunger. He does kind things to people, but doesn't do it for charity, but for the pride of doing it. He believes that it is something that will save him, something that will help him get out of poverty. While these are valid beliefs, it removes the point of calling it charity. Therefore, I believe that at least on these terms, it is wrong to compare Jesus to the protagnosist of Hunger.

Gregor's Unhappiness

Gregor Sancha is the main character of Kafka, and I feel sorry for the guy. He works like a dog every day, and keeps a tiny fraction of the money for himself. He pays his parents debts, and is planning to put his sister through school. His parent's don't seem to feel sorry for him at all. When the chief clerk comes to the Sancha residence to ask why Gregor hasn't turned up, the parents try to persuade him that Gregor is ill. However, they do it out of purely selfish reasons: They don't want to have to pay back their debts themselves. When the father sees that Gregor has transformed into the creature, he is angry at the creature, because he knows that he will have to go back to work to pay the debts that the family have to the firm. The mother is also uspet, mostly because her son has transformed into a massive bug, but also because it means that they will be in financial trouble again.

Hunger Mind Map

A Hunger Parody

My guitar... I have to find my guitar.... I just don't know where I left it. That guitar.... I need it to live. How will I produce the musical wonders that I write to survive! The people of Boston will feel so deprived. How can they live without me, supplying them with their daily fix of Grunge, which I learnt to enjoy while living in Seattle. Also, how would I be able to make money...? How would I.....? I just don't know.... my diabetes. The insulin I need to survive..... its been 2 days, and I can feel my brain running slowly. I need money, to give to the people at the shelter, that give me a place to sleep, while I work to spread the power of my music. That producer that stopped me the other day, he offered me a deal. Told me to cut down on the violent lyrics. I'd rather die. I can't believe that he would so viciously attack me. I guess I'm just going to have to struggle through, find a producer that understands the music. But stilll... I have to find my guitar...

Gaming, harmful?

This article, why not going in too far indepth into the topic about gaming being harmful to people, strikes close to home. As long time readers of this blog will know, I'm a proud gamer, and while gaming does hurt my social life, I'm happy to accept it, and  know that its my own fault, not the games fault, that I spent too much time playing them. This applies to all sorts of technology. If you do some data mining, you will find that the people that spend the most time on Facebook are housewifes. These are people that have time to spare, and therefore spend time accessing the internet. They get distracted by the technology, but the tech isn't distracting them, understand what I mean?

 He compares blogs to Twitter. I don't mean to sound nasty, but I don't believe he understands what the difference between the two is. Twitter isn't made for creative writing. Twitter isn't even made for writing. Its made for sharing quick notes with one another. For example, articles one should read, or quick competitions. Blogging is completly different. Although still made to express feelings, blogging is made so that one can develop ideas, and is where one should. Why would you want to share deep feelings with people through Twitter? A website that gives users the ability to share short and sweet posts? It just seems stupid to even try to write something length in Twitter. Again, in a call back to my previous post, its like comparing oranges and apples. You just can't do it.

By believeing that it has no affect on me, I free myself from the affects that it has on me

This article talks about the attacks the existentialism has upon it. It talks about how people will attack the existentialist believers about how all it does is drop them into a pit of despair. I completly disagree with this attack on existentialism, as the whole idea is to free yourself. How can you free yourself if you become saddled with grief after trying to free yourself. Thats why I like the existentialist belief system. The basic beleif is that you free yourself by accepting that none of your actions have any repurcusions. While this can be interpreted as a serial killer thinking that its alright to murder people, it isn't intended that way. It is intended as a way to free oneself from the constraints of mortal life. For example, I am really scared of talking to new people. I'm constantly afraid that I'm going to say something that will either a) make them think I'm weird or b) upset them. If I followed the beliefs of existentialism, I would be unafraid of these things, and talk to them no matter what. Therefore freeing myself from the worries of social life. The same thing would happen if I was to express myself artisticly or musically, not worrying about what people think of the media that I produce. Therefore, the artistic minds of the world are bettered by existentialist beliefs. Where would the art industry be if people were scared to try new things? We would have had no innovations like experimentalism or serialism, both two movements that influenced all sorts of music that we all take for granted now, such as dance, house or even (shudder) drum and bass. While the orginial two were around before existentialism, the basic belief that you should try something without thinknig about how it affects you applies here. I believe that I am going to have to start following the belief, I would find it a lot easier to intergrate myself into my new schools society, and maybe get to know more people than the 6 or 7 that I know right now.  All in all, I believe that when existentialism is followed at the bare bone beliefs, it works perfectly, and that by following the belief that no repercurssion will affect you, a lot more social, artistic and scientific development will affect the human race.