In “Hunger”, “Penal Colony” and Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, Kafka managed to show his individuals as obsessed with their profession; however their obsession has caused their downfall because society demands so much from an individual, only so much can be done. However, regardless, these people prefer work to themselves and not even ill health or death can stop them. Because society puts too much pressure on Kafka's work-obsessed character, they neglect their own well-being and cause their own downfall. In “A Hunger Artist” Kafka portrays the artist as a person obsessed with starving. Not even death matters as long as he gets the attention he wants from society. Kafka wants society to be the reason why the artist became who he is now. “He worked with integrity, but the world robbed [the artist] of his reward” (Kafka 144). The Hunger Artist no longer has anything significant in his life other than the one thing that makes him the way he is because he wants the public's attention. Society's demands are high and not easy to satisfy, to the point that the artist was the center of attention in big cities with beautiful girls waiting to help him get out of his cage. But now he is in a small cage, neglected by everyone, even when it comes to fasting “no one [counts] the days, no one, not even the faster himself, [knows] the extent of his successes” (144). Eventually, the hunger artist's body could no longer sustain itself after the long fast, yet society was moving forward and he was not. Society has been the bane of his life, wanting public attention is not easy in a cruel society that demands changes and new entertainment. In "The Penal Colony" the officer's life is based exclusively on the rules and ideals of the old commander. His strong obsession with being “involved in the very first experiments and also [sharing] the work until its completion” (96) has a profound impact on the officer's life and beliefs. The officer is not only obsessed with his work but also with the old methods adopted by the old commander. Furthermore, the fact that he is the last one in the colony to still follow the old ways means that he is going against the entire society of the colony. The new commander “uses everything as an excuse to attack the old ways” (105).