"Una fame da tagliarsi col coltello". Pinocchio e le tre pere

Hunger represents a feature in 'Le avventure di Pinocchio' denoting the state of poverty of the puppet and, besides it, his condition of need and shortage. It has therefore a double meaning: on one side it asks to satisfy an immediate and imperative necessity of the instinct, on the other side it accompanies Pinocchio's growth and change. It modifies with him until it disappears completely. With a costant attention to relationship between food and word and to the binomial bitter-sweet, the article retraces the fundamental steps of the pupet's hunger: from his need to be fed, to his capacity to eat by himself up to the difficult task of 'nursing' his father.