Introduction Poem “Hunger”:
“Hunger,” one of Jayanta Mahapatra’s most widely anthologised poems, is a stark and unsettling exploration of human desperation set against the socio-economic realities of coastal Odisha. Written in Mahapatra’s characteristically spare and evocative style, the poem intertwines two kinds of hunger—physical hunger born of poverty and sexual hunger rooted in bodily desire.
Through the encounter between the speaker and the fisherman who offers his own daughter for prostitution, Mahapatra exposes the brutal compromises people make when survival becomes paramount.
Rather than offering moral judgement, the poem presents an atmosphere heavy with guilt, silence, and vulnerability. Its imagery—drawn from the sea, the body, and the desolate landscape—creates a layered meditation on how economic deprivation corrodes human relationships and reduces life to an exchange of needs. “Hunger” ultimately stands as a powerful critique of social neglect and an intimate portrayal of shame, complicity, and the human cost of poverty.
The poem “Hunger” portrays a deeply moving encounter between the speaker, a fisherman, and the fisherman’s daughter. It explores hunger in two distinct dimensions: the physical craving for food brought on by extreme deprivation, and the deeper, unquenchable longing for sexual fulfilment. The poem revolves around the theme of prostitution, depicted as a consequence of poverty and systemic social and economic inequality.
Through the father’s actions, the poem illustrates how crushing poverty can drive a man to abandon moral values and even use his own daughter as a means of survival. It also highlights society’s indifference—how people witness suffering around them yet fail to offer support to those living in misery. Ultimately, the poem exposes a harsh truth: in an unjust society, the powerful often exploit the weak and the impoverished.
Summary of the Poem “Hunger”:
Speaker’s Overwhelming Desire:
The speaker was overwhelmed by a powerful urge for sexual fulfilment. He felt an intense, almost consuming need to engage in intercourse and found himself unable to control these impulses. In other words, he was experiencing a pressing longing for sexual release. He had heard from certain sources that the fisherman’s daughter was involved in prostitution, and that the fisherman arranged encounters with her for men driven by such desires in exchange for money. Motivated by his own strong need for sexual satisfaction, the speaker approached the fisherman.
Fisherman Testing the Speaker’s Intentions:
After a brief exchange, the fisherman asked the speaker whether he felt an urgent desire for the girl. Through this question, he was trying to gauge the speaker’s intensity and sincerity of his sexual emotions. Yet, he continued dragging his fishing nets without giving the speaker, his words, or his feelings any real attention. It appeared that by ignoring him, the fisherman was attempting to probe more deeply into the speaker’s thoughts and inner emotions.
Journey to the Fisherman’s Cottage:
Walking beside the speaker, the fisherman made his way toward his modest cottage. Along the path to his home, he revealed nothing of his worries, hardships, or poverty. He maintained a calm, detached manner, as though determined to hide his true emotions and instead stir the speaker’s interest as a buyer. As he pulled his nets behind him, it was as if he were also dragging his strained nerves along—struggling to steady his thoughts and keep his feelings firmly in check.
Shameless Proposal and Moral Contrast:
When the fisherman asked the speaker whether he wanted to sleep with his daughter, he showed no hint of remorse or shame. He spoke with a kind of elegance, as though his words carried an air of sanctity and solemnity—though his intention was anything but sacred. The speaker noticed the fisherman’s white teeth gleaming on one side of his mouth, as if silently mocking him.
Speaker’s Inner Conflict and Physical Agitation:
The speaker, driven by an intense desire for the fisherman’s daughter, trailed the fisherman across the wide stretches of sand along the shore. Overwhelmed by the pull of physical longing, he accompanied the fisherman to his cottage. His mind churned with unrest; his heartbeat quickened, and even his skin seemed to brace him like a sling supporting an injured arm. Just as a sling steadies a broken limb, the body’s raw instincts tried to steady his troubled thoughts. Yet, despite the powerful lure of a woman’s flesh and the body’s attempt to fortify the mind, his thoughts remained unsettled and refused to find calm.
Guilt and Psychological Turmoil:
The speaker finds no peace in physical pleasure. Such desires, and the attempts to fulfill them, inevitably stir inner turmoil and unease. They are often accompanied by a sense of guilt. For this reason, the speaker believes that true peace can only be found by confronting these feelings—allowing the guilt and the longing for redemption to consume him in his own home after seeking sexual satisfaction.
Speaker’s Silence and Fisherman’s Labor:
Despite being weighed down by guilt, the speaker could not restrain his overpowering sexual longing. He found himself unable to utter a word, feeling as though his tongue had gone numb. Because of this, he remarks that even the sleeves of his shirt or coat seemed gripped by silence.
The fisherman’s nets were flecked with foam—a natural consequence of repeatedly casting them into the sea in search of fish. Slowly and with effort, the fisherman hauled his foam-laden nets behind him. By this time, dusk had started to settle in.
Approaching the Fisherman’s Shed:
In a state of deep mental turmoil and driven by an overpowering urge for sexual fulfilment with the fisherman’s daughter, the speaker followed the fisherman back to his shed. Despite feeling guilty and inwardly shaken, he found himself incapable of regaining the calm he had lost to his intense desire.
Darkness, Poverty, and Symbolic Imagery:
A surge of desire washed over him. Dusk was settling in, and in the wavering half-light the speaker noticed how frail the fisherman truly was—so slender that his very body resembled a wound, a raw injury inflicted by the unrelenting cruelty of poverty. In that moment, the speaker felt weightless, as unbound as the wind. The palm leaves brushed against his skin, leaving behind faint scratches that felt like traces of guilt.
Inside the small hut, an oil lamp glowed softly, casting its light across the cramped walls. It seemed to the speaker that time itself was trapped within that space, its hours pressed tightly against the cottage’s boundaries. The smoke rising from the lamp drifted toward him, as though seeping directly into his thoughts.
Soot as a Symbol of Sin and Social Condemnation:
He sensed that the emptiness in his mind was suddenly occupied by the “root” of the lamp. This suggests that by engaging in a sexual act with the fisherman’s daughter, the speaker was on the verge of committing a moral transgression. The image of soot traditionally symbolizes sin, reminding us that the darkness surrounding the father who offers his daughter is not so much an indictment of him as it is of the society that allows such misery to unfold. Though the soot settles on the fisherman’s hut, it is the speaker’s conscience that bears its stain.
Immorality and Social Injustice:
A question emerges about the fairness of a society that has lost its sense of sanctity. People trapped in extreme poverty receive no support, and some are driven to the tragic point of selling the bodies of their wives and daughters simply to survive. Such conditions allow immorality to take root in the community. In the process, both those who suffer and those who exploit them become participants in wrongdoing.
Manipulation Through the Girl’s Age:
As the speaker entered the cottage, he overheard the fisherman mentioning that his daughter had just reached the age of fifteen. It became clear that the fisherman was attempting to manipulate the customer, using this information to make his offer seem more appealing and extract more money.
The speaker suspected that the fisherman had used similar tactics with other visitors, presenting his daughter in an enticing way to attract profit. By emphasising her age, he was exploiting the common perception that a fifteen-year-old girl is on the brink of maturity—something he assumed would draw the interest of men seeking such encounters.
Father’s Instructions and the Speaker’s Shock:
The fisherman then added that he would step out for a short while and, during his absence, the speaker—the customer—was free to touch the girl however he wished. He went on to explain that the speaker must finish the sexual act precisely by nine o’clock, the time when he himself would return home.
Hearing such words from the girl’s own father left the speaker utterly shocked. It felt as though the sky had collapsed upon him; the shame of the father’s proposal struck him with a force he could hardly describe. The speaker realised that this man had used various schemes on different customers, and by now his supply of tricks seemed completely exhausted.
Description of the Girl’s Condition:
When the speaker approached the girl, he noticed how frail and undernourished she looked. It seemed clear that extreme poverty had drained her health and left her weakened. She prepared herself mechanically for the act, positioning her legs apart to make it easier for the customer to begin. Her legs were so thin that they appeared almost insect-like in their slightness.
Seeing how deeply poverty had diminished her, the speaker felt a mix of discomfort and disdain for the circumstances that had reduced her to this state. Her body was cold to the touch, like unfeeling rubber, and she showed no real interest or emotion toward what was about to happen.
Poverty as the Root Cause:
The speaker longed for sexual fulfilment, yet he was simultaneously repelled by the girl, knowing she submitted to the act only because poverty left her no choice. He understood that her desperation sprang from physical hunger, while his own desire was purely sexual. He realised that stark need had forced both father and daughter into this way of earning a living. Meanwhile, the fisherman discovered that his trade brought in too little; relying on fishing alone, he struggled even to survive.
Critical Appreciation of the Poem “Hunger”:
Introduction:
The poem Hunger reveals how the poet gradually redirects attention from his own encounter with a prostitute to the stark poverty of a fisherman, while the fisherman’s daughter remains entirely voiceless and powerless. It shows how two forms of hunger—physical starvation and sexual desire—are intertwined and treated with unsettling ease.
The word hunger appears in the poem with a double meaning. On one level, it refers to the bodily need for food, the urgent demand of the stomach without which survival is impossible. Once this basic need is met, the next strongest craving is that of sexual longing.
The poem recounts an incident involving the speaker, a fisherman, and the fisherman’s daughter. Though the speaker never explicitly describes the fisherman’s economic struggles, the situation he narrates makes it clear that the man is living in severe hardship.
Thought – Content:
The speaker contacted the fisherman in order to have a sexual experience with the fisherman’s daughter and thus to satisfy his sexual craving. The fisherman took the speaker to his shack close to the sea shore and, after telling the speaker that the girl had just turned fifteen, left the shack so that the customer could have his satisfaction.
As soon as the fisherman had left, the girl opened her legs wide so that the customer could have his pleasure. At that moment the protagonist perceived that it was the hunger (or the sheer economic need) of the fisherman and his daughter which had driven him and the girl to adopt this means of earning some money.
Heart Moving and Satirical Elements:
The poem is a very touching poignant and highly moving. The poet ironically reveals that the feeling of hunger which has been used in double sense, first it means the sharp desire to eat caused by starvation and secondly the insatiable hunger for sexual satisfaction.
The poem is a highly moving mordant satire on the object poverty and social injustice in India. The penury of the fisherman father compels him to let his fifteen years old daughter to resort to prostitution for earnings. It is a profoundly human document and its former depends mainly on the authenticity of human experience.
The Use of Symbols and Images:
The fisherman was ‘trailing his nets’. The symbolism is apparent as he was laying out the net for customers. The fisherman’s net had froth from the sea. Perhaps it may be symbolic of the fact that wrong that wrongdoings may leave apparent traces behind.
The fisherman’s lean body in the flickering dark appeared like a wound. The inevitable wound symbolises his utter poverty. At the current moment the poet felt he was at will, as free as the wind. The palm leaves scratched his skin, leaving marks of guilt.
Hours in the shack are portrayed as stacks bunched up to those walls splayed by the burning oil lamp. It signifies that all the hours were similar confined to the small shack. The space in his blank mind was filled with soot from the lamp. The age fifteen symbolises the freshness of the beauty of the girl.
The bus symbolises the tourist’s journey who came to stay in the fisherman’s cottage for some time. The poet uses the term ‘ wormy ‘ for her legs as she opened them wide. The word reflects the speaker’s perception of the girl as abject as a worm, thin and slimy.
The poem primarily has two structures of images: flesh related and poverty related; hunger emanating from the flesh and that from poverty. What makes the poem impressive is the way these images entangle one another, some abstract, all building the irony of the two urges. The vividity of the images builds a word portrait of the place, graphically relating the manners of three characters.
The image of wound is prepared to by such images as the ‘bond thrashing in his eyes’, ‘mind thumping in the flesh’s sling’, ‘burning the house’, ‘body clawing’. The actions indicated in these images portray the human effort that is rather desperate, fruitless and hurting.
The ‘wound’ image gathers them all together in a place where the combined force of all these previous images together hits the reader hard and jump him / her out of complacency. It must be borne in mind that the tourist searching for sexual gratification implicitly holds the place of the audience as the reader is a voyeur like the tourist.
The soot image, a customary suggestion of sin, alerts us to how blackness of the predicament of the father pimping his daughter is a condemnation not of the father but of the society where such tragedy comes to pass.
Communicative Value of Silence:
In this poem, the poet attains a powerful eloquence precisely by invoking silence. Silence itself is a recurring presence in Mahapatra’s work—almost a sacred motif—and it clearly holds him in its sway. Yet nowhere does he render silence more expressive than he does here. Neither the young man nor the girl utters a word, and even the fisherman’s brief remarks carry a stark, foreboding quietness.
Mahapatra draws fully on silence as a mode of communication, letting it speak where language falls away. As a result, the poem avoids the ornate flourish that once dominated much of Indian English poetry. Interestingly, this measured restraint is absent in another poem of his built around a similar theme, The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street.
Style and Language of Poem:
The poem takes the shape of a dramatic monologue, with the speaker recounting his encounters with a fisherman and the man’s daughter. One of its striking qualities is its tight, economical design; the entire narrative is delivered with remarkable brevity and clarity. The poem presents three distinct characters, each rendered with convincing realism.
Mahapatra’s craftsmanship is evident in his thoughtful word choice and the delicate precision with which he arranges those words. The diction is notably effective, and there is a quiet charm in the way he shapes his phrases and structures his sentences.
This poem stands as a deeply human piece of writing, its strength deriving largely from the credibility of the experience that the language so carefully constructs. Every word resonates; every word feels intentional.
The poem’s successful fusion of literal and metaphorical meaning can be seen in evocative expressions such as “the flesh heavy on my back,” “trailing his nets and his nerves,” “the white bone thrash his eyes,” “burning the house I live in,” “the flickering dark,” “his lean-to opened like a wound,” “a father’s exhausted wile,” and “her years were cold as rubber.”
