Suffering Pride Vladimir Nabokov once said that he thought Franz Kafka was the best German writer of his time. Today, the latter is also considered one of the greatest writers of his time. Not only his writing style and the turn of his sentences convince of Kafka's greatness, but also the novelty and ingenuity of the themes and problems he addresses in his works. What's more, it is the ambiguity of his pieces that fascinates both the public and the critics. Works that exhibit the above-mentioned characteristics include "A Hunger Artist", in which the author explores the nature of artists' consciousness and the relationship between their suffering and what they do. In this particular short story, Franz Kafka uses the metaphor of fasting extensively to talk about suffering as both a positive and negative experience that an artist goes through. Many critics who study the works of Franz Kafka tend to focus on a specific aspect of the writer's turn of phrase. , which is the use of figurative language. Specifically, they argue that one of the most powerful tools in Kafka's writing is metaphor. John Hopkins University professor and literary critic Henry Sussman, who studied Kafka's works, once mentioned in his work that the writer's use of metaphors is complex and even unique. He writes that Kafka had the ability to “connect the seemingly unrelated, to transport meaning to new meaning, and to establish significance where there was coexistence of unrelated phenomena” (Beicker). Overall, critics agree that Kafka uses metaphors throughout his works. In “A Hunger Artist,” metaphor seems to be the main stylistic device used by the playwright. In particular, he uses the m...... middle of paper...... forget it. After all his suffering, he dies in oblivion and is buried with his only possession, straw. Therefore, physical and psychological self-destruction is also a reason why the hunger artist suffers because of art. Overall, the short story “A Hunger Artist” is metaphorical in character. The central metaphor of the analyzed work is fasting, which represents the suffering of every artist for the good and because of his art. It seems that the story explains how suffering can be both a positive and negative experience for the artist. Using the example of the hunger artist, Kafka shows that suffering for the sake of art can be beneficial because it is a source of inspiration and can be a way to improve oneself. On the other hand, the artist can experience suffering because of art and become its victim, just as the starving artist does..