What aspects of this short story seem to you to be particularly modernist?
Lu Xun’s In The Wineshop is about the narrator revisiting a place he once lived in. This “revisiting,” to me, appears to be the representation of the modernist attack on old societal norms and cultural aspects. This is because the modernist movement is all about not caring about what the old is but rather what the new is supposed to be. As a modernist writer, Lu Xun brings to the table the old ways of doing things, such as the burial, and rejects it in the form of Wei Fu. Another modernist aspect that this story has, I believe, is the stream-of-consciousness writing in which we can particularly see the thoughts and emotions of the narrator.
The story’s narrator is revisiting a place he once lived. Explain the significance that this “revisiting” has in relation to the themes of the story.
This “revisiting” thus also plays a significant role in relation to the nostalgic feeling that Lu Xun seems to evoke as well as the theme of change. Throughout the story, the narrator and his friend Wei Fu talk about how they used to be in the old days, and so they realize how much they have changed. The place and the characters themselves are no longer what they used to be.
Armand – I agree with you that Modernism generally brings with it a rejection of tradition and an embracing of the new. However, I’m not sure how you see that in the example of the burial in this story. After all, Weifu is going along with his mother’s wishes and burying an empty coffin in order to comply with traditional expectations. How is this Modernist?