A Hunger Artist

I wish I knew why I liked this story. I read it twice and still I'm not sure but I did like it. Perhaps it is the fascination with something that one does not understand. That would make it similar to the reason people were so interested in the hunger artist. The interest certainly would be in part from not understanding why someone would do what the 'artist' was doing. It could also be a morbid curiousity in watching one wither away. The filled amphitheatres to watch him emerge from the cage to break his fast show an attraction and appreciation to the testing of human endurance. I wish that the artist had once declared his purpose. What was it that made this man do this? Was it disdain for society? At the end after the crowds had died and he no longer received the attention he once had, he achieves his goal by fasting for longer than even he knows and finds that without the attention it is a meaningless deed.