This is not a sign of power, yet a reflex derived from his alienation. We could even go further and affirm that the artist is an escapist, because he absolutely ignores the real necessity to get a decent job and he also ignores the clock in his cage, the ticking indicator that the time he went to work has come. He escapes in his own world of fantasy, where he can create his own rules and philosophy of life.
One very realistic element in the story, combined in an unusual manner with the rest of the almost absurd type of characteristics, is the existence of a manager. While the artist's fasting emerges from suffering and grief, his impresario denatures this fact in an entertaining, circus-like show. This seems like a parody of real art, which is transposed, in the capitalist world, in a money-making scheme.
Another realistic detail of the story is the complicated relationship between the suffering artist and his ignorant audience. No one could understand his art. His art is fasting, which we should see as a metaphor for suffering. When he claims fasting is easy - hence, suffering is easy -, no one believes him; people even accused him for cheating and furtively eating. At a deep level, he is the misunderstood genius.
Nevertheless, the artist continues to perform his weird art, because he needs to feel superior to his audience. He needs to prove to himself that his art is living and breathing, that it is superior to everybody's ignorance, that it is intense and powerful. The artist decides that the inaccessibility of his art is a very wise way to protect it from the unenlightened eyes of the others. Ordinary people are much more interested in cheap entertainment, in watching someone else's private life than really understanding the nucleus of a certain visible fact - like...
They don't even try to guess what's behind it, they are satisfied if it's weird enough to stimulate their yet obtuse curiosity. The artist feels accomplished if his stomach is empty, but his soul abounding - in art.
The story proposes even a deeper level of understanding of the Kafkaesque artist. One may notice a subtle parallel between the forty days fasting of the artist and the forty days fasting of Jesus Christ; also, people watch the artist as they watched Jesus, with curiosity, but in the end they leave him. Both of these tragic characters end up marginalized and misunderstood.
We have another realistic element in the story, and that is the lack of free will of the artist and the fact that he has to sell his art in order to survive. But he doesn't care about that, it is his impresario that sells photographs with him and commercializes his suffering. When he has to get a job in the circus, he doesn't even read his contract; the artist is absolutely above all these materialistic mortal things - the only thing that matters is his art, which is impossible to be understood by the masses.
When he is replaced by the vigorous panther, we can simply see a contrast between the hunger, probably pale and transfigured artist and the powerful panther, which is a symbol of vitality. The panther is much more appealing to people's understanding and they become much more interested in it - but will this interest be forever? Probably not. They will probably forget the panther soon, as they have done with the hunger artist
Bibliography
Kafka, Franz. A Hunger Artist (Short Prose of Franz Kafka Series). Twisted Spoon Press, January 1996
Preece, Julian (Editor). The Cambridge Companion to Kafka. Cambridge University Press, March 2002
