“Call to Arms”
Summary: For the assigned reading material, I can truly feel that Lu Xun is holding enlightenment purpose and humanitarian spirit, revealing all kinds of deep-rooted social contradictions, deeply analyzing and thoroughly negating the old Chinese system and some outdated traditional concepts, showing a strong sense of anxiety about the survival of a nation and a strong hope for social change.
Question: I am wondering what do we still need Lu Xun’s critique and awakening in this era? It should be pointed out that compared to a century ago, thanks to the improvement of education and material levels, the entire population is no longer as numb as it was then. The question now is not awake. There are awake people everywhere. The key is what can we do when we wake up?
Excerpt: On the sixth page of the excerpt, according to the commentary, the one with his hands bound was a spy working for the Russians, who was to have his head cut off by the Japanese military as a warning to others, while the Chinese beside him had come to enjoy the spectacle. I hold the view that this experience caused the image of “numb people” to appear repeatedly in Lu Xun’s future writing works. However, everything he did was “mourning, screaming and fighting for the insulted and the injured with great love.” That’s why his work has the power to travel through time. In this a few words, he expressed that he is more like a friend walking on the side of the road, but always in conflict.
“A Madman’s Diary”
Summary: For the assigned reading material, I can see that the stories reveal the “madman” image and the madman self- describing description of the persecuted, revealing the “eating nature of the feudal etiquette, and expressing Lu Xun’s resistance to the feudal culture.
Question: At that time, in an era where the revolution was needed, it seemed normal for Lu Xun to write this thing. Today, when we read Lu Xun again, we will feel a little strange. Some of the cannibalism and rituals that Lu Xun once criticized seem to have returned, do not all children today recite “Disciple Gauge” and “Three-character Primer”?
Excerpt: The first sentence of these diaries mentions this madman, this “I”. He saw the moon in the sky, he found that he had hardly seen it in the past thirty years, and now he saw it again. And after seeing the moon, the whole person seems to be awake, and understand everything. Also, in the word, every page and line are full, and the words “cannibalism” are printed on each line. The history of China over the past four thousand years is a history of cannibalism. Therefore, this cannibalism is often understood by us as feudal etiquette burying humanity and eating away our humanity.
