This work is very similar to Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Both of them used satire, through their whole text, to reveal the ugly truth of the social reality. As in A Modest Proposal”, Jonathan mocks the British cruel policy toward Ireland; Lu Xun uses a madman’s diary to expose the unacceptable truth: “eating people”. Lu Xun created this work to against the feudalism and the feudal ethics in China. And he claimed that the feudal thinking is “eating” people.

In this work, “eating people” culture is referring the Chinese traditional feudal thinking and the madman is a symbol of all the people who against it. The title of this text is so interesting: Diary of a madman. the reader will initially realize that this diary is written by a madman. Which means that all the content is unreliable or unbelievable. Even though this work is in a diary format, which we will observe the world through a crazy guy’s eyes, there will also be a voice in the reader’s mind: “I am a normal person and I am not a madman.” So, of course, when the madman starts talking about the “eating people” stuff, the audience won’t believe. But If we go through the madman’s “mad” descriptions of the people and the history, we can find that every other character’s actions in this fiction are normal and logical. Brother’s cold smile (250,10), the people’s whisper (244,2), and the doctor’s reaction, even the dirty look from the Zhao family’s dog (244,1). All of these are logical responses when people saw a madman or heard his crazy speech. In reality, it is also normal to “eat people”: “since I couldn’t get to sleep anyway, I read that history very carefully for most of the night, and finally, I began to make out what was written between the lines; the whole volume was filled with a single phrase: EAT PEOPLE!” (246) And all the other eating people stories, from Yi Ya to Xu Xilin, are also true events happened in China history (250). Now, the audiences will realize that the madman is talking about the truth.

“Eating people” is still remaining on a physical level in madman’s society. But in reality, “eating people” is happening on a psychological, spiritual level – the traditional feudal thinking. The madman seems to be the only person awake in the room, just like a revolutionist. He tried to wake up the rest of the people. But everybody in the society is ignorance and unconscious because they are deeply blinded or assimilated by the feudalism. As a result, they seeing the madman as a madman.