The artist's plea shows that even those who try to admire his work do not understand it. "Just try to explain to someone what the art of fasting is. No one who does not feel it can be made to understand what it means" (218) the narrator tells us, and indeed the ludicrousness of public exhibition fasting, the appeal of which display no reader can comprehend, underscores the private nature of the artist's performance. The artist's fasting is an end in itself. No one but himself is around to appreciate his death from starvation, a sacrifice for an ignored art, as "the world was cheating him of his reward" (218). .
Gregor Samsa's sacrifice somewhat resembles the fasting-artist's; it is just as unappreciated, but more beneficial to others. Gregor hates his job as a traveling salesman; "if [he] didn't have to hold back for the sake of [his] parents [he'd] have handed in [his] notice long since" (77), but he works to support his parents and sister, none of whom work. He keeps only "a few odd coins for himself" (98), giving most of his salary to his parents. He also plans to raise the money to send his sister to a conservatory to practice the violin. Gregor's work to help his family and pay off their debt is more easily appreciated by the reader than the artist's fasting is, but Gregor's family is less appreciative than the artist's audience. "They had simply got used to [Gregor's giving his family his salary], both the family and Gregor.it no longer gave rise to any special warmth of feeling" (97). Gregor's family does nothing to help him pay off the debt, all the while concealing from him the fact that they have been saving money he earned, instead of using it to pay off the debt to Gregor's employer and thus let him change jobs sooner. .
Gregor's sacrifice, great as it already is, becomes even heavier when he turns into a giant insect. At first both he and his family are in denial; Gregor attempts to go to work, having "no intention at all of deserting his family" (83), and his mother speaks of the time "when Gregor returns to us" (103), as though he will recover.
