In the Diary of a Madman by Lu Xun, he is portrayed as someone who is very paranoid. This character suffers from paranoia which causes him to have some very unusual beliefs of his surroundings and neighbors. He becomes very nervous about his surroundings as people talk about him as he passes by them, this was because after thirty years he finally came back. People tend to talk about people who usually came back after a very long time. However Lu Xun took this to another level by believing that the people talking about him were about to attack him and immediately becomes defensive. He thinks of these people as cannibals, even things that were not related to him makes him believe he is in danger. Such as; a mother’s cursing word to her son, dogs barking, stares and even glances at him makes him believe that people are out to eat him. Then one night without any sleep he reads a book and he focused on two words “eat people”. This made him so paranoid he believed that even his own family members were planning on eating him such as his brother and mother. By the end of the story he says that the children does not know the cannibalistic ways therefore they are able to change the future of China.

Cannibalism in this story is a symbol for Feudalism. The way they used the term eat people is saying like bigger companies taking over smaller companies. They take advantage of the weak and “eat them up” but not physically devouring them. Lu Xun uses cannibalism to talk about Feudalism during his time period in China because during his time the rich people take advantage of the poor in order to make themselves more wealthy. The children that the author talks about means that these new children will be able to pursue the changes in China’s Feudalistic society and make China great again.

I feel like Lu Xun’s message is that even though we have a bad society there is always another way of changing it and in this case its a new generation that will bring changes.