Hope of Death as the Possibility of Life: A Psychosemiotic Reading of Franz Kafka’s The Hunger Artist as the Narrative of Existence into Non Being

Abstract

This study of The Hunger Artist explores how signs and symbols play a
significant role in bringing the structured imagination of Kafka’s
psyche and signification process on the surface of the narrative. As
various signs encode different representations of experiences and the
source of these representations is not only the subconscious and
unconscious selves of the author and reader but also the
communicative and linguistic context within which the experience is
embedded. These entrenched sign complexes help to appreciate the indepth
dimensions of the meanings of the narrative by positioning it in a
multidimensional theoretical framework of psychosemiotics. The
underlined proposal of sign experience synchronizes with Freudian
dream theory and spotlights the psychic structure of id, ego and
superego manifested in the text at discourse level. This explicit display
of the narrative within the particular perspective of the interpretation
of signs and symbols has been argued in the light of theoretical
assumptions of Sonne & Grambye’s (2006) model at discourse level
corresponding to id, ego and superego for the purpose of this study.
The underpinning logic of this study is to investigate The Hunger Artist
as a discourse through a dialectical exploration to lay bare the
conceptual contrasts and parallels portrayed in the form of
inveterating and recurring significatory units to crystallize
psychosemiotic theoretical configuration.