In my opinion, The New Year’s Sacrifice is one of Lu Xun’s best-written novels. He used the “I” vision to show the character Xiang Lin’s Wife lively, exposing the bleakness of the world and the darkness of the feudal society. Whether it is from the subject matter or the writing method, The New Year’s Sacrifice is an excellent novel.
The novel began with an unfortunate way to create the atmosphere, writing the snow fluttering, making people devastated, desolate and painful. Then Lu Xun slowly used the death of Xiang Lin’s Wife to lead to the tragedy of her life. Lu Xun’s naturally narrative the life of and Xiang Lin’s Wife: escaping– working – being tied away – remarriage – losing his husband – working – being cast aside, all are entirely expressed without any restraint. Lu Xun did not express sympathy to Xiang Lin’s Wife in the text, but he could firmly grasp the reader’s heart in the narrative and make everyone sympathize with the character.
I think the article is not only about life, but also to reveal the life and present the dark ignorance of the society at that time to the readers. After her second husband died, Xiang Lin’s Wife returned to work in Lu Chen. The owner did not care about her, but only concerned that her performance was not as good as before. She was also thought that she was a bane and people did not let her touch the supply in the sacrifice. The poor woman used her one-year salary to donate a threshold, but it still did not change the views from others. She can’t convince herself. She was quickly aging, and first killed herself mentally. Xiang Lin’s Wife died in the Chinese New Year’s Eve, but no one treats her as a human being, just saying that she is not the time to die. When I finished reading this article, I felt very depressed. At the same time, I also deeply felt the spiritual strength of Lu Xun. He used the pen to fight against the darkness and used articles to liberate people’s thoughts. He can be said to be the godfather of the Chinese spiritual realm. In this article, Lu Xun designed a numb character, Xiang Lin’s Wife. When she was laughing at others, her eyes just stared at the front. This sharp contrast is impressive. In my opinion, this also expresses the helplessness of Lu Xun when he faced the weak people in the past, and they were unwilling to wake up.
I feel the most wonderful part of the article is the title. In Chinese, the title of this novel has the meaning of “blessing.” Why is the article not simply called “the death of Xiang Lin’s Wife”? This is meaningful. The article is written about a tragedy. Although the English name is translated as “sacrifice,” it is a promising topic in Chinese. It is the most brilliant place for Lu Xun. It uses simple questions to express grief and hope, and lead people to reflect. The author presents the deep ignorance of the society at the time to the reader and describes a person who suffers in the old feudal society. Lu Xun also explained the truth to the people through this work: Xiang Lin’s Wife’s hard life is not caused by one person, but the old society in which she lives is such darkness, which is deeply rooted in feudal ethics for thousands of years. The Xiang Lin’s Wife’s sadness is that she does not realize how she lives in a society. She does not see that she is so small and does not understand that fate is not her own.
At the end of the story, Xiang Lin’s Wife, the incarnation of this tragedy, has gone through all the pains of the world, with full of humiliation and hurt, and finally left us. Xiang Lin’s Wife came to the world with his longing for the world but left with the endless sufferings of the ancient capital. Although we are full of pity for this story and its characters, it is more like of a judgment of society. This is the same as what I think of another famous novel that written by Lu Xun, which is, Kong Yiji. The story’background is also the old life of the old society. The protagonist is also suffering, and it is also difficult to live in the society, slowly dying, leaving a painful and sighing figure. All of these are the same as the story of Xiang Lin’s Wife. This reflects the decay of the feudal society. It also showed those peasants who struggled hard and sighed with helplessness. They all disappeared along with the demise of a dynasty, and there was not even a trace in history.
I think Lu Xun expressed in this article is also helpless. This kind of helplessness is contradictory, deeply afflicting his soul. For such a soul, I sympathize with him. Some people say that Lu Xun has left us. I do not think so, because it is just from the novel that Lu Xun is still very close to us. The things that far from us are the feudal society and the ignorant people.