REFLECTIONS

...His death, Kafka seems to say, comes not from physical debilitation but from the public's lack of interest...

...The unlimited fast unto death, particularly when it is accompanied by the demand for a change in others' behavior, carries with it some ethical conundrums...

...But such coercion works only if the parents care about the child...

...Second, no matter how righteous its purpose, an unlimited fast uses an instrument of death for life-affirming ends...

...Why, after all, should Ronald Reagan care whether four veterans decide to sacrifice their lives because they disagree with his policies...

...Weeks before the protest came to a close, Liteky was asked if he was bothered by the lack of press coverage...

...one's witness will still be serious, and one could never be accused of either blackmail or the celebration of death...

...Better, I think, to acknowledge, as Kafka's hunger artist did, that the very meaning of the fast is dependent on public concern not just about the issue at hand but also about the welfare of the faster...

...They rushed past his cage with barely a glance, eager to behold the wild animals in the cages just beyond...

...The little notice board telling the number of fast days achieved, which at first was changed carefully every day, had long stayed at the same figure, for after the first few weeks even this small task seemed pointless to the staff...

...At one time," Kafka wrote, "the whole town took an interest in the hunger artist...

...I wanted them to know that, despite the news blackout, their message was getting through: Many of us in the religious community shared their agony over U.S...

...from day to day of his fast the excitement mounted...

...Why, for that matter, should the American people care...

...It is easy enough to assert that self-inflicted violence harms only oneself, but it surely causes pain as well to those who love its victim...

...it is not a moral deed in and of itself...

...Is my life worth enough to you to cause you to reassess your own...

...Last fall, four American war veterans— Charles Liteky, George Mizo, Brian Will-son, and Duncan Murphy—fasted for several weeks on the steps of the U.S...

...No, we're not interested in getting coverage for ourselves," he said...

...If suicide is to be an instrument of protest, it may be ethically more defensible if that sacrifice be swift and uncompromising, like the self-immolation practiced in the 1960s by Vietnamese monks...

...It is the inducement of this guilt that fasting depends on for its effect...

...When the evangelist Oral Roberts announced he would fast unto death, if necessary, to raise the remaining $1.5 million in an $8 million fundraising campaign, it was hard not to notice a parallel with the youthful candy-grubber...

...REFLECTIONS William F. Schulz The Hunger Artists In one of his simplest and most touching short stories, Franz Kafka told of a "hunger artist" who staged forty-day fasts for the entertainment of the populace...

...policy, if not their physical suffering...

...I always wanted you to admire my fasting," says the hunger artist...

...But to assert that one's fast is contingent upon the reform of other people's hearts is to make a game of death, like playing "chicken...

...I visited the four about halfway through their vigil...

...And yet, moved as I was by the veterans' obvious sincerity and willingness to endanger themselves in the interests of others, I came away from my meeting troubled and uncertain...

...In the face of a morally outrageous situation, passivity is the greatest enemy...

...The fine placards [in front of his cage] grew dirty and illegible...

...Kafka himself cautions us here...

...And yet a fast that receives no press coverage may be a splendid form.of religious witness but a poor form of social protest...

...When we read of Catherine of Siena flagellating herself for an hour and a half three times a day with an iron chain, or St...

...aid was still flowing to the contras...

...When the veterans ended their vigil, claiming they had accomplished their purpose in focusing attention on the atrocities fostered by this country in Nicaragua, I was relieved by their decision...

...The moral efficacy of fasting also depends upon the morality of the cause in whose name it is carried out...

...They vowed to continue their fast until they saw Americans, in Li-teky's words, "no longer satisfied merely to register their 62 per cent opposition to contra aid in polls but actually doing something about it, putting their lives on the line to stop the slaughter...

...We don't want people to be concerned about us...

...and sat from morning 'til night in front of his small barred cage...

...There were people who bought season tickets for the last few days...

...We want people to be concerned about what's going on in Nicaragua, to do something about that...

...Some of my discomfort no doubt stemmed from my own unwillingness (or inability) to put myself at similar risk...

...Such recognition points to a fourth moral ambiguity about fasting: that it may become, in the name of altruism, a manifestation of egotism...

...After all the ethical speculation is concluded, the killing in Nicaragua continues...

...It is the accompanying conviction that a just cause—in Catherine's and Veronica's cases, the adoration of Jesus—can be served only by such blatantly self-deprecatory acts...

...One's suffering will still be great...

...Just try to explain to anyone the art of fasting," he says in the story...

...But still he failed to catch the world's attention...

...wondering whether fasting was a justifiable means to pursue their laudable goals, whether it was the method of heroes or blackmailers...

...At the very least, unlimited fasters are saying, "I can no longer bear to live in a world that treats people like this...

...A child who holds her breath for candy is best ignored, but if she holds her breath to dissuade her parents from inflicting undue punishment upon her younger sister, she is probably a candidate for our praise...

...No longer did the people find the artist's skill amusing...

...These, then, were some of the troubling thoughts which plagued me as I left the four veterans on the steps...

...If George Wallace had taken up fasting rather than standing in the schoolhouse door when President Kennedy forced the integration of the University of Alabama, would we have regarded Wallace's cause as any more just...

...Yet, for all that, I cannot help but admire the veterans...

...Finally, in desperation, the artist vowed to fast for more than forty days, to fast indeed for longer than anyone had before...

...It only feeds cynicism when the faster, having announced the intention of going all the way, has a change of heart and breaks the fast before dying...

...But my ambivalence also stemmed from my suspicion that moral claims are put forward in a morally ambiguous fashion and that, unless we can defend both the ethics and the efficacy of our practices, we are at the mercy of those who would dismiss not only the moral witness itself but the cause—in this case, opposition to the war in Nicaragua—for which the witness is borne...

...Third, unlimited fasts inevitably risk defeat...

...If more conventional means of stopping it have failed, who is to condemn those who would try another road...

...Honorable though it may be, there is something discomforting about the use of self-destruction as a vehicle of affirmation...

...In this sense, the fast itself becomes a vehicle of terror...

...But I could not help but notice that American public opinion about Nicaragua had not changed appreciably during the span of the fast and that U.S...

...What's more, it invites death to be a problem-solver in the world...

...I couldn't help The Reverend William F. Schulz is president of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations in North America...

...At last, the hunger artist disappears beneath the straw that lines his cage, still fasting but forgotten...

...What is wiser, I suspect, from an ethical point of view, is to conduct a limited fast: to announce at the beginning that one will deprive oneself of food for a specific period of time...

...But in Kafka's story, the profession of fasting came upon hard times...

...Might it have been wiser not to require a change in public opinion as a precondition of the fast's end...

...First, fasting appears—on the surface, at least—to come uncomfortably close to the act of a manipulative child who promises to hold her breath until her parents yield to her demands...

...Might the fast have been an even more powerful form of witness had they not threatened to make their vigil a fatal one in the first place...

...Veronica's habit of eating cat vomit, leeches, and clumps of hair, it is not just the ascetic practices themselves that disturb us...

...Capitol to protest American support of the Nica-raguan contras...

...Anyone who has no feeling for it cannot be made to understand...