When I read Lu Xun’s “Diary Of a Madman”, I have a question in my mind. Is this madman really paranoid and insane or is he the only one awakened? From the madman’s diary, we can see that he feels everybody is malicious toward him and wants to eat him. Crew of people look at him with their “smiling green faces and protruding fangs”(Lu,251) makes him feel dire. He feels his elder brother, doctor, people in the street talk about him are all cannibals. Although he thinks all of them are cannibals, but he can tell they are not all think in the same way. He feels that “some are thought it’s always been like this and that they really should eat human flesh. Others knew they shouldn’t but went right on doing it anyway.”(251) I think the previous one is the real Cannibals and the latter one is what I called sleepers.
The difference between cannibals and sleepers is sleepers are the oppressed and cannibals are the oppressors. From the madman’s diary, he knows those people in the street, “some have worn the cangue on the district magistrate’s order, some have had their faces slapped by the gentry, some have had their wives ravished by yamen clerks, some have had their dads and moms dunned to death by creditors”.(245)The district magistrate order, the gentry, the yamen clerks, and the creditors are the real cannicals. And the people who suffered are the victims, but the “expression on their faces were never as frightened or as savage”(245)when these terrible things happened. These people’s attitudes toward these terrible things take place on them and their families are just submissive and apathetic. They are sleepers. They have no feelings about injustice, they will not fight and they just accept their miserable fate. Using kant’s word to say is these people don’t use their reason.
Madman is the only awakened on in this article.In part 3, the madman reads a history book, he finds every page are the words “BENEVOLENCE, RIGHTOUSNESS, and MORALITY”.(246) But the single phase he makes out is ”EAT PEOPLE”.(246) And in the part 10, we can figure out what makes him to think that way. Though out the history, cannibalism always exist. There are ruthless exploitation and persecution. But these books use righteousness and morality to hide the truth. And part 11, his elder brother used to tell him that when parents ill, a son should slice off his own flesh and feed his parents to be count as a good. This is what feudal society tells people about morality and rightousness. Feudalism contains decadent ideas and misleading informations, and it makes people benighted. In “Medicine”, the father believes the rumor that if his son who has T.B. eats the mantou that contain human blood will get better. But his son still died after he eats the mantou. The madman is different with these benighted, ignorant, and submissive sleepers. He questions these traditional concepts and morality. He questions these sleepers that they “couldn’t do much to prevent [cannibalism], but why did you have to go and join them[cannibals]?”(251) They can fight and change the society, but why they are so obedient, indifferent and apathetic. These sleepers are reptiles, they can become human if they change, and they will be eradicated by real human in the future if they don’t change. Feudalism is eating people, if there have no changes, then there is no humanism.
Luxun wanted to be a doctor to treat people’s physical illness. Then, he realized what people really need is their mental treatment. So, he started to write articles to wake people up. Below is the woodblock print that made by Zhao YanNian. I think it shows the “smiling green faces and protruding fangs” look.
