The first category is the victims and victims of the feudal system, such as Kong Yiji in Kong Yiji and Chen Shicheng in White Light. Deeply poisoned by the feudal imperial examination system, they are bent on seeking fame and are full of the sour smell of old-fashioned literati. The author has both criticism and sympathy for them.
The second category is the defenders and followers of the feudal system, such as Siming in Soap and Gao in Gao Old Master Q Ah Q. Their souls are completely decadent and seemingly hypocritical, but in fact they are full of thieves and prostitutes, or guardians of feudal morality and hypocrisy, or uneducated literati garbage and scum. The author only criticizes them without sympathy;
The third category is the saboteurs and rebels of the feudal system, such as the madman in Diary of a Madman, Lu in a Restaurant, Wei in Loneliness, Juansheng and Zijun in Mourning for the Past, the madman in Medicine, The Ever-burning Lamp and the "I" in A Little Thing. They have modern consciousness, progressive ideas and reform requirements, and a glorious history of fighting for their own ideals, but almost all the resistance ended in failure. This kind of image is not only numerous, but also the image of modern intellectuals that Lu Xun values most. Lu Xun hopes to see that their tragedy is not only the tragedy of the times and society, but also the result of their lack of "resilience" spirit and struggle strategy.
The theme of Lu Xun's novel "Regret for the Past" is different from the popular novels with the same theme at that time. It is not to show young people's resistance to the feudal concept of marriage in order to fight for freedom of love and independence of marriage, nor to sing the popular "emancipating the mind with individuality" at that time, but to point out the limitations of "emancipating the mind with individuality" and explore how a generation of May 4th rebellious young people influenced by "emancipating the mind with individuality" embarked on a "new way of life" after rushing out of the family cage.
Two years before Lu Xun wrote this novel, that is,1923 65438+February, he gave a speech entitled "What happened after Nora left" in Beijing Women's Normal School. Nora is a social drama by the Norwegian playwright Ibsen. It was translated into Puppet Family and performed in China, which aroused widespread concern in the society. At that time, the focus of people's attention was how to get out of the family, while Lu Xun warned everyone in his speech: "The most painful thing in life is that there is no way to go after waking up from a dream. Happy are dreamers; If you can't see the way to go, the most important thing is not to wake him. ..... However, since Nora woke up, it was not easy to return to her dream, so she had to go; But after leaving, sometimes it is inevitable to fall or come back. Otherwise, we have to ask: what did she bring besides her awakened heart? If there is only one scarf with purple velvet rope like gentlemen, it is completely useless to be two or three feet wider. She needs more money. There's something in her bag. To put it bluntly, she needs money. " Two years later, Lu Xun brought up the old story again, because he thought that the question "What happened after Nora left" still didn't attract everyone's attention and remained unsolved. Therefore, he took pains to use the word 12 times in his regret for the past. The works in A Madman's Diary observe the people around them through the eyes of the hero, a madman: "They-some lashed the magistrate, some slapped the gentleman's mouth, some occupied the lady's official position, and some were forced to death by creditors." However, instead of fighting against each other, they will follow suit. The madman is puzzled by this, and the author is very angry about it: "It has always been used like this, why not do something wrong?" "Or did you lose your conscience and commit a crime on purpose?" In the eyes of lunatics or authors, these people will eventually be eaten if they don't change, and the hope for the future can only be pinned on those "children" who "or" don't eat people. Therefore, he issued "Save the children ...". The works not only show the courage to thoroughly criticize feudal ethics, but also show the author's humanitarian feelings of "grief and indignation" and the overall spirit of transforming society and life with literary and artistic creation. In this sense, the significance of Diary of a Madman goes far beyond the scope of literature.
The image of a madman has the duality of "madness" and "not madness" On the one hand, the madness of a madman lies in his characteristics as a mental patient, on the other hand, in his resistance to tradition and secularism; The madman's "not crazy" lies in his "advanced" ideological understanding, saying what people dared not say or thought at that time. Just as anyone who resists tradition and the existing social order in history is regarded as a "madman" without exception, the madman's thinking and language are often deviant, but his observations and conclusions are rich and profound. Therefore, the madman is actually an awakened intellectual image who dares to challenge the tradition and a symbol image of a sober anti-feudal Democrat who dares to challenge the realistic secular society. However, Lu Xun is not optimistic about the fate and future of the madman, so he foresees his ending in the Preface to Classical Chinese: "I recovered early, so I went to a place to stand by."