Friday, April 22, 2011

Diary of a Madman

I’ve gone over and over Diary of a Madman, trying to read between the lines and make a sensible explanation of the text and the real issues that it eludes to. What I’ve come down to is this…find out what someone else thinks.
The story condemns the oppressive nature of Chinese Confucian culture as a "man-eating" society where the strong devour the weak. The madman's reading of ancient texts to discover evidence of cannibalism is a parody of traditional Confucian scholarship. In a sense, the madman is a rebel and social critic whose madness is a kind of sanity. The story reveals Lu Xun's interest in changing society -- in converting people from "cannibalism" to a higher level of humanity. http://fajardo-acosta.com/worldlit/luxun/diary.htm
I have a little knowledge of Confucian teachings, but not nearly enough to analyze this story and identify the relationship between the two. I do know that the collection of Confucian teachings is called the Analects, and that is was a hierarchical structure of society. There is a ruler and a subject. Similarly, there is the husband and wife, father and son, older brother and younger brother, etc. Instead, I did a little reading on others who have analyzed it, and tried to understand the comparisons made by them.
One thing that I did find interesting in the beginning of the story was the use of the name “Mr. Antiquity”. “The only thing I can think of is that twenty years ago I trampled the account books kept by Mr. Antiquity, and he was hopping mad about it too” (Lu Xun 1921). “Probably decided to right the injustice I had done Mr. Antiquity by getting all those people on the street to gang up on me” ( Lu Xun 1921). I thought that was an odd name for a Chinaman. Antiquity is defined as the far distant past, therefore, I think Antiquity is used as a reference to Confucianism.

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