The writers I discuss in this book powerfully destroy the connection between aesthetic autonomy and freedom, portraying their art as neither free nor voluntarily chosen. For some hunger artists, this lack of freedom manifests as a literal loss of liberation: Bartleby dies of starvation in prison, and Kafka’s hunger artist moves from cage to cage throughout the story. This absence also marks the end of a true freedom-based progression, contrasting with the imagined freedomlessness in the art of hunger. The narrator in Hamsun’s story ends his hunger by joining a ship’s crew, freeing himself from both hunger and writing in an unexpected turn of events. Rimbaud provides a real-life counterpart to Hamsun’s fictional narrative, famously abandoning poetry to live as a French colonel. Maud Ellmann, in her book The Hunger Artists, proposes a connection between hunger, writing, and imprisonment, suggesting that both writing and fasting aspire to transcend the body and escape its deadly manacles.