Before the publication of Diary of a Madman, Lu Xun not only wrote literary papers such as Cultural Deviation and Molo Shi Li, but also translated many foreign progressive novels and created China's classic novel Nostalgia, the main purpose of which was to arouse people's awakening. But as a senior intellectual, although the voice is radical, it lacks echo and cannot cause a movement. After New Youth attacked feudal ideology and culture for the first time, it was a bit lonely for a while, but everyone encouraged it together and eventually formed a force, whose influence was shocking. Shen Yanbing once wrote when he was reading an article recalling the situation at that time: "At that time, New Youth was advocating the' literary revolution', and it was mercilessly attacking China's traditional thought. In the eyes of the general society, the 100-page "New Youth" is almost full of crazy words, so it is not surprising that "Diary of a Madman" is caught in it, and it has not been invited to denounce one of the national quintessence. The unprecedented literary and artistic work "Diary of a Madman" then quietly passed away and never caused a major storm in the "literary world" again. Compared with later works such as Yu Dafu's Sinking and Wang Jingzhi's Wind Back, Diary of a Madman really "never caused a major storm in the literary world" and did not launch a literary debate. However, Diary of a Madman still has a great and far-reaching influence in expanding the influence of the literary revolution and opening up the road of modern novels, especially in criticizing the pernicious feudal ethics. Therefore, Lu Xun's success lies in his profound understanding of our nation and society. The theme of Diary of a Madman is very clear, that is, "it is intended to expose the disadvantages of family system and ethics". He also wrote a letter to Xu Shoutang on August 20th of 19 18, which said: "Diary of a Madman is really a poor book ... reading history from it can solve many problems. Later, I accidentally read in the mirror, "Ness China is still a cannibal, so it became an article. This discovery has a lot to do with it, and few people know it. " Therefore, the so-called "I'm going to summarize a study for doctors" in the preface of the work can be completely understood as the irony written by the author intentionally copying traditional note novels, and it can also be understood that the "doctor" mentioned by the author has a deeper meaning, not a narrow sense of "doctor" or "doctor". In this work, we can see that although the madman has the spiritual characteristics of persecution, such as "There is no moonlight today, I know it is not good", "Zhao Guiweng has strange eyes: he seems to want to hurt me" and "Why does Zhao Dog look at me?" And so on, but the deep meaning of the works consciously points to the history of thousands of years and the phenomenon of "cannibalism" in society at that time, from "changing children to eating" in ancient times to "eating tenants' hearts in the wolf village the day before yesterday"; From "Yiya steamed his son for him" to being fired in Xu Xilin. Although the content of the work has the illogical psychological characteristics of a madman, it always revolves around "cannibalism" and various cannibalism phenomena that have occurred in China for thousands of years. Its intention is obvious. When expressing its theme, Diary of a Madman also shows distinctive characteristics of enlightenment. Lu Xun hates the "spectator" mentality in China's national character most, and his great choice of "abandoning medicine and pursuing literature" is directly due to this factor. All of Gu's essays and novels before and after the May 4th Movement are characterized by enlightenment. The creation of A Madman's Diary is Lu Xun's first cry after experiencing silence and thinking, which naturally incorporates his anger, resentment, dissatisfaction, anxiety, hope and longing for many years, and also inevitably reflects his profound thinking on China history and his understanding of the real society for many years. It is a thorough anti-feudal "declaration" and the "general preface" of the author's subsequent creation. The characteristics of the enlightenment thought in A Madman's Diary are mainly manifested in the profound exposure of feudal ethics, the criticism of the numb and ignorant national character, and the firm belief and warm hope for the future. The author wrote: "I look at history. There is no age in this history, and the words' benevolence, righteousness and morality' are written on every crooked leaf. I can't sleep anyway. I read it carefully in the middle of the night before I saw the words through the gap. The book is full of the word' cannibalism'! " Ethics is cannibalism, and benevolence and morality are masks of ethical hypocrisy. This is Lu Xun's definition of feudal morality, the result of his years of thinking and understanding, and the most brilliant achievement of this work. The works observe the people around them through the eyes of the protagonist: "Some flail the magistrate, some slap the gentleman's mouth, some occupy their wives for the sake of the chief executive, and some are forced to death by creditors." However, instead of rising up against cannibals, they also want to eat people. The author is puzzled and angry about this: "I'm still used to it", don't you think so? Or did you lose your conscience and knowingly commit a crime? The work also wrote: "I curse the man who eats people, starting with him (that is, the big brother of the madman); To persuade cannibals, start with him. " "You can change, starting with a sincere change of work! You will eat it all, too. " In the last diary of the work, the author deeply hopes: "You haven't eaten other people's children, but you still have them?" "Save the children ..." Diary of a Madman not only shows the courage to thoroughly criticize feudal ethics, but also shows Lu Xun's humanitarian feelings of "grief and indignation" and the overall spirit of transforming society and life through literary and artistic creation. In this sense, the significance of Diary of a Madman really goes far beyond the literary field. Although the protagonist of the work is a "madman" who suffers from persecution phobia, the main purpose of the work is not to write about the persecution suffered by the lower working people, let alone to write a "documentary literature" of a mental patient, but to expose the nature of feudal ethics eating people for thousands of years through the mouth of a madman. So the madman in the work is actually a symbolic image. "In history, many people who rebelled against the old tradition and deviated from the truth were once regarded as lunatics, such as Sun Yat-sen, who was also called' madman'. From a secular point of view, he is crazy; From the revolutionary point of view, he is a prophet. The same person, the same idea, has two diametrically opposite views and evaluations in society, which is also a reflection of social contradictions in the era of change. Lu Xun's portrayal of this dual image of madness and non-madness reveals social contradictions. This is also the profound meaning of the crazy image itself. " The key to mastering the image of a madman is to understand whether a madman is a real madman or a fake madman. Lu Xun once said in the article "How do I start a novel": At that time, "all I relied on was a hundred foreign works and a little medical knowledge I had read before". Judging from the words and deeds of the madman in his works, he is indeed a persecutor, with the characteristics of fear, paranoia, perceptual obstacles and imperfect logical thinking, and belongs to the "persecution paranoia" mental patient in psychiatry. As written in the work: "When you go out carefully in the morning, Zhao Guiweng's eyes are very strange: it seems that you are afraid of me. There are seven or eight people whispering about me, but they are afraid that I will see them. People along the way are like this. " So everyone wants to hurt him and eat him, which can be seen everywhere in his works. If we only look at this aspect, it is easy to think that the madman is really crazy. In fact, there are many disorders and paranoia in madman's comments and psychology, but they show sober understanding, profound thoughts and the insight of the spokesman. In this respect, the most prominent thing is the cannibalism he discovered from the historical cracks filled with the words "benevolence, righteousness and morality". This passage unveiled China's feudal ethics for thousands of years, exposed the spiritual harm of feudal ethics to the people, and exposed the evil of feudal slavery and oppression of the people. For thousands of years, people who dare to speak out this essence are not regarded as "crazy" by the world? There is such a passage at the beginning of the work: "I haven't seen you for more than 30 years; Seeing you today is particularly refreshing, only to know that I have been dizzy for more than 30 years before; However, you must be very careful. "The author writes the characters' language according to the thinking characteristics of a persecutor. Although its logic is often unclear, its meaning is quite rich and profound. Therefore, the madman in the work is actually a symbolic image of a sober, anti-feudal Democrat who dares to challenge the traditional secular society. If the problem of the true and false image of a madman is solved, then it is easy to grasp the duality of "crazy and not crazy" in the image of a madman. The madness of a madman, on the one hand, is due to some characteristics of mental patients, on the other hand, is his resistance to tradition and secularism; The madman's "not crazy" is that his "advanced" ideological understanding conforms to the historical development trend and is proved to be correct by history, except that he said appalling things that people dared not say or had not said at that time. We say that Diary of a Madman is the "general preface" of all Lu Xun's works, which contains not only the factors of ideological theme, but also its pioneering significance in Lu Xun's novel art. It is here that Lu Xun's novels learn from the advantages of foreign novels and inherit the advantages of traditional novels, thus creating a new national form of modern novels. As soon as Diary of a Madman was published, it attracted the attention of many people who paid attention to new literature because of its "special format". It is unique in that it adopts a "diary style" that China's traditional novels have never seen before. In addition, the author's "faint symbolism" and the newly formed "combination of cold and heat" style with unique personality have also attracted people's attention. Therefore, Mao Dun said: "At that time, there was no second equally striking writer, let alone a second equally successful novel." In China, there were no diary novels before, only notebook novels and chapter novels. The note style is "collecting wind" and the chapter style is "storytelling". They all use the third person, and the diary uses the first person. The whole work is almost a confession of the hero's inner world. Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman draws lessons from the novel of the same name by the famous Russian writer Nikolai Nikolai Gogol not only from the title, but also from the overall form. While studying Nikolai Nikolai Gogol's novels, Lu Xun not only showed more "grief and indignation" in ideological content, but also pointed the finger at feudal ethics, which showed his national life and consciousness well. Moreover, in terms of artistic techniques, he did not completely abandon his novel tradition. In diary novels with self-expression as the main feature, he can still use line drawing well to depict the characters' images and personalities very concisely through language and behavior. In addition, the author's use of vernacular Chinese has reached a very skilled level. For example, "In the morning, I sat still for a while. Chen Laowu brought in a bowl of vegetables and a bowl of steamed fish. Fish's eyes are white and hard, and their mouths are open, just like those who want to eat people. After eating a few chopsticks, I didn't know if it was a fish or a person, so I spit it out. " From these short dozens of words, we can see that the author's writing skills, including psychology, movements and details, are all standard vernacular, natural and simple, but lively and interesting. There are also some epigrams in the works, such as "everything must be studied to understand." "If they eat people, they may not eat me." "The fierce heart like a lion, the cowardice like a rabbit, the cunning like a fox" and so on are as powerful in generalization and profound in meaning as classical Chinese. With superb language skills, Lu Xun successfully combined the advantages of foreign novels with those of traditional novels, and profoundly expressed his nation's thoughts and life, thus creating a new form of China's modern novels-"diary style". From the perspective of creative methods, Diary of a Madman mainly adopts realistic methods. This is manifested in the description of typical environment, the authenticity of details and the emphasis on the unity of characters. When reading, if we correct the "illusion" of the madman, we can find that both the attitude of passers-by and Mr. He's diagnosis of him are common life phenomena in society at that time. And "since Pangu opened the world, he has been eating the son of Yiya; From Yi Yaer to Xu Xilin ",even" Last year, a prisoner was nailed in the city, and a man with consumption dipped his steamed bread in blood "(this detail was later used by the author in his other novel" Medicine "), which is really" never like this ". The most important realistic spirit of A Madman's Diary is the persistent criticism of feudal morality, homosexuality and fools. In his works, besides the realistic method, symbolism often appears. Whether it is "Good Moonlight" or "Zhao's Dog"; Whether it is the speculation in the prodigal village or the fact that Li Shizhen's human flesh can be fried and eaten, it can be regarded as both a portrayal of reality and a combination of symbolism. The description of madman's mental illness is realistic, and his language is almost symbolic. His image itself is more symbolic. Mao Dun once wrote in 1923, "The tone of this strange cold sentence is quite steep, and it forms a peculiar style with the meaning of saving vomit and the faint symbolic meaning, which makes people feel self-evident sadness and joy at first glance." Lu Xun formed an "unusual style" from the beginning of Diary of a Madman, that is, although the beginning of the work shrouded people in cold fear and made people feel creepy everywhere, the high fighting spirit of the madman in the work could not but inspire people, making people feel that the author still had warm feelings and ardent hopes in the cold words. In a word, it is the "alternative style" of Lu Xun's novels, which combines cold and heat. Diary of a Madman combines the thorough anti-feudal spirit with a brand-new and perfect art form, profoundly embodies the achievements of ideological revolution and literary revolution, and plays an epoch-making role in it.