A Hunger Artist, and Everyday Use Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

A Hunger Artist, and Everyday Use - Essay Example His temperament weakened due to starvation, he become too fragile that it disgusted the people who carried him out of his cage and his manager set certain rules to the fasting period that took the charm out of the performance for the hunger artist. People resorted to alternative acts and means of entertainment and gave up on staying loyal the act they had once supported immensely. The hunger artist, not doing so well financially, becomes aggravated and fires his manager to join a circus himself. At the circus, he becomes a small part of the circus and not the main attraction. This bothers him greatly because he was once a one-man show that drove thousands to come and watch him. Now his cage was placed in between paths that led to the actual attraction of the circus, exotic animals. People now stole an uninterested glance at the hunger artist’s cage and carried on to pursue something that interested them more (Kafka, Crick and Robertson). The circus manager seldom cared about the hunger artist’s fasting and no one kept count. This lead to his depression and prolonged fasting that lead to his last breaths. When he was discovered dead by the management, he was buried and his cage was inhabited by a young panther. The story covers many themes of true art, one of the major ones being that of the seclusion of an artist from the outside world. Engrosse d in the act itself and becoming selfless to an extent that it affected his own being, is one of the key themes of the story supported by the hunger artist’s life. The hunger artist made his art his world where he performed and remained in his own company. It also depicts that when an artist is bound and retracted even slightly the art loses its creativity and the charm that it holds. When the manager set the fasting period to 40 days the hunger artist became exasperated and lost the true essence of surprise and thrill of fasting for as long

Critical Analysis of Two Short Stories Walkers Everyday Use and Strong Essay

Critical Analysis of Two Short Stories Walkers Everyday Use and Strong Horse Tea - Essay Example â€Å"Strong Horse Tea† is a story revolving around Rannie Toomer, a single black mother of a baby boy named Snooks. She struggles to keep herself composed in the most difficult of situations which primarily involves the health of her son who is extremely ill but, no doctor would attend to his needs. She patiently waits for any kind of help from the doctors and refuses all sorts of home remedies or magic to heal her son because she does not believe in such notions proposed by her neighbor. She ignores the fact that the doctors are not willing to give her an appointment because of her color and, this represents her strength of self-worthiness and her capability of rising above the mundane. Hence, when Sarah, an old black woman, attempts to convince Rannie of using home remedies to heal her son, she blatantly declines her offer. Rannie remains fearless and independent with regard to her decision for seeking help from the modern facilities in the midst of the traditional methods her black community still revered. To split away from her own tradition was a courageous move she taken by Rannie. In the story â€Å"Everyday Use†, the situation is more or less the same but, what Mama’s eldest child Dee undergoes is a rebellious identity crisis. She is sent away from home for educational purposes but she realizes how little she knows about her own heritage. She renames herself Wangero which is an African name. She believes in a new optimistic, Americanized world for the blacks, which is not her fault. She was sent away from home and indirectly away from her own tradition. This, however, was not Mama’s intention. She sent her away so that she could receive the best education and also because Mama feared that she and Maggie would not be able to tolerate each other. When she arrives home on vacation she accompanies a boyfriend Hakim who