The Critiques of feudal Chinese Society in Lu Xun’s two articles
The Critiques of Feudal Chinese Society in Lu Xun’s Two Articles:
Madman’s Diary and Leaving the Pass
By
The term 2 HASS essay question
Singapore University of Technology and Design
Lin Yijuan
October 2013
Once during the years 1915-1923 in modern Chinese history, a grand revolution campaign named New Culture Movement was whipped up by some pioneer revolutionists. This group led by Lu Xun and Chen Duxiu considered the feudalism as the primary obstruction of China’s development and appealed to the disposal of feudal autocracy and the reformation of Chinese traditional thoughts, culture and ethic codes through the channel of literature. Two articles among these literature written by Lu Xun, Madman’s Diary and Leaving the Pass, sharply revealed the essence and the root of feudalism and criticized the conservative and rigid traditional thoughts. This paper will talk about the critiques of Chinese society in these two works and relate them to the special historical background of culture revolution.
The Diary of A Madman describes a madman’s psychological activities and conditions in the form of diary. In this way, the writer managed to metaphorize the seemingly virtuous but virtually persecutory feudalism. As Lu Xun himself mentioned in the Preface of Selections of Novels in The Great Series of the New Literature 1917-1927, the Diary of a Madman is aimed to expose the feudal Chinese Family System and the persecutory traditional codes of ethics (Lu, 1935).
To show the motif, he metaphorized four types of social citizens at that time by constructing four characters. To begin with, the character of the madman is sketched as an isolated enemy to other ordinary people. By mentioning that the madman was the first one to see “the whole book being filled with the two words: ’eat people’”(Lu, 1918), Lu Xun was actually referring to a minor pioneer group who was the first and the only to see the root sickness of Chinese society at that time.
Madman’s Diary and Leaving the Pass
By
The term 2 HASS essay question
Singapore University of Technology and Design
Lin Yijuan
October 2013
Once during the years 1915-1923 in modern Chinese history, a grand revolution campaign named New Culture Movement was whipped up by some pioneer revolutionists. This group led by Lu Xun and Chen Duxiu considered the feudalism as the primary obstruction of China’s development and appealed to the disposal of feudal autocracy and the reformation of Chinese traditional thoughts, culture and ethic codes through the channel of literature. Two articles among these literature written by Lu Xun, Madman’s Diary and Leaving the Pass, sharply revealed the essence and the root of feudalism and criticized the conservative and rigid traditional thoughts. This paper will talk about the critiques of Chinese society in these two works and relate them to the special historical background of culture revolution.
The Diary of A Madman describes a madman’s psychological activities and conditions in the form of diary. In this way, the writer managed to metaphorize the seemingly virtuous but virtually persecutory feudalism. As Lu Xun himself mentioned in the Preface of Selections of Novels in The Great Series of the New Literature 1917-1927, the Diary of a Madman is aimed to expose the feudal Chinese Family System and the persecutory traditional codes of ethics (Lu, 1935).
To show the motif, he metaphorized four types of social citizens at that time by constructing four characters. To begin with, the character of the madman is sketched as an isolated enemy to other ordinary people. By mentioning that the madman was the first one to see “the whole book being filled with the two words: ’eat people’”(Lu, 1918), Lu Xun was actually referring to a minor pioneer group who was the first and the only to see the root sickness of Chinese society at that time.
References: Lu, X. (1935). The preface of selections of novels in the great series of the new literature 1917-1927. Shanghai, China: Shanghai Liang You Publication Company. Lu, X. (1918). The Diary of A Madman. New Youth, 4(5). Lu, X. (1936). Old tales retold: Leaving the pass. Shanghai: Life and Culture Publishing House.