Mark's thoughts on Hungry.

Putting it simply and at first glance, Hungry deals with the main issue about what we miss about life after it is taken away from us. It is the extreme case of what we deal with everyday. We always regret and miss something only after it is gone. Perhaps it is a loved one or our previous position. We are only hungry for something we don't have, or no longer have, much like the characters in the play. What we once had, we hunger for it again even though we once cast it aside or took for granted. This theme is explored differently with each character.

In the character of Mug, we see the case of one being brought down from a high position. Having been a Sri Vijayan God, Mug now serves as an anonymous deity for students who are sitting for their exams. A kind of solace that something will help them. However, Mug wants to go back to the times where he was recognized and praised in glory instead of being forgotten and old. He has fallen so much that he even asks himself where he is "God" in the first scene he appears in. In truth he WAS a God but wants to be a God again. His confrontation with Death shows most clearly his hunger for people to "need" him. He has become so hungry to satiate his desire for glory that his obsession has caused him to go slightly crazy. All he does hear nowadays, after all, are students reciting the mantra during their studying, thus the incorporation of many scientific and historical facts in his speech. In this way, we see Mug's hunger for lost-glory and how this hunger made him... well... a Mug.

Baby, on the other hand, explores the other end of the table, where life is yet to be experienced. It should be noted that Baby is still hungry to live and explore the world. I guess this allows us to put in retrospective, that all the characters are hungry for life in different ways. Baby has the ability to break things down to the fundamentals. She serves as a reminder to the characters that life, after all, is about living and not always about finding the answers to life. This is especially true for Sarah, who is always Hungry for answers. One profound statement she made was that "the most important reason why you eat oranges... because you're hungry. And oranges taste good". Baby once again reminds us to look at life once more through the eyes of a baby, if we are to appreciate it. It's not about knowing everything etc. We always want more in life that we forget what we have. We make things seem so complicated when actually, they're not. By apporaching the issue from a "post-life" angle, we (and the characters) realize what life is not about and why they lost out.

Mui Choo explores the concept through the eyes of a mother (rather a mother-to-be). She had thought that life was getting too hard for herself to sustain her baby in the womb. She was afraid of having the baby, having an unstable financial background as a waitress and no husband to support her. In many ways, she was sick of her life, so she killed herself, not realizing that the baby would die as well. It is only then does she realize her mistake. A very symbolic line that supports Baby's view on life and sums up Mui Choo's hunger is how she described babies as being "so beautiful" without "pimple or scar or white hair". These signs of aging are much like how our life gets corupted and uglier as we grow older and forget how to live, like a baby. We see Mui Choo's hunger here as well, as she hints how she wishes she could live her life again so that she can right the wrongs she made perhaps?

In the exchange between Death and Mui Choo, a line he said that struck me a lot is that "everyone feels like that". Everyone feels a sense of regret and longing for something they once had after it is gone. We only realize our mistake once it is done. We only realize the beauty of life after it is over. We only realize that answers can never be found after we can't find it. i guess it pretty much sums up the characters' hunger for life in non-life, much like how some of the characters hungered for death when alive.