When I read Lu Xun’s “Diary of a Madman”, I feel that the protagonist suffers mental illness like paranoia. He always thinks that his brother and all other villagers are planning to eat him even though children and Zhao family’s dog. This sounds ridiculous and irrational. The diary also doesn’t write down the date. It seems like some parts happen in a same day, but some parts include many days. These are consistent with what Lu Xun writes in the preface that this diary is from a man with a dread disease and he changes no word.

In Part One, there is a sentence, “But I’ve still got to be very careful.” I feel that the society is very danger, so the protagonist needs to “be very careful”. Protagonist is very sensitive because he can realize that villagers plan to eat him based on their actions and eyes. He discovers that old texts also talk about cannibalism. Villagers are very apathetic because they don’t stop although they know they are wrong. They let the bad things happen and don’t give a help. At the end, Lu Xun is yelling “Save the children.” This bad culture and apathetic behaviors cannot pass to younger generations. Lu Xun wants people to realize that the bad side of traditional culture and take a change.

My favors part of this Diary is, “There were no dates in this history, but scrawled this way and that across every page were the words BENEVOLENCE, RIGHTEOUSNESS, and MORALITY. 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!”(Lu Xun 246) These two sentences said that traditional culture teaches people virtue like “benevolence”, “righteousness”, and “morality”, but the aim is to cover the brutal truth of “eat people”. People are influenced and assimilated imperceptibly, so people become apathetic.