In “Diary of a Madman,” the author borrows a madman’s perspective to attack some people’s social appearances. The madman begins his diary with his consciousness of the moonlight. He feels refreshing when he sees the moonlight, but it immediately changes with no moonlight in the diary 2 and he warns himself to be careful of something dangerous. The development of the diary reveals that he is a person who is paranoid. He feels uncomfortable with people’s stares, and he feels there are unfriendliness in people’ eyes which come from their hearts. His irrationality causes him to suspect his elder brother, neighbors, passengers, children, and dogs want to eat his flesh. His family tries to lock him inside a room so that he will not get into any troubles. He concludes that people are cannibals after he overheard a farmer’s report from a nearby village.
He is so obsessed with cannibalism that he wants to study it to fully understand it. He studies a history textbook and he finds out that the single phrase “EAT PEOPLE” is written between the lines (Lu 246). As a consequence, he treats everyone with distrust because he is afraid that he is going to be eaten. When the doctor says to his elder brother “To be eaten as soon as possible!” (Lu 247) The doctor simply means that the patient should take his medicine as soon as possible to cure the illness. However, he misunderstands the doctor’s phrase and accuses that his elder brother wants to collaborate with the doctor to eat him too. He also tries to accuse that his elder brother of eating their little sister even though he does not have any evidences to support this conclusion. He is disgusted that he may also eat some of his sister’s flesh without knowing.
It is unexpected that he knows that other people label him as a madman because he does not fully lose his ability to think clearly- In the preface, he is said to be cured of his disease. As a result, he is not at all an irrational human being. When he states that “People want to eat others and at the same time they’re afraid that other people are going to eat them” (Lu 250). He shows his contempt of the way that society works. The rich people who appear benevolent are oppressive of the poor people’s labors and resources. The people at the top of the social ladder are figuratively eating the people at the bottom rung to obtain their economic, social and political powers. There is deeper meaning when he says that “And yet all they’d have to do is turn back-change-and then everything would be fine”(Lu 251). He mentions the word “change” three times in the dairy to emphasize his innocent and good intentions. At last, when he calls out to the children because he wants to save the children who haven’t been corrupted by the society.
I agree with your post but we must underlined that he is not completely crazy, he is using cannibalism as a metaphor to talk about an issue which is left unspoken. He uses cannibalism as the example because he thinks that what people will spoke up about it more since it is such a horrible act, so he hoped if he talks about it in that manner he will inspire people to take a stand about the real issue.
The character “Madman” I believe is completely crazy. The author Lu Xun’s ideas are just manifested into the Madman himself metaphorically. I agree with the idea that Xun was attempting to criticize the Chinese culture for being a culture that took advantage of the poor in order to increase their power and wealth. You can compare the metaphorical use of cannibalism Johnathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” One of the underlying differences between these two texts is that Johnathan Swift was criticizing Ireland’s politicians (just a select few), but Xun is criticizing literally everybody, and in a way, himself. The only people that have not been corrupted are the children, as he ends the short story with: “Save the children” (253).
I agree that author Lu Xun is using the prespective of a paranoid patient to reveal the negative society’s appearance at that time. In my point of view, even though the madman was determined as a paranoid patient, he is not completely insane. Conversely, his observation of daily life is clear than any others in that society. He noticed that people’s life was acting like cannibal that people take advantages from others and protect themselves to be taken advantages. The purpose of using cannibalism as an metaphor in the diaries is to alter the people in society and give them a different way of thinking about how ugly the society looks like. In addition, he appealed the potentical readers to stop the action of cannibal and protect the next generation from being eaten. Therefore, I see these dairies as a sign to support the civil revolution.