How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph) We used Stanley Corngold's translation.
Quote #1
[…] there were also permanent watchmen, chosen by the public – oddly enough, usually butchers – whose job it was, always three at a time, to watch the starvation artist day and night […] (2)
The watchmen seem almost priest-like in the way they attend to the artist. But then again, they're butchers – ironic, since the man they're watching is starving himself. And why butchers? What is it about the hunger artist's performance that requires watchmen skilled in slaughter and slicing up meat?
Quote #2
Experience had proven that for about forty days, through gradually intensified publicity, you could go on stimulating a city's interest, but beyond that time there was no audience […] (3)
The "forty days" carries a possible echo of the temptation of Jesus in the New Testament, which also took forty days. But the forty days in Kafka's story refers to a marketing principle, at least for the profit-hungry manager – surely an ironic jab at any attempt at turning Kafka's story into a religious parable.