"Water Control" is a work that combines ancient life and modern life, which not only describes historical figures truly, but also allegorizes social reality from a wide angle. In Water Control, on the one hand, Lu Xun created the image of Dayu, an ancient water control hero, on the other hand, he boldly broke through the formal norms of traditional historical novels, put all kinds of ugly and innocent phenomena in China society in the 1930s under the cloak of history, ironically embedded them into the mythological atmosphere of ancient times, and portrayed many funny people, such as scholars, professors, inspection officials and water conservancy directors, on the cultural mountain, forming a strange world in ancient and modern times. This grotesque artistic conception most typically embodies the unique artistic style of "old" and "new" editing pursued by the writer in "New Stories".

Dayu in Water Control, as a hero of water control in myths and legends, was praised by Lu Xun, although he didn't write much ink. The works put him in the sinister natural environment of "the soup was cut by the flood, and the fragrance of Shan Ye was boundless" and his father's gun failed to control the water and exiled Yushan for nine years. It focuses on describing his personality characteristics with hard work as the core and his noble character of pleading for the people and going through fire and water from three aspects. First, he has great wisdom and courage: he went deep into field investigation and study, summed up the lessons of years of failed water control, resolutely overthrew his father's "annihilation", established a new water control law with "guidance", was determined to innovate, and was not afraid of attacks and intimidation by conservative forces. 2. Down-to-earth and hard-working spirit: He took the lead in Mu Feng, waded through mountains and rivers, led his entourage to observe the water regime, dredged rivers, led floods into the sea, and always struggled in the front line of water control, "breeding every day" without tiredness. The third is the character of public and forgetting private: in order to save the people in the disaster, he put aside personal and family interests and "asked his wife to leave in four days"; "Don't look at Archie's son when he is born"; I devoted myself to flood control and disaster relief, so that I counted my homes and didn't enter. When creating the image of Dayu, Lu Xun is good at capturing a series of artistic details with concise and vivid sketches, describing his ragged, black and thin facial features, rough hands and feet, short and powerful language, and highlighting the simplicity, calmness, firmness, pragmatism and foresight of the characters.

Compared with the legendary Dayu, the image of Dayu in Lu Xun's works is not only faithful to the basic features of historical figures, but also abandons the absurd and superstitious colors endowed by the ancients. He is a hero and leader who works for the welfare of the people in a down-to-earth manner, not a superman and omnipotent God above all else.

The image of Dayu shows that Lu Xun attached great importance to carrying forward the national excellent cultural spirit and enhancing national self-confidence under the severe situation of China's internal troubles and foreign invasion and frequent disasters in 1930s. At that time, the domestic political situation was dark, the people's livelihood was depressed, the Japanese army stepped up its aggression, the country was declining, and the tone of pessimism and disappointment was filled in the media. For this reason, Lu Xun wrote "Non-attack" and "Water Control", eulogizing Mozi, who worked hard and cherished the world, and praising Dayu, who had great wisdom, courage, hard work and selfless personal interests, in order to stimulate people's national pride and self-improvement consciousness through the display of ancient heroes and the national spirit they represented, and inspire them to face the real disaster and draw strength from excellent national cultural traditions and elites. As he emphasized in his essay "Have China People Lost Confidence" in the same period: "Since ancient times, there have been people who have worked hard, people who have worked hard, people who have pleaded for their lives, and people who have given their lives for the law ... Although it is the so-called" official history "of the imperial genealogy, it often cannot hide their glory. This is the backbone of China. "

It is the ugliness and meanness of the scholars, professors, procurators and officials of water conservancy bureau on the cultural mountain that are in sharp contrast with Dayu's spirit of hard struggle and his selfless personal interests. The flood was terrible, and people were devastated. Dayu led his entourage to manage the water with great pain. A group of "celebrities" of knowledge settled down in the cultural mountain surrounded by waves, ate foreign bread sent by the Cibula national flying car once a month, and relaxed and boasted after eating their stomachs. Some of them are based on the reactionary ethnology that "the descendants of the rich are all rich, and the descendants of the bad guys are all bad guys", claiming that "I will definitely not succeed". Some textual research "Yu is a worm" from the perspective of exegetics, and think that the so-called Dayu's theory of water control is purely a rumor, and Yu does not exist at all. Some argue, like biologists, that elm is rich in nutrition and contains "vitamin W" and "iodine". People own elm, so "the disaster is not serious". Some attribute the root of the flood to the laziness of the people-"When the water doesn't come, it's too lazy to fill it, and when the flood comes, it's too lazy to push it ...". Others ignore people's sufferings, immerse themselves in the expression of personal spirit, and accuse people of "losing their spirit" and "having no choice". However, those officials who inspected the disaster made fun of the people's sufferings, rewarded Gu Song, fished eels and enjoyed sightseeing in the name of inspection. Officials from the Water Conservancy Bureau gave a big banquet to welcome officials who returned to Beijing for inspection, and they were extravagant. After the officials have had enough to eat and drink, or talk about the feelings of "reed flowers are like snow, muddy water is like gold, and eel is fat and slippery" along the way; Or advocate "national peace and security", whitewash the reality that the people are not rich, or praise the exquisiteness and fragrance of "muffins" and "cypress cakes" and enjoy the people's suffering with relish. When Dayu decided to give up the "annihilation method" to "guide" the water control, they stubbornly stood in an old-fashioned position and attacked Dayu, doing their best to slander and threaten.

If the depiction of the image of Dayu in the works is Lu Xun's courage and belief in inspiring people's realistic struggle by praising ancient heroes, then the depiction of ugliness by scholars, professors, prosecutors and officials of water conservancy bureau on the cultural mountain is the writer's ruthless lashing and bitter satire on the ugliness of reality. The portraits of scholars and professors on the cultural mountain point the criticism at the depravity of China literati in 1930s. The design of "cultural mountain", the speeches of scholars and professors and the description of theory all have distinct realistic innuendo. For example, the exaggeration of the "mountain of culture" and scholars' statement that "culture is the lifeblood of a country and scholars are the soul of culture". As long as culture exists, China exists, and everything else is secondary "implies that 1932 more than 30 people, including Jiang Han, a cultural and educational figure in Beiping, wrote to the government to demand the disarmament of Beiping at the critical juncture of the Japanese invasion of North China. Mr. Bird Head's argument that "I am a worm", "a scholar on crutches" and "the descendants of the rich are all rich and the descendants of the bad guys are all bad guys" was ironically imitated by Gu Jiegang's exegetics and Pan Guangdan's ethnology. The gag of "Fuxi Eight-part Essay Writer" is obviously satirizing the so-called "recorded prose" advocated by Lin Yutang and others. In the essay "Crisis of Essays" in the same period, Lu Xun severely accused them: "Rough hearts are gradually smoothed by low resentment or micro-singing. ..... and forget that after the Yellow River burst, you are holding the treetops just out of the water. " Scholars who study Shennong's materia medica and the myth of "a gentleman with five beards and a red robe" are easily associated with the contempt and slander of the bourgeois literati of Hu Shi School on the general public in China. Here, Lu Xun satirized not some specific individuals, but people and things with typical significance among the literati at that time, criticizing China's empty talk habits and various harmful ideological theories popular in the upper intelligentsia in the 1930s. The works put the empty talk and all kinds of fallacies and heresies of the literati in the disastrous situation in the 1930s in an environment full of disasters in ancient times, which formed an ironic contrast with Dayu's self-suffering and forgetting the public and private affairs, and effectively revealed their sharp disharmony with the environment and their harm to the Chinese people. The group portraits of prosecutors and officials of water conservancy bureau pointed the criticism at the darkness of officialdom in the 1930s. For example, all inspection officers take the opportunity of inspection to travel around the mountains and water, and officials of the Water Conservancy Bureau hold a banquet to entertain their superiors. They ignore the life and death of the people, whitewash the real disaster and oppose Dayu's water control. They all adopted the perverse actions of the Kuomintang government in the 1930s, which reflected the writer's understanding of the reactionary, corrupt and hypocritical nature of the Kuomintang government. By revealing the image characteristics of officials, such as fatuity, greed, hypocrisy and conservatism. The work depicts a dark and ugly picture of officialdom in the style of cartoon, exposing the nature of the Kuomintang regime that harms the country and the people.

From the perspective of artistic expression, the most striking feature of Water Control is its bizarre conception of intricate blending of ancient and modern times. Starting from the purpose of reviewing history and satirizing reality, Lu Xun broke the boundaries of time and space, inserted a large number of modern personnel into the ancient mythological world, and made his works break away from the category of traditional historical novels, showing a distinctive grotesque satirical comedy atmosphere. This is undoubtedly a bold creation in the writing of historical novels. If this artistic expression of blending ancient and modern times and blending ancient and modern times is investigated in the category of comedy aesthetics, it is not difficult to find that it has the artistic function of defamiliarization of narrative objects and is a powerful means to create comedy satire. As we all know, the essence of comedy and satire lies in revealing the funny and ugly nature of things. But as the famous comedy theorist Bergson pointed out: "There are many things that qualify to be interesting. Because of persistent habits, the funny nature is paralyzed, and in fact it is no longer funny. To awaken this funny nature, we must break this persistent habit and break with fashion. " Because of this, comedy artists often make people familiar with things appear as unfamiliar faces in their works, which makes the funny and ugly nature of things sharp and eye-catching based on the defamiliarization of artistic treatment, eliminates the false impression of habitual prejudice on things, and provides people with an appropriate psychological distance and the best angle to see through the ugly and despicable nature of things.

The writing style of "Lishui" is to deal with the unfamiliar comedy art through the historization of real characters. In China in 1930s, all kinds of fashionable ideas and theories and the principles and policies of the Kuomintang government were extremely confusing and deceptive. Its ugly and absurd essence is often wrapped in elegance, solemnity, detachment, dignity and grandeur, which is not easy to be seen through. Lu Xun skillfully put them in an ancient mythological environment where the people were flooded and hungry and cold, and turned them into scholars and professors who talked about state mistakes and ignorant and greedy officials who ruined the country and the people. Through such defamiliarization, in a simplified, narrow and grotesque art world, writers highly summarized the sinister situation of China in 1930s, the tragic fate of the lower class, the degeneration of literati and the dark corruption of officialdom. Those seemingly profound and harmful thoughts, theories and their representatives suddenly lost the so-called academic detachment and the lofty elegance of scholars, revealing their true colors of "helping" or "helping leisure" in the dark reality. The Kuomintang regime has also been pulled down from its declared position of justice, majesty and awe, and has become the object of contempt and ridicule. What works of art do in the art world completely conforms to their real political and moral characteristics in the real world.

In addition to defaming the object through historization and creating ironic effect, Lu Xun often consciously secularizes and belittles the characters in the description of specific comedy roles in order to achieve the purpose of ridicule and ridicule. This is also a major feature of the satirical art of water control. For example, writers talk about various theories while writing about celebrities on cultural mountains, while swallowing fried noodles and munching on bread; Mr. Aconitum spent 3927 days writing an academic paper. People who want to read "have to take out ten tender elm leaves" or "a shell of fresh water moss", but when they pass the paper, they "pedal their feet hard and look very tired", "their noses are red and purple" and "their helix is purple with anger". The officials who wrote about the water conservancy bureau ate and drank greedily, throwing the gnawed cow bones all over the floor; When writing a fat official attacking Dayu's new water control law, he was covered in oil and sweat. These descriptions highlight the characters' vulgar physiological needs for food and their ugly physical reactions. As Bergson said: "Everything related to the spirit but attracting our attention to the human body is absurd", and its role will inevitably lead to the secularization and inferiority of the narrative object, leaving the characters in an absurd position.

For Lu Xun, it is no accident that the artistic descriptions of "Lishui" and "New Stories" are ubiquitous at all times and all over the world. It is a unique novel form created by the writer to complete the task of historical reflection and realistic criticism in a specific situation. Its significance is just as Mao Dun said: "Since the May 4th Movement, literary works with historical facts as the theme have made new progress. Lu Xun is a great pioneer and successful person in this field. His new novel also shows various changes in form, which sets a valuable example for us. But what is particularly important is the profundity of the content-in The New Story, Mr. Lu Xun, with his unique keen observation, fighting passion and creative art, not only did not write the ancients more dead, but also integrated the ancient and the modern into one. ..... His deeper intention is to inspire modern people to hate and love things through the past body.

The methods of shaping Dayu are as follows: ① Contrast and contrast. Scholars and professors on the "Cultural Mountain" specialize in eating special food, boasting, ignoring the sufferings of the people, stealing safety and leisure, visiting officials to talk about ostentation and extravagance, and making tours for "red tape". The officials of the Water Conservancy Bureau hosted a banquet to eat and drink at work, which contrasted with Yu, and set off Yu's spiritual quality of being down-to-earth, working hard and forgetting the public and saving the people. ② Sketch technique/frontal description. Through Yu's portraits, figures, costumes, words and deeds, and psychological activities, his qualities of ability, diligence, serving the people, and great wisdom and courage are demonstrated. (3) Take advantage of the fact that my wife is looking for Yu to set off the quality of Yu San's inability to enter the door and forget private affairs.