TWO TROPES IN LU XUN`S FICTION: THE SICK MAN AND THE

TWO TROPES IN LU XUN’S FICTION:
THE SICK MAN AND THE CROWD
A Thesis submitted to the faculty of
San Francisco State University
In partial fulfillment of
the requirements for
the Degree
A5
io!(,
,1
Master of Arts
In
Humanities
by
Brian Johnson
San Francisco, California
May 2016
Copyright by
Brian Johnson
2016
CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL
I certify that I have read Two Tropes in Lu Xun ’s Fiction: the Sick Man and the Crowd by
Brian Johnson, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis
submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Art in
Humanities at San Francisco State University.
Professor of Humanities
Laura Garcia-Moreno Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Humanities
TWO TROPES IN LU XUN’S FICTION: THE SICK MAN AND THE CROWD
Brian Johnson
San Francisco, California
2016
Lu Xun is considered the most influential modern Chinese writer, likened by many
scholars to Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Goethe in both scope and cultural impact. The
richness of Lu Xun's writing is predicated upon conflict, symbology and ambivalence. By
incorporating both Chinese and European literature, as well as historical and biographical
components of Lu Xun's life, this paper discusses two significant themes and characters
in Lu Xun's early fiction: the sick man and the crowd. These two tropes figure
prominently into his first four stories, all published between 1918 and 1920: "Diary of a
Madman," "Medicine," "Tomorrow," and "Kong Yiji." These stories describe Lu Xun's
struggle with modern manifestations of Neo-Confucian family and class morality, as well
as the aspects of twentieth century modern China that are replacing these mores.
I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my family and all those who aided in the writing of this thesis.
2
Lu Xun is considered the most influential modern Chinese writer, likened by
many scholars to Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Goethe in both scope and cultural impact.
The richness of Lu Xun's writing is predicated upon conflict, symbology and
ambivalence. To aid in my discussion of Lu Xun’s early fiction, I will incorporate both
Chinese and European literature, as well as historical and biographical components of Lu
Xun's life. In this paper, I discuss two significant themes and characters in Lu Xun's
early fiction: the sick man and the crowd. These two tropes figure prominently into his
first four stories, all published between 1918 and 1920: "Diary of a Madman,"
"Medicine," "Tomorrow," and "Kong Yiji." These stories describe Lu Xun's struggle
with modern manifestations of Neo-Confucian family and class morality, as well as the
aspects of twentieth century modem China that are replacing these mores.
Lu Xun's symbology is a product of the interplay between the character's
relationships, their names, vocations, lives and locations, and oftentimes, their deaths. To
dissect this at times abstruse symbology, and the conflicts that arise from these symbols, I
will use not only texts and ideas that directly influenced Lu Xun, but will also discuss
texts outside of Lu Xun's assumed scope of reading that explicate themes in his stories:
alienation, isolation, revolution, and death. The texts that have directly influenced Lu
Xun are Frederich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), Karl Marx's Communist
Manifesto (1848) and Leonid Andreev's "Silence" (1900). The texts that deal with
similar themes, and which may or may not have had a direct influence on Lu Xun,
include Tolstoy's Death o f Ivan Ilych (1886) and Chan and Taoist literature.
3
Sickness in Lu Xun is a dynamic trope. My first attempt to discuss sickness is in
Lu Xun's story "Diary of a Madman," in which the sickness results from excessive
insight. Classical Chinese essays and travel accounts, as well as Nikolai Gogol's short
story "Diary of a Madman,” influenced the form of "Diary of a Madman," a depiction of
a man's descent into a madness precipitated by his dawning understanding of the violence
inherent in the Neo-Confucian family system. In content, Frederich Nietzsche’s Thus
Spoke Zarathustra, a series of parables describing Zarathustra's spiritual ascent,
influenced “Diary of a Madman." Both works discuss spiritual evolution by drawing
comparisons between humans and animals, as well as children and adults. "Diary of a
Madman" compares Neo-Confucian family and class systems to cannibalism, and
expostulates against what Lu Xun saw as the negative aspects of Neo-Confucian society,
such as subjugation, servility, superstition, and pedantry. In "Diary of a Madman," Lu
Xun invests hope in the younger generation because they are not contaminated by these
authoritarian collective values that detract from individualism. The May 4th generation's
fight against tradition, and belief in the power of the younger generation, was grounded in
the major theories of the early twentieth century, primarily the biological ideas of Charles
Darwin and the social theories of Karl Marx.
By virtue of Lu Xun's irony and habitual ambivalence, "Diary of a Madman" and
"Medicine" offer both positive and negative appraisals of modem and Qing dynasty
China. In Lu Xun's "Medicine," the motif of sickness shifts to a polemic exposition of
both Qing dynasty China and the social reform of the early twentieth century. In
4
"Medicine," a father tries to cure his young son's illness by purchasing a mantou saturated
in the blood of a recently-executed revolutionary. The intended prophylaxis fails,
however, and in the final scene, the son's mothers visit the graves, which are
unexpectedly adorned by flowers. However, where the psychological sickness of "Diary
of a Madman" is the result of critiquing Neo-Confucian mores, the physical illness of
"Medicine" examines the critique itself, questioning the value and lasting impact of
literature and social revolution. The exposition of China in "Medicine" is rooted in a
biographical event: Lu Xun watched his father suffer and die as a result of misdiagnosis
and mistreatment by traditional doctors. The exposition of social reform manifests in
"Medicine" through the symbol of the crow, which I will discuss in terms of Jungian and
Taoist literature.
The trope of the crowd is the antithesis to the trope of the sick man. Though the
sicknesses in "Diary of a Madman" and "Medicine" represent different social ills, the two
stories are joined by their discussion of the crowd. Lu Xun's discussion of the crowd in
"Diary of a Madman" and "Medicine" is similar to Marx's sociological representations of
the crowd: a social group that that is preventing others from achieving a healthy mode of
living. In "Diary of a Madman," the main narrator identifies and attempts to spread his
awareness of the crowd's sickness, while in "Medicine," the life (and death) of the sick
man is inextricably related to the life of a revolutionary. The sick man's struggle in both
stories also mirrors the injunctions made by the eponymous character in Thus Spoke
Zarathustra: The crowd and its internalized values must be overcome. The spiritual and
5
sociological distinctions between the sick man and the crowd correspond to the
differences between Marxism and Nietzschean philosophy.
The trope of the crowd returns in the stories "Tomorrow" and "Kong Yiji," in
which the most prominent manifestations of the crowd are the patrons of the Universal
Prosperity tavern, a common symbolic locale in Lu Xun's early fiction. In "Tomorrow"
the crowd is characterized by its nonchalant approach to the sick man's suffering, a
dichotomy mirrored and extrapolated upon in The Death o f Ivan Ilych, as we will see in
Section 4. In "Kong Yiji," the titular sick man is a unique confluence of characteristics,
for he also bears an uncanny resemblance to the crowd that ridicules him. As such, Kong
Yiji provides a valuable insight into Lu Xun's perspectives on the crowd and their values.
Leo Lee, author of Voices from the Iron House (1987), argues that Lu Xun's
multifaceted use of narrative voice and his distinctive use of both third and first person
narration qualifies him as a major innovator in modern Chinese literature. Lu Xun's
narration styles create links between stories, which in turn allows the reader to see a
dialogue between the conflicts in each story. Both "Diary of a Madman" and "Kong Yiji"
are primarily written in the first person, and each contains a physically and
psychologically tortured sick man, who then dies. Each sick man is at odds with the
crowd, but the sick men exist at two ends of a spectrum. In "Diary of a Madman," the
sick man is a harbinger of modernity, as evidenced by his insights into the morals of his
family and his examination of the past. In "Kong Yiji," the sick man is a product of the
past, unable to reconcile his education and his upbringing with the mores of the
6
succeeding generation. The sick man in each story, one representing the past and the
other the future, leads a tortured life that culminates in a miserable death, causing the
reader to question the value of modernity. "Medicine" and "Tomorrow" are written in the
third person, and both concern a son's illness, and the type of help he receives. Where
"Diary of a Madman" and "Kong Yiji" examine the sick man, "Medicine" and
"Tomorrow" question the values of the crowd. All four stories ask the questions: What
are the virtues of conforming to the crowd? What are the virtues of fighting the crowd?
Is it possible to create a society founded upon empathetic and genuine relationships?
What are the virtues of modernity, and can these virtues be fully realized? What in the
past is worth salvaging, and if there is nothing, how can the prior traditions be fully
destroyed? Lu Xun's ambivalence, exacerbated by the similarities in narration styles,
offers neither answers nor explications - Lu Xun only evokes discomfort and provides
possibilities, demanding that the reader interrogate his own values.
I. Psychological sickness: “Diary of a Madman”
Lu Xun's internal conflicts manifested early: "Diary of a Madman"
simultaneously represents Lu Xun's hope and pessimism for intellectuals in modern
China. Published in 1918 in the journal New Youth, “Diary of a Madman” is Lu Xun’s
first widely published work and serves as a prime example of Lu Xun’s blending of
classic Chinese literature with modern Russian literature. The gap between Chinese
7
literature and modem European literature can be interpreted temporally as well as
spatially. The importation of modem European culture into China created a conflict
between the newly introduced ideas and established Chinese mores, a friction that
resulted in the revolutionary Chinese writers of the early twentieth century. Lu Xun’s
early fiction is product of an epoch characterized by the influx of foreign literature,
including philosophy (Frederich Nietzsche), literature (Nikolai Gogol), and biology
(Charles Darwin). Lu Xun refers to these both obliquely and overtly, so interpreting Lu
Xun’s symbolic early fiction requires an understanding of European and Russian
literature.
The form and title of "Diary of a Madman," taken from the Gogol story of the
same name, demonstrate this blending. The body of “Diary of a Madman” reads as a
combination of a classical Chinese essay, a personal note (hiji) and travel accounts dating
as far back as the Ming dynasty (Lee, 53). The journal, which forms the bulk of the text,
is preceded by a prologue describing the narrator’s brother, which creates an aspect of
intensity to the journal and emphasizes the narrator’s emotional, subjective description of
his descent into insanity, while casting a calm objectivity over the narrator’s
brother. This juxtaposition of narrative styles allows “Diary of a Madman” to be read as
a parody of classical Chinese essay, as the Madman's insanity is imputed by the third
person narration. This narration resembles the form of a classical essay, which is usually
characterized by strong and often moralistic statements of opinion. This contrasts with
8
Lu Xun's typically stolid narration style, which David Pollard, in his book The True Story
ofL uX un, argues is one of the main indications of Lu Xun's "modernity:"
The stories that followed [The Diary of a Madman], however, owed their
success as works of literature to the deletion of any overt message and the
suppression of any show of sentiment on the part of the author. As
classical Chinese literature was given precisely to extravagant expression
of sentiment, this was itself a mark of modernity. (211-2)
Pollard overstates the case about the tone of the classical essay, but the basic point is
valid. The juxtaposition also leaves the narrator's fate open to interpretation: is he
“cured," as the brother suggests, or is he finally, as the narrator fears, “consumed”?
This juxtaposition of classical Chinese with modern European form is
characteristic of Lu Xun. By delving into modern European literature, he seeks to
understand the possibility of infusing Chinese values with modern, European forms of
living. Lu Xun is consequently a man caught between the worlds of the ancient and the
modern (with a distrust of both), and this liminality is mirrored in the forms and language
of his stories, creating a unique conflation of styles. "Diary of a Madman's" combination
of first- and third-person narration allows the reader to empathize with multiple
perspectives and encourages the story to be read on several different levels. On one
9
hand, because it is written in the style of a classical Chinese essay, two arguments could
be made: that the unnamed main narrator represents the Chinese mores imploding upon
themselves, or that the narrator's mental illness is an innate aberration separate from
social influences. As in a Poe or Hoffmann story, the paranoia created by living in a
society of mutual consumption was, whether conscious or not, at the base of every
individual’s psychology living in China at that time. In Freudian terms, this suspicion is
a projection of one’s own thoughts and feelings, similar to the seemingly mad murder of
the old man in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." The journal's subjectivity emphasizes the
isolated nature of the Madman's suffering, thereby casting doubt on the validity and
veracity of the Madman's insights. For example, the story opens:
Tonight the moon is very bright. I have not seen it for over thirty years, so
today when I saw it I felt in unusually high spirits. I began to realize that
during the past thirty-odd years I have been in the dark; but now I must be
extremely careful. Otherwise why should that dog at the Chao house have
looked at me twice? I have reason for my fear. (1)
In a Poe or Hoffman story, in which paranoia is omnipresent, the introduction represents
this paranoia as normally manifesting itself unconsciously. As such, the Madman's
paranoia is a result of his attempts to destroy his own social conditioning, and each
10
journal entry is an attempt to examine his own values as they emerge from his
unconscious. However, as he has given the story the title of a popular Russian story, Lu
Xun could also be raising the question of importing modernity into China. The very form
and title of "Diary of a Madman" invites questions regarding the conflict between modern
European and Chinese culture.
The form of “Diary of a Madman” is mirrored in its content; the blending of
classical Chinese and European forms is seen in Lu Xun’s characteristic use of symbols
throughout the story. This can be seen in the first line - the first “entry” - of the story:
“The moon is bright tonight.” The emphasis on the moon is repeated throughout the
story. In European traditions, the moon is etymologically connected with insanity (luna
being the Latin root for both “lunar” and “lunatic”); examples of this can be seen in the
legend of the werewolf s transformation during the full moon and the modern statistic
indicating higher Emergency Room admittance during the full moon, especially for
injuries incurred during violent crimes (Blackman & Catalina, 1973) as well as
exacerbations of mental illnesses (Templer & Veleber, 1980). However, in the Chinese
canon, especially in Confucian and Chan traditions, the moon, by virtue of its reflection
of the sun, is a symbol of the teacher and of enlightenment; this is seen in the Chan koan
regarding teaching as a “finger pointing to the moon” and the “dewdrop reflecting the
image of the moon.” The moon is a symbol of enlightenment for many reasons: it is
bright (PJj), which is also a verb that means "to realize, the understand"; it is round (HI),
which suggests completeness. In these two interpretations, we find a reiteration of Lu
11
Xun’s ambivalence about modernity and the continued motif of sickness, both physical
and psychological, in Lu Xun’s writing. The psychological sickness caused by mental
illness represents the manner by which insight is treated in society: in a successful
revolution, these insights will either be distorted by their mass consumption, or, in the
event that the revolution is a failure, individuals possessing insights will be “consumed”
by the crowd.
However, the bulk of "Diary of a Madman" was influenced by Frederich
Nietzsche, as Lu Xun notes in the preface to his second fiction collection in The
Complete Works ofL u X u n (LXQJ, vol. 6, p. 238-9). Lu Xun's intellectual relationship
with Nietzsche is evinced outside of "Diary of a Madman,” as Lu Xun also translated
Thus Spoke Zarathustra's "Prologue.” Frederich Nietzsche, in both his life and writing, is
the embodiment of the sick man trope, a fate Nietzsche himself appeared to acknowledge,
if not embrace. This is seen not only in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but also in Nietzsche's
early lectures, in which Nietzsche repeatedly tells the historical parable of Diogenes, a
man who walked through town during the day with a lit lantern with the hope of finding a
“genuine human.” For this and other peculiar behavior (which could easily have
qualified Diogenes as mentally ill), Diogenes was subject to ridicule and contempt.
These are parallel punishments, although admittedly less severe, to those meted out in
“Diary of a Madman.” Nietzsche's identification with Diogenes was so strong that,
during the time in which he lectured on Diogenes, he took to signing his letters
"Diogenes Laertiades" (Pre-Platonic Philosophers, xliv). This identification with
12
Diogenes became prophetic: Nietzsche lived a life consumed by a similar search, but one
that culminated in tragedy: Nietzsche, still the youngest man to be appointed Chair of
Classical Philology at the University of Basel, began his life steeped in genius, but spent
the last ten years of his life catatonic at an asylum. This correlation between genius and
mental illness, seen in the biographies of Diogenes and Nietzsche, is shared by Lu Xun's
anonymous Madman.
"Diary of a Madman" is littered with symbolic references to animals, an
idiosyncratic and befuddling device until compared with similar poetic references in Thus
Spoke Zarathustra. Lu Xun uses animal-themed adjectives (with the repeated mentions of
“fangs”), similes (“Fierce as a lion, cowardly as a rabbit, cunning as a fox . . “the
children stare at me like wild beasts”) and metaphor (comparing both an old man and the
Zhao’s dog to a “carrion”-consuming hyena), and in one standout passage specifically
compares animals and humans: “Primitive men probably did eat human flesh. But their
thinking changed, developed over time, and some of them stopped - they were
determined to become human, genuinely human.” Viewed in the context of “Diary of a
Madman,” Thus Spoke Zarathustra turns the tale of human consumption into a comment
on human spiritual evolution. If the eponymous narrator of “Diary of a Madman” is not
read ironically, human cannibalism, used by Lu Xun to present a hyperbolic
representation of ancient Chinese customs, is a natural stage of human
evolution. However, to become “genuinely human” (or the “overman” in Nietzsche’s
terms), one must quit cannibalism. The animal symbolism conveys hope for modern
13
China by indicating that though, in Lu Xun's view, modern manifestations of NeoConfucian mores, specifically Qing dynasty Neo-Confucian mores, are below human
standards, we have an innate sense of a moral standard higher than Neo-Confucianism
that is shared by both the main narrator of “Diary of a Madman” and the main character
in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In both cases the crowd is unwilling or unable to understand
these conceptions, often with pernicious consequences to the bearer of insights. The
symbol of the animal equates Neo-Confucian societal mores to animalistic standards, and
intimates that a different value system is necessary to create “genuine humans.” This
comparison between animalistic and genuinely humanistic standards is most significant
in the parable in the "Prologue" of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which a man is walking a
tightrope above a crowd when, in the middle of the rope, a jester comes and knocks the
performer to the ground. Zarathustra explains this allegory:
All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you
want to be the ebb of the great flood and even go back to the beasts rather
than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a
painful embarrassment. And man shall be that for the overman: a
laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from
worm to man, and much in you is still worm . . . . Man is a rope, tied
between beast and overman - a rope over an abyss. (12-14)
14
For Lu Xun a similar rope between beast and “overman” exists, but in “Diary of a
Madman’s” implicit references to Nietzsche's “Prologue,” the allegory carries different
meanings. The jester still represents the complacency that opposes the overman’s
evolution, but as Lu Xun sees it, this complacency lies in Neo-Confucianism, an ideology
preventing the realization of its member’s full human potential.
Besides appropriating Nietzsche's biography and allegorical use of animals, Lu
Xun appears to incorporate Thus Spoke Zarathustra to conclude "Diary of Madman.”
Again, the last lines of the diary appear scattered, apparently disconnected to the other
entries: "Are there children who have not yet eaten human flesh? Save the children" (31).
Similar sentiments are found in Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
Alas, where shall I climb now with my longing? From all mountains I
look out for fatherlands and motherlands. But home I found nowhere; a
fugitive am I in all cities and a departure at all gates. Strange and a
mockery to me are the men of today to whom my heart recently drew me;
and I am driven out of fatherlands and motherlands. Thus I now love only
my children's land, yet undiscovered, in the farthest sea: for this I bid my
sails search and search. In my children I want to make up for being the
child of my fathers - and to all the future, for this today. (121) (original
emphasis)
15
Lu Xun's distrust in his own culture creates the parallels between this passage, notably
found in the chapter entitled "On the Land of Education,” and the conclusion of “Diary of
a Madman.” Children have not yet been formed by the tradition Lu Xun abhorred, and
subsequently represent hope for the future. Lu Xun's emphasis on progression from NeoConfucian mores to the hopes inherent in modem China becomes increasingly relevant
when one observes China in relation to the rest of the world during the early 20th
century. As Lu Xun wrote in an essay published by New Youth several months after
"Diary of a Madman":
The Chinese always have an air of ego-mania - unfortunately it is not the
"ego-mania" of an individualist, but the collective kind of "patriotic ego­
mania." This is the reason why after her failure in competing with other
cultures China still cannot strive to improve. The individualist kind of ego­
mania is eccentricity; it means to declare war on the mundane crowd.
(LXQJ vol. 1 p. 163)
This distrust encouraged Lu Xun to embrace European ideas, such as Nietzsche's
philosophy, but also other popular theories of the time, including Darwin's evolutionary
theory and Marxist philosophy.
16
Thus we can return to the Lu Xun's use of animals in "Diary of a Madman.” The
parallel uses of animals in “Diary of a Madman” and Thus Spoke Zarathustra shows
society's impact on spiritual evolution, while Darwin's theories, and their relation to
"Diary of a Madman" causes the reader to observe the spiritual evolution of Chinese
society. The distinction between animals and humans in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
suggests that the symbols of “Diary of a Madman” allude to society's harmful effects on
the individuals living within that society. Leo Lee observes that, in addition to providing
social and spiritual commentary, the animal symbols also allow the reader to read “Diary
of a Madman” on a biological level (56). This sensitive interpretation is based on the
distinction between human and animal, but instead of this distinction occurring on a
spiritual level, this interpretation appropriates Darwin’s biological distinction between
human and animal. The theory of evolution is a biological continuum analogous to
Nietzsche’s spiritual continuum, with man being the culmination of natural processes
rather than a process of spiritual evolution. The Madman implies that one function of
society is to continue these processes of nature, lest man be returned to a prior phase of
evolution:
Primitive men probably did eat human flesh. But their thinking changed,
developed over time, and some of them stopped - they were determined to
become human, genuinely human. Those who wouldn’t give it up
17
remained reptiles, some of them turning into fish, birds or monkeys, then
finally men. The shame of the cannibal before the non-cannibal! (28)
The biological reading of "Diary of a Madman" adds another dimension to Lu Xun's
emphasis on progression from the Qing dynasty Chinese mores to his hopes for modern
China.
After the oblique reference to biological progression, “Diary of a Madman”
describes various instances of cannibalism throughout Chinese history. What exactly, are
the Neo-Confucian mores, here represented by cannibalism, to which Lu Xun and the
other May Fourth writers were so adamantly opposed, and why are these represented in
“Diary of a Madman ” as cannibalism? Because Neo-Confucianism explicitly structures
the family as a microcosm of society, it is profitable to identify and discuss three familial
relationships presented in “Diary of a Madman": the relation of the sister to the family,
the relation between the two depictions of the younger brother (before and after his
revelation) and the relationship between the younger brother and the older brother.
At the end of the story, the main narrator discusses the death of his younger sister,
and comes to the conclusion that she was eaten by the family:
18
My sister, I remember, died while my brother was managing the
household. He probably fed her secretly to us, by mixing her into our
food. (31)
The consumption of the sister is the most obvious delineation of Lu Xun’s criticism of
Neo-Confucianism. Neo-Confucianism defines women as secondary to and lesser than
men, with less potential to become “genuine humans.” This is seen in the Neo-Confucian
Zhu Xi's compilation entitled "The Way of the Family":
Master Zhu said: To do wrong is unbecoming for a wife, and to do good
is also unbecoming for a wife. A woman is merely to be obedient to what
is proper. If a daughter does nothing wrong, that is enough. If she does
good, then likewise, that is neither a favorable nor a desirable thing. Only
spirits and food are her concern, and not to occasion sorrow to her parents
is all that is called for. Mengzi's mother said, "The proper ritual conduct
of a woman is to prepare the five grains for food, ferment the wine, care
for one’s mother- and father-in-law, mend clothes, and that is all."
(.Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy, 296)
19
The consumption actualized in “Diary of a Madman” is Neo-Confucian patriarchy's
consumption of the potential of the apparently lesser categories of persons.
Because the May Fourth Movement brought communism into the Chinese
political atmosphere, an analogous relationship between the treatment of disparate social
classes in the Communist Manifesto and “Diary of a Madman” must be made. Just as the
Communist Manifesto states that the bourgeois are as negatively affected by capitalism as
the proletariat, so does Lu Xun imply that the hierarchal structure is pernicious even to
those belonging to relatively privileged groups. When the younger brother begins to
reflect on his own consumption of others before his revelation, he begins to realize that
he, too, lacks humanity. The argument proceeds along the following lines: No one under
the Neo-Confucian system is capable of becoming a “genuine human," for to become
“genuinely human," one must lead a life that is built upon mutually beneficial human
relations. This is a difficult concept to grasp, especially as much of Neo-Confucian
thought encourages mutually beneficial human relationships. For example, Zhu Xi, in
the same compilation, states:
The feelings parents have for a child are that of inexhaustible tenderness
and love, and a desire that they be intelligent and firmly established. This
is what is called a Sincere mind. (294)
20
However, there is a great difference between the origins of Confucianism in the 3rd
century BC, Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism in the 12th century, and the Neo-Confucianism
experienced in the Qing dynasty in the early 20th century. The intentions of
Confucianism, initially predicated upon symbiotic relationships, had transmuted into
moral pedantry: respect had been replaced by servility, familial propriety by subjugation,
and reverence traded for superstition. In a Nietzschean fashion, the Madman's revelatory
suffering, regarding the separation between the "spirit" and the "specter" of
Confucianism, begets his social and spiritual evolution. This suffering results from a
conflict of identities: the younger brother realizes that though he was in a position in the
family structure to “consume,’*this negatively affected him as much as those he
consumed, and he now wants to not only extricate himself from the culture of
consumption, but also wants to help others become “genuinely human.”
Throughout “Diary of a Madman” the younger brother constantly beseeches the
elder brother, trusting his brother with his own insights regarding the eating of human
flesh. The older brother remains scornful until the end of the speech, at which point the
“color drains dreadfully from his face” and a crowd forms outside the house. The elder
brother then appears to protect both the younger brother and the community's norms by
attributing the outburst to the younger brother's insanity. After this incident, the journal
become more and more distraught (Entry XI: “The sun will not come out”) and distrait
(Entry XII: “Further thought is painful”), and ends on an apparent non-sequitur that
becomes coherent only in relation to similar incongruities in the introduction (“the
21
brother had long since made a recovery and had left home to wait for an appropriate
official post to fall vacant”). These entries lead the reader to conjecture that the elder
brother may have eaten the younger brother, or at best, that the younger brother has been
coopted by the hegemonic discourse and actually taken up a post - which is,
metaphorically, the same as being eaten. This consumption implies a dark destiny for
those who possess and express critical insights regarding the surrounding culture, and
implies that Neo-Confucian hegemony is insuperable.
Though the Madman's insights are characteristic of May Fourth literature, the
consumption marks Lu Xun’s difference from his contemporaries. Gloria Davies
remarks: “Unlike his contemporaries, who valorized the speed and acceleration of
revolutionary change, Lu Xun dwelt on the belated arrival of true insight as a tragic
ordeal” (12). These insights are primarily a modem critique of Neo-Confucian
mores. The efficacy of these insights is questioned by the brother’s prologue, which
invites interpretation of the narrator's fate: is he “cured” and sent to a sanatorium, as the
elder brother suggests, or is he finally consumed by the crowd he so feared? Either
interpretation conveys pessimism: if he is “cured,” his insights become irrelevant and
transient, and if he is consumed, the insight is isolated, overwhelmed and made irrelevant
by the crowd's opposition.
II. Physical sickness: “Medicine"
22
Lu Xun's belief that literature could not instigate a successful revolution is
exposed not only in psychological sickness like the Madman's but in physical sickness as
well. The most prominent, obvious (and at times confusing) example of this is
■‘Medicine,” which Leo Lee argues is the most symbolic of Lu Xun’s early
fiction. “Medicine,” like "Diary of a Madman," appears in the collection Outcry, the
preface of which notably opens with: “When I was young, I too had many dreams ..
These dreams are the lofty ideals of Lu Xun’s May Fourth contemporaries, and by
referring to his youth to speak pejoratively of these dreams, Lu Xun implicitly and
ironically questions the value of writing. “Medicine” has many of the same motifs and
themes as “Diary of a Madman.” However, where the Madman’s psychological illness in
“Diary of a Madman” embodies a critique of Qing dynasty Chinese mores, physical
illnesses in “Medicine” offers a critique of literature and social revolution.
There are both biographical and intellectual explanations for Lu Xun’s pessimism
about Chinese social literature in the early twentieth century. Before the success of
“ Diary of a Madman,” Lu Xun was a significant literary failure on several counts: his
literary magazine New Life sold forty-one copies of 1500 hundred printed; a manifesto
with the idyllic title, “On the Power of Mara Poetry,” was equally unsuccessful; and Lu
Xun forwent several teaching posts before accepting a government job (Lovell, xviii).
One could argue that these failures contributed to Lu Xun’s pessimism (or realism) about
the idealistic literature of the May Fourth Movement. His failures, one could argue,
tempered the hopefulness suffusing the times, lending Lu Xun's writing an ironic
23
maturity that other May Fourth writers lacked. However, one must not dissect an
author’s work from a strictly biographical approach. Instead, we may credit Lu Xun with
insights either into the social aspect of human nature, or the impression that the social
realm is unable to nurture certain aspects of human nature, the latter recalling the isolated
temperament of Nietzsche’s Overman. Whether these insights are due to Lu Xun’s
exposure to both Chinese and European literature, some kind of innate perspicacity (Julia
Lovell says that “Lu Xun distinguished himself from less disciplined contemporaries
through . . . his critical intelligence and sardonic humor”), or his previous literary
failures, his ambivalent approach to literature is evident in his preface to A Call To Arms:
Imagine an iron house having not a single window and virtually
indestructible, in which there are many people soundly asleep who are
about to die of suffocation. Yet from slumber to demise - it does not
cause them to feel the sorrow of impending death. Now if you raise a
shout to wake up a few of the relatively light sleepers, making these
unfortunate few suffer the agony of irrevocable death, do you really think
you are doing them a good turn?
Lu Xun wrote this in response to a request for stories from Qian Xuantong’s, the
publisher of New Youth. Though on the surface this famous ‘Iron House’ quote is rather
24
melodramatic, it intimates that literature, particularly Lu Xun’s writing, has the power to
revolutionize the masses. Also, one cannot ignore Lu Xun’s prolific output during the
primary years of the May 4th Movement. Lu Xun’s apparent pessimism may have even
been a careful measure to protect himself from further failure. Whether these writings
were meant to assuage his sense of failures or to promulgate sentiments similar to his
contemporaries, Lu Xun reflected in a public statement in 1933:
As for why I wrote fiction, I still uphold the principle of "enlightenment’
of more than a decade ago. I think it must ‘serve life’ and furthermore
reform life . . . Thus my subjects were often taken from the unfortunate
people in this sick society; my aim was to expose the disease as to draw
attention to its cure. (Emphasis added.)
In “Medicine,” the most obvious symbols are the child's sickness and the means
by which his parents seek to cure him. The two children in the story, one of whose blood
is supposed to cure the other’s consumption, are linked by their names: one has the
surname ‘Hua’, while the other has the surname ‘Xia’. Combined, these two form the
compound ‘Hua-Xia’, the ancient name for China (Lee, 66). Because of this, and
because of the children's linked fetes, the reader can see a temporal connection between
25
the children: Xia is the social revolution that is occurring in Lu Xun’s time, and Hua
represents the fate of China after this social revolution.
Shuan tries to cure the younger Hua Shuan's consumption, of which we are subtly
informed early in the story (“A coughing fit erupted inside the small back room”), by a
mantou dipped in blood of the revolutionary. While Hua Shuan is consuming the
mantou, we see the connection between the ill-fated characters: “as if it were his own life
he were holding between finger and thumb,” an oblique cannibalism mirrored by the
parents who watch him eat with “an odd gleam in their eyes - as if they wanted to pour
something into him, and take something out in return.” To further emphasize the
proximity of life and death, Lu Xun mentions the similarity in shape between the mantou
and the graves: “Both sides [of the graveyard] bulged with grave mounds, like the tiered
crowns of steamed bread.”
“Medicine” culminates with the presence of a crow, a symbol analogous to the
moon in “Diary of a Madman” in two regards. One, as the crow's significance varies
across cultures, the symbol is ambiguous, and two, for each symbol’s placement in the
two stories: The moon is mentioned in the first line of “Diary of a Madman” while the
last paragraphs of “Medicine” center around the crow, each placement drawing attention
to the significance of the symbol. The crow’s ambivalent meaning, like the moon,
reflects Lu Xun’s ambivalent perspectives on literature. In Chinese tradition the crow is
an evil omen, because of its habit of eating decomposing flesh (Li Xifan, 344). To
complicate matters, at the time of the story's publication, the bird was generally
26
interpreted as a symbol of hope for social revolution (Lee, 86). Therefore, to end the
story with a crow presents conflicting comments on revolution.1 The impassive presence
of the crow, "as if cast in iron," is another subtle reference to Russian literature. Lu Xun
translated Leonid Andreev and published two of his stories in Anthology o f Foreign
Fiction in 1909 (Hanan, 62). One of these stories was the short story "Silence," which
culminates with the lines:
"My dear!" He stretched up toward his wife and gazed into her eyes. But
neither forgiveness nor anger was to be found in them. Perhaps she had
forgiven him, perhaps she even pitied him, but her eyes showed nothing at
all; they were still and silent. And silence reigned over that lonely,
desolate house. (62)
Patrick Hanan argues that "Silence" forms the foundation for the end of "Medicine":
"There is thus a slight but distinct thematic and stylistic similarity between the main
movement of "Silence" and the concluding movement of "Medicine" ("The Technique of
1 With roots in Freudian dream interpretation, Jungian psychology seeks to explain the hum an psyche by
exam ining arts, specifically literature, across epochs. In Jungian psychology, the crow is not a harbinger o f
doom , but rather the m anifestation o f the hum an psyche that lies in perpetual shadow. In this
interpretation, the crow could connote an aspect o f the M ay Fourth revolution unacknow ledged by Lu
X u n ’s contem poraries: its failure. The cro w ’s flight tow ard the horizon em phasizes this possibility.
27
Lu Hsun's Fiction," 63). If so, then the crow evokes hope, death and despair, but also a
paralyzing emptiness.
Leo Lee argues for a Taoist interpretation: although the mother demands that the
crow assuage her grief, the crow ignores her demand in favor of more meaningful relief.
Instead of landing on the grave, the crow’s flight toward the horizon asks the mother to
ruminate not only on her son’s death, but also on the significance of her and her son's life
in relation to the universe, again making the direction of crow’s flight as significant as its
presence.
The only clue Lu Xun gives to the “meaning” of the crow is its juxtaposition to
the wreath the revolutionary's mother discovers upon her son’s grave. Whether we take
the crow as an augury of death or a portent of ignorance, or its flight to represent a
cosmic message or the possible failure of a revolution, the wreath of flowers
complements the crow, thereby contributing to the ambivalence of the story. Many
interpreters argue that Lu Xun added the wreath of flowers as a positive symbol, a
message of hope from Lu Xun not only to his audience but also his literary
contemporaries (Lee, 86). The colorful wreath of flowers is placed on the revolutionary
son's grave, and Hua Dama cannot help but compare it to the small flowers covering her
son’s grave, notable especially in relation to the lack of natural buds adorning the
surrounding trees. In addition, Hua Dama can only see dead patches of earth on the grave
and must look for some time before seeing the flowers, even when the revolutionary’s
mother indicates their existence. The flowers on Hua Shuan’s grave are scattered and
28
“undaunted by the cold.” Both their size and their bluish-white color carry connotations
of death. The combination of the quality, ephemerality and color of the flowers imply a
purpose to the revolutionary's life that was lacking in the “poor” son. Hua Dama
shudders while she compares the flowers: “She was unaccountably troubled by a sense of
dissatisfaction, or inadequacy.”
The flowers are not the only difference between the two graves: the path between
the graves also serves as a symbolic separation. This “natural boundary line” (a word
choice denoting power disparities in society) cleaves the graves into two categories: the
executed and the poor. This furthers the story’s main trope: not only will the lives of the
revolutionaries be intrinsically separated from the poor, but even in death the two will
remain separate. This pessimism is a comment on the ineffectiveness of the social
revolutionaries, but a thread of deeper meaning can perhaps be found in the mothers of
the deceased sons (who contribute a great deal of pathos, regret and premonition to
“Medicine”). Although the graves are separated by the path and are adorned by flowers
of varying quality, the mothers leave the graveyard together.
Lu Xun, characteristically taciturn, describes Hua Dama’s feelings as either
“unaccountable” or inexplicable. Perhaps these emotions surprise Hua Dama because
they are not just her own, but rather arise in response to Xia’s mother's feelings. For
instance, the first of these strange feelings occurs after Hua Dama cries: her sensation of
expectation, of “waiting for something - what, she couldn’t say - to happen,” is
immediately followed by Shuan’s mother's appearance at the graveyard. Another
29
example occurs during the waiting following Xia’s mother's invocation to the crow,
during which time other mourners “weave between the graves.” Then Hua Dama feels an
urge to leave the graveyard with Xia's mother, an urge followed by the flight of the crow
toward the horizon. In effect, their son's deaths tie the two mothers together on a level
below consciousness, a connection that is also suggested by the position of the son’s
graves: though separated by the path, they lie on equal sides of the path.
Lu Xun’s use of symbolism is complicated by the influence of European literature
in twentieth century China. Lu Xun uses the trope of the sick man to represent themes
common in his writing: psychological sickness, as seen in “Diary of a Madman,”
represents his critique of Neo-Confucian mores, while physical sickness, as seen in
“Medicine,” critiques both the hope and risk of social revolution for the future of China.
The imagery of sickness shows Lu Xun’s ambivalence toward social revolution,
questioning both its possibility for failure and indicting those who do not participate in
social revolution. Reading this imagery in the contexts of both European and Chinese
literature, culture and religion enrich the possible interpretation of the story and suggest
that Lu Xun's global erudition injected irony into his symbols.
III. The Crowd in “Diary of a Madman” and “Medicine”
The contrast between the sick man and the crowd is most pivotal in “Diary of a
Madman” and “Medicine.” In Lu Xun’s early fiction, the trope of the crowd manifests in
30
both specific characters as well as unnamed secondary and tertiary characters. “Diary of
a Madman" presents the most prominent juxtaposition of the crowd and the sick man: the
representative of the crowd is the Madman’s elder brother, while the younger brother, the
Madman, is the sick man. They are pitted against each other, both ideologically and
physically, and Lu Xun offers a first-hand account of this confrontation. The elder
brother, who represents Lu Xun's perception of Qing dynasty-era China, is mainly
responsible for the figurative cannibalism that takes place in "Diary of a Madman.”
The patrons at the cafe where the sick son's family live and work in "Medicine"
parallel the elder brother in “Diary of a Madman”: Mr. Kang, the patron who informs
Shuan of the healing properties of the blood-soaked mantou, shares the Madman’s elder
brother’s conventionality, selfishness, and superstition. Mr. Kang is the foil to the sick
man in the story, the younger Shuan, as well as to the younger Shuan's complementary
character, the revolutionary Xia Yu'er. This is shown by his judgement of of Xia Yu'er's
death: "'He threw his life away, the idiot'" (41). These sentiments are echoed by the other
patrons of the cafe. Even a nameless crowd member in Chapter I echoes the hunger of
the elder brother in "Diary of a Madman": "Shuan now noticed passers-by - though the
lines in the man's face remained hazy in the fading darkness, Shuan caught a predatory,
famished glean in his eyes" (38). Later in "Medicine," another characteristic of the
nameless crowd is revealed:
31
"The crowd surged forward . . . Shuan watched them, the view beyond
blocked by the ranks of backs and extended necks - as if they were so
many ducks, their heads stretched upwards by an invisible puppeteer"
(38).
Comparing the characteristics of the sick men in "Medicine" and "Diary of a
Madman" gives us insights into the nature of the crowd. The sick men (and in the case of
"Medicine,” the families of the sick men) are empathetic, especially towards their family
members. The sick man's empathy is seen in Shuan’s quest to cure his ailing son, as well
as in the last chapters of "Diary of a Madman,” when the Madman becomes penitent over
his past cannibalism ("the memory of it, even now, is painful" [30]). The crowd, on the
other hand, is characterized by their cupidity, a trait made literal by the cannibalism in
"Diary of a Madman.” This lack of empathy can be seen also in "Medicine,” in the
attitude of the crowd Shuan fights through to purchase the blood-soaked mantou, as well
as in the hefty price Shuan must pay. In addition, the crowd is thoughtless and lack self­
reflection - they never question their lack of empathy.
But perhaps the most significant difference between the crowd and the sick man is
the singular aspect of the sick man versus the multiplicity of the crowd. This is important
to Lu Xun from sociological and spiritual perspectives: the former requires a Marxist
32
interpretation, while the latter is clarified by a return to Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke
Zarathustra.
There are major similarities between Marxist philosophy and the oblique
philosophy of Lu Xun’s early fiction, especially "Diary of a Madman" and "Medicine."
Lu Xun’s description of Neo-Confucianism parallels Marx’s description of capitalism:
both expostulate against former modes of living, and both are subsequently appropriated
by a regime with aims that differ from the original philosophy. If the crowd in Lu Xun is
Neo-Confucianism, the crowd in Marxism is capitalism. However, the greatest
similarities between Karl Marx and Lu Xun are their call for a revolution and creation of
a new society. For this to take place, the current society must reject its current values and
embrace a new mode of living. The crowd becomes something against which one must
fight: one must become singular, which in Marxism is a collective singularity, a
singularity predicated upon solidarity.
A similar case is found in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, with which much
of Lu Xun's early fiction shares a similar philosophy. Both Nietzsche and Lu Xun
emphasize trusting oneself in the face of the crowd, both in a spiritual sense and a
sociological sense. The sociological sense manifests as a struggle against the demands
society places on an individual, as well as the expectations and desires created by the
crowd, which are consequently internalized by individuals. We can see this struggle
against the values of the external crowd in the chapter titles of Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
33
“On the Rabble," “On the Love of the Neighbor," and “On the Flies of the Marketplace,"
and here:
Life is a well of joy; but where the rabble drinks too, all wells are
poisoned. I am fond of all that is clean, but I have no wish to see the
grinning snouts and the thirst of the unclean. They cast their eye into the
well: now their revolting smile shines up out of the well. They have
poisoned the holy water with their lustfulness; and when they called their
dirty dreams “pleasure,” they poisoned the language too. The flame is
vexed when their moist hearts come near the fire; the spirit itself seethes
and smokes where the rabble step near the fire. (96-7)
Immediately this quote recalls the language of "Diary of a Madman":
That woman scolding her son - 'I could eat you!' - those bleached faces
and bared fangs, their roars of laughter; the farmer's story; the signs are all
there. I now see that their speech is poisoned, their laughter knife-edged,
their teeth fearfully white —teeth that eat people. (23)
34
However, this passage does not necessarily elucidate the values of the crowd, nor does it
identify the "consumption" Lu Xun opposed. To do so, we must turn to another chapter
of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "On the New Idol," in which Nietzsche terms the crowd "the
superfluous":
Behold the superfluous! They gather riches and become poorer with them.
They want power and first the level of power, much money - the impotent
paupers! Watch them clamber, the swift monkeys! They clamber over
one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They
all want to get to the throne: that is their madness - as if happiness sat on
the throne. My brothers, do you want to suffocate in the fumes of their
snouts and appetites? Rather break the windows and leap to freedom.
Only where the state ends, there begins the human being who is not
superfluous. Where the state ends - look there, my brothers! Do you not
see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the overman? (50-1)
Therefore, unlike Marx, Nietzsche finds the external crowd completely unnecessary.
Nietzsche's sociological struggle against the external crowd is a spiritual version of the
class struggle Marx describes. Nietzsche is not a social reformer, nor does he wish to
incite a revolution and create a harmonious society that better encourages an individual’s
35
internal potential. Rather, Nietzsche wishes to create a physical separation between the
reader and the crowd, in the hopes that this physical separation will transmute into an
internal separation. Leo Lee observes the connections between the inner and outer lives
of Lu Xun's characters:
Physical deformities - a mole, a scar, a broken leg - are prominently
drawn, as if they were outward manifestations of an inner disease. This is
certainly in line with one of his statements of purpose: "My aim is to
expose the disease so as to draw attention to its cure." But the disease
which engaged his mind was primarily "spiritual.” His attention to
physical details and defects in characterization was meant to expose the
spiritual failings of a people enveloped in an abnormal society. (61)
In "Diary of a Madman," Lu Xun treads a delicate line between Marx and
Nietzsche's expostulation against the external crowd. The confusion caused by rejecting
external values could be the cause of the Madman’s vague desires: he wishes to
simultaneously incorporate both Marx's and Nietzsche's rejection of popular values and
subsequent reformation of values. The Madman begins the journal in an amateur
Nietzschean fashion by inquiring into the cause of his discontent: "My nights are
sleepless. Only thorough investigation will bring clarity" (23). He continues his inquiry
36
into the difference between himself and the crowd and comes to the conclusion that they
are cannibals: "My own brother was a cannibal! I was the brother of a cannibal!" (25).
However, rather than considering his insight as a virtue and further separating himself
from the crowd, he openly accuses them of their flaws, hoping to make them realize the
error of their ways. Therefore, in a Marxist fashion, he does not wish to turn his back on
current society, but to reject it openly, and create a culture that accords with his new­
found insight. This desire prompts the speech to his brother in Chapter X. Were his
insight more accurate, or if he were given more time to deepen his insight, he might have
anticipated the crowd's negative reaction, and not suffered either his brother's reaction or
his own self-doubt, which appears in the second-to-last journal entry: "With the weight of
four thousand years of cannibalism bearing down upon me, even if once I was innocent
how can I now face real humans?" (31). However, the Madman's ultimate failure,
whether it is his death or his cooptation, is not the result of the vastness of the crowd
against which he is fighting, nor is it due to the "weight of four thousand years.” Rather,
it is his failure to fuse Marx's philosophy with Nietzsche's. Lu Xun is a pessimist about
revolution not because he lacks faith in the crowd, but because he lacks faith in any
individual's ability to sufficiently influence the crowd.
IV. Universal Prosperity in "Tomorrow" and "Kong Yiji"
37
In Lu Xun's early fiction, the crowd manifests not only as individual characters
but also as institutions. A primary example of the latter is the Universal Prosperity
tavern, a location frequently featured in Lu Xun's stories. Examining Universal
Prosperity and its patrons in "Kong Yiji" and "Tomorrow" helps expose properties of the
crowd. This is caused not only by the prominence of the institution and its patrons in
each story, but also because of the analogies between "Kong Yiji" and "Diary of a
Madman" and the parallels between "Tomorrow" and "Medicine." Both "Kong Yiji" and
"Diary of a Madman" are written in the first person, but with a significant difference: the
first-person protagonist in "Diary of a Madman" is subsumed under sick man trope, while
the first-person narrator in "Kong Yiji" is subsumed under the crowd trope.
Consequently, the foil characters - the prominent secondary characters who have a direct
relation with the protagonist - are reversed in each story: the elder brother in "Diary of a
Madman" is the representative of the crowd, and Kong Yiji is the representative of the
sick man. "Medicine" and "Tomorrow," on the other hand, have three parallels: both are
written in the third person, the protagonists of both stories are concerned about the
physical illness of their child, and both protagonists are besieged and alienated by
members of the crowd. However, the sick man is represented differently in "Kong Yiji"
and "Tomorrow" from the sick man in "Diary of a Madman." In the latter story, the
sickness is a result of excess insight; in "Kong Yiji" and "Tomorrow," the protagonists'
absent, or misguided, intellect is intentionally reiterated.
38
There are several characters in "Tomorrow" who are part of the crowd, each
possessing specific traits and general qualities of the crowd. The characters of the crowd
are contrasted with the "virtuous," or empathetic, character in the story, the protagonist
Mrs. Shan. This contrast, especially evident in "Tomorrow," explores the nature of
suffering. The initial scene of "Tomorrow" is constructed around a comparison between
characters in adjacent but contrasting locations:
Only two establishments kept their lamps burning into the small hours.
One was Universal Prosperity, where a few comrades in cups clustered
around the bar to eat, drink, and generally be merry; the other was the
home of Mrs. Shan, a young widow of two year's standing, who lived next
door. Rude economic necessity - the need to make a living from spinning
for herself and her three-year-old son - also kept her up late. (46)
The spatial contrast is similar to the juxtaposition of the two graves in the final scene of
"Medicine," and the contrast is just as effective in "Tomorrow": one is forced to imagine
the lives contained within these two locales, one consumed by work, suffering and
loneliness, the other concerned with palliation through wine and superficial camaraderie.
In addition to these spatial and temporal descriptions, sound also plays an important role
in reflecting the nature of the characters in "Tomorrow," especially as "the two adjoining
39
establishments stayed awake into the night, and only Gong and his fellow drinkers would
hear any noise that was to be heard from Mrs. Shan's; or fail to hear it, in its absence"
(46). Universal Prosperity is illuminated by sound, as evinced by the habits of its
patrons: "Gong took a great, easy slug of his wine, and began crooning a popular love
song" ( 4 6 ) ; " . . . Ah-wu drinking at the bar, with Gong wailing his songs" (50).
Contrarily, Mrs. Shan's house is consumed by a silence that recalls “Medicine’s” crow:
"At this moment [during Gong's easy slug], Mrs. Shan next door was sitting on the edge
of the bed, cradling her son, Bao'er, as the spinning wheel stood silently by" (46); "Mrs.
Shan was sitting on the edge of her bed, crying, Bao'er stretched out next to her; the
spinning wheel stood silently by" (50); "The longer she thought, the more she noticed the
curiously excessive silence of the room. Getting up, she turned on the lamp. Now the
room seemed even quieter. She closed the door and returned to the edge of the bed, as if
in a trance, the spinning wheel standing silently by. The room was too quiet, too big, too
empty - an enormous void enveloping her, bearing down on her, stifling the breath out of
her" (51). The weaving of the spinning wheel represents Bao'er's life, and the spinning
wheel's silence emphasizes the impact of his death. The repeated mentions of Gong's
singing occur concurrently with the presence of the silent spinning wheel, most clearly
seen in the auditory descriptions of the final scene:
40
But at last she drifted off to sleep; and the silence claimed the room. Gong
and his red nose staggered out of the Universal Prosperity, working up to a
shrill falsetto encore: 'Oh, my darling! . . . Poor you . . . All alone . . ( 5 2 )
The spatial and auditory juxtapositions help illuminate the comparison between the sick
man's and the crowd's motives and emotions throughout "Tomorrow."
The most prominent representative of the crowd in "Tomorrow" is Blue-Skinned
Ah-wu. Ah-wu is one of two "hardcore" patrons of Universal Prosperity, and is the
primary foil character to Mrs. Shan. Ah-wu's traits are especially poignant in three
scenes in "Tomorrow": his presence at Universal Prosperity (the opening scene of
"Tomorrow"), his efforts to help Mrs. Wang carry Bao'er back from the pharmacy, and
his attitude during Bao'er's burial. Each of these scenes illuminate the disparity between
Ah-wu's actions and his motives, which are obvious in the initial scene but made more
distinct during subsequent scenes. When he first appears, Ah-wu is gathered with his
"comrade in cup," Red-Nosed Gong, with the intention to "eat, drink, and generally be
merry" (48). His motives of self-interest are reiterated while Mrs. Wang is carrying
Bao'er back from the pharmacy:
Although Mrs. Shan had indeed been hoping that Heaven would send
down a guardian angel of some kind, her strong preference would have
41
been for someone other than Ah-wu. But here he was, and after a few
attempts to demur, she submitted. Out stretched his arm, insinuating itself
down between her bosom and her child, until Bao'er was secured. Mrs.
Shan's breast surged with heat, the flush spreading across her face, and
back to her ears. (48)
Leo Lee argues that he offers to help Mrs. Wang because he "harbors a subdued sexual
feeling toward her" (73). This is made more apparent in his subsequent actions: Mrs.
Shan ignores his verbal advances, so he quickly hands the child back to Mrs. Shan before
they reach her house. In Ah-wu's third appearance, his self-interest takes another form: it
is no longer emotional or sexual, but financial. Immediately after Bao'er's death, Mrs.
Wang assumes control of the funeral affairs, and once again Ah-wu offers assistance.
However, he is appointed a lowly coffin bearer, an unpaid position, "to which honor Ahwu responded by scowling and swearing at her" (50), and as a result, fails to appear at the
funeral. Ah-wu's final scene forms the penultimate paragraph of "Tomorrow," in which
he and Red-Nosed Gong are found at the tavern of Universal Prosperity, unaffected by
the course of events in the story: "Ah-wu grabbed at Gong's shoulder, and the two of
them zigzagged off down the road, laughing and pushing at each other" (52).
42
The second representative of the crowd, Mrs. Wang, unlike Blue-Skinned Ah-wu,
functions as a representative of the crowd's approach to death, which is as distant as the
eponymous character's in Tolstoy's infamous short story "The Death of Ivan Illych":
The syllogism he had learnt from Kiezewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man,
men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," has always seemed to him
correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That
Caius - man in the abstract - was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he
was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate
from all others. (45)
Mrs. Wang's approach to death can be seen in her apathy towards the ailing Bao'er:
"You must have seen a lot of this thing over the years, Mrs. Wang. Would
you take a look at him for me?"
"Hmmm."
"What do you think?"
43
"Hmmm." Mrs. Wang took a long, hard look, nodded twice, then shook
her head twice. (49)
Similarly, after Bao'er dies, Mrs. Wang has no patience with the mourning Mrs. Shan:
Because Mrs. Shan wouldn't stop crying and wanting to take one last look
at her son, because she refused to give up hope, the lid didn't get nailed
down until the afternoon. In the end, Mrs. Wang mercifully lost patience
with her and yanked her away, as a confusion of hands scrabbled to fasten
the lid. (50)
A third way Mrs. Wang distances herself from death is her pedantic approach to
Bao'er's funeral obsequies. Though she ensures that the proper rituals are performed, she
forgets the sentiments the rituals represent. This absence of emotional depth or altruistic
sentiment makes her ulterior motives as insidious and self-serving as Ah-wu's, for this
absence increases the distance between the emotional Mrs. Shan and the callous crowd.
Mrs. Wang's observation of death is as abstract as Caius's, for though she submits to the
funeral customs, she has empathy for neither Bao'er nor the grieving Mrs. Shan.
44
The third character, Dr. Ho Xiaoxian, represents the crowd's approach to
medicine. From his peculiar triaging methods ("Four silver dollars bought Bao'er fifth
place in the queue" [47]) to the absence of attention he gives to Bao'er, the doctor is
arguably the most insensitive of the three characters. Ah-wu and Mrs. Wang are treated
with an ambivalence that is as notable as the wreath of flowers found at the end of
"Medicine":
Since Ah-wu failed to show up, the manager of the Universal Prosperity
hired two bearers - at a cost of two hundred and ten coppers each - on
Mrs. Shan's behalf, to carry the coffin to its final resting place in a
pauper's grave. Mrs. Wang then helped her to prepare food for anyone
who had moved a muscle or said a word in contribution. (51)
But no quarter is given to the doctor, and perhaps he is the most malevolent
characterization of the crowd. He is as greedy as the man who sells the mantou in
"Medicine," and his insensitivity is exacerbated by his flippant demeanor. The crowd's
behavior is Lu Xun's indictment of the lack of empathy in Chinese traditional norms, and
Dr. Ho Xiaoxian's diagnosis of Bao'er is the most obvious manifestation of this critique:
"'His Fire is vanquishing his Metal'" (47). As such, the doctor is the character that
historicizes the crowd's apathy and self-interest, helping the reader understand why Lu
45
Xun desires a shift from a culture revolving around superstition and subservience to a
future founded on science and empiricism.
The primary difference between these three characters and Mrs. Shan is their
approach to suffering. First and foremost, there is the lack of empathy - like the
callousness of the hefty charge for the mantou in "Medicine" - that Leo Lee calls "the
crowd's insensitivity to a member of its own kind" (73). To summon empathy for the
bereaved is to partake in and be willing to shoulder, and thus alleviate, another's pain. In
his desire to "generally be merry," Blue-Skinned Ah-wu represents the crowd's attitude
towards suffering in daily life. By being the apathetic arranger of Bao'er funeral, Mrs.
Wang represents the crowd's attitudes towards suffering during death, and the doctor's
ostensible pragmatism represents the medical profession's ineptitude and carelessness.
Mrs. Shan's suffering, already characterized by isolation and social ostracism, is
intensified by the crowd's unempathic response to her suffering. The primary distinction
between the sick men (and the sick men's families) and the crowd is their respective
approaches to suffering.
The machinations of the crowd in "Tomorrow" are reflected in the narrator's
ironic voice: "Mrs. Wang mercifully lost patience" (50), "his gallant craving quickly
satisfied" (49), "Mrs. Wang then helped [Mrs. Shan] prepare food for anyone who had
moved a muscle or said a word in contribution" (51). In addition, the narrator, with
almost comical persistence, reiterates the "backwater" nature of the town and Mrs. Shan's
simple-mindedness ("Mrs. Shan was a simple, uneducated sort of a woman" [47]). These
46
two reiterations are implications of the crowd, implying the ubiquity of this sort of town
and its inhabitants, as well as the perceptiveness of Mrs. Shan. By using such a blatantly
ironic voice, the narrator caricatures the crowd, allowing the reader to see the inanity of
the crowd's mode of existence. The final nature of the crowd is revealed in the last line of
"Tomorrow": "Silence descended on Luzhen. Only the darkness remained, agitating to
become tomorrow's first light, concealing itself within the howls of the village dogs"
(52).
In both "Tomorrow" and "Kong Yiji," Universal Prosperity tavern is an ironic
critique of the crowd. The primary distinction between the stories is the specific nature
of the crowd: In "Kong Yiji" the line between the sick man and the crowd is not so
distinct as it is in "Diary of a Madman," "Medicine," or "Tomorrow." In the latter three
stories, different facets of the crowd manifest in different characters, while the sick man
is presented as a separate character. However, the eponymous sick man in "Kong Yiji"
performs a different function: while he definitely qualifies as physically and
psychologically sick, he simultaneously presents characteristics of the crowd. This
enables Lu Xun to describe a sickness that, unlike the sicknesses in the previous three
stories, satirizes a particular group rather than offering a better alternative to the crowd’s
values. In "Kong Yiji," Lu Xun offers not so much a critique of Chinese intellectuals as a
critique of intellectuals who are unable to adapt to an era which demands a new kind of
intellectual. This malleable satire also criticizes the academic pedantry of NeoConfucianism, commenting on a system of intellectuals who are, regardless of the depth
47
of their learning, unable to earn a living. The narrator of “Kong Yiji,” an obvious
member of the crowd, makes this critique more poignant.
The story is essentially a short compilation of comments on Kong Yiji's gradual
descent into obscurity and presumed death. The narrator begins by informing the reader
of Kong Yiji's origins:
Somewhere in the distant past, the story went, Kong Yiji had received a
classical education, but it had never got him past even the lowest grade of
the imperial civil service examination. Since he had no head for any other
kind of business, he grew steadily poorer until he was on the point of
having to beg for food. Fortunately, he had a good writing hand - he could
have scraped by, copying out books. Unfortunately, he didn't have the
temperament for this, or indeed any work, preferring drinking to all other
occupations. (34)
This lack of intellectual promise begins his descent into poverty, his emotional separation
from the crowd and his subsequent eligibility for sick man status:
48
After half a bowl of wine, the flush had usually receded from Kong Yiji's
face, inviting bystanders to try something else: 'Can you really read, Kong
Yiji?' A look of scorn from their victim. Next: 'How come you never
managed to pass an exam?' This tended to hit home: his face would turn a
defeated grey, as he launched into another incomprehensibly classical
sputter. At which universal merriment would again prevail. (34)
Kong Yiji's lack of work, his penchant for drink, and the ridicule from members of
Universal Prosperity eventually take their toll on him:
He looked terrible: his face grey, gaunt, a thin, ragged cotton jacket over
his shoulders, his legs crossed beneath him, sitting on a rush sack that he
kept in place with a straw rope. 'Warm me a bowl of wine,' he repeated
when he caught sight of me. 'Is that Kong Yiji?' the manager craned
forward. 'You still owe me nineteen coppers!'. . . Drawing four coppers
out of a pocket in his tattered jacket, he placed them in my hand. His own
hand, I saw, was filthy from dragging himself along the ground. Soon
enough, he finished his wine and then, amid further laughter from the
assembled company, dragged himself off again . . . I never saw him again
- I suppose Kong Yiji really must have died. (36)
49
As is typical in Lu Xun's stories, Kong Yiji's inner life is mirrored in his physical
appearance, similar to the apparent psychological illness in "Diary of a Madman" or the
physical illnesses in "Tomorrow" and "Medicine." This mirroring device is similar to
those used throughout Lu Xun's stories, which typically are, as Leo Lee notes, "outward
manifestations of an inner disease." In "Kong Yiji," the outward deformities are physical
manifestations of the sick man's separation from the crowd. This is especially true in the
case of Kong Yiji, as the crowd causes his physical deformities:
'Another scar, Kong Yiji?' the assembled company would laugh the
moment he arrived in the tavern. 'Two bowls of wine, warm, and a plate
of aniseed beans,' he would order, ignoring his hecklers and lining nine
coppers up on the bar. The provocatively raucous chorus would begin
once more: 'Stealing again? (33)
Kong Yiji's physical deformities worsen as his position in society decays. His initial
scars accumulate throughout the story as Kong Yiji steals (clumsily) to compensate for
his unused and underappreciated intellect, until his legs are broken and he presumably
dies. Because of this, Kong Yiji possess all the traits the other sick Men: he is physically
50
deformed, psychologically inept, and ostracized by the crowd, traits which culminate in
his death at the end of the story.
There are several distinct sick man characteristics that Kong Yiji lacks: in "Diary
of a Madman," "Medicine" and "Tomorrow," sickness is signified by each sick man's
fight against the status quo. But Kong Yiji's downfall is that he does not fight against the
new or old status quo: he is, supposedly, given an opportunity to advance himself in
society, and instead falls into a life of poverty. This makes Kong Yiji a representative of
Lu Xun's typical ambivalence toward the relationship between intellectuals and society:
he is both separated from and a member of the crowd, a confused conglomeration
reminiscent of the mixture of Marxist and Nietzschean philosophies in "Diary of a
Madman" and "Medicine." This is compounded by the narrator's perspective: though the
narrator attributes Kong Yiji's penury to his temperament, the narrator ignores the fact
that, even with a classical education, Kong Yiji is unable to pass the lowest grades of
examination. The narrator's callousness critiques both the crowd and the intellectual
environment early twentieth century Neo-Confucianism creates. Like "Diary of a
Madman," Lu Xun uses the first-person perspective to provide ambivalence,
simultaneously indicting the inadequacies of the past and the callousness of the present.
While his physical deformities cast him as a sick man, his dress places him in the
limbo between sick man and crowd: "Kong Yiji was the only long-gowned drinker who
took his wine standing up" (33). The long gown signifies his position as an intellectual,
51
while his posture at the bar, in place of being seated within the confines of a comfortable
bar, indicates his poverty:
Only those dressed in the long scholar's gowns that distinguished those
who worked with their heads from those who worked with their hands
made for a more sedate, inner room, to enjoy their wine and food sitting
down. (32)
Kong Yiji's chosen manner of speaking is another way his appearance conveys his
inward characteristics. Kong Yiji's laziness and his refusal to work are not the only traits
of the crowd that Kong Yiji presents: his use of "archaic language" simultaneously
creates his sickness and casts him into the crowd. Kong Yiji's appearances in the story
are always accompanied by speech, emphasizing the importance of his abstruse argot.
The first instance of this occurs after he is accused of stealing books: "'Stealing books is
no crime! Is scholarship theft?' he would argue back, illustrating his point with a
perplexing smatter of archaisms: 'poverty and learning, oft twixt by jowl', etcetera,
etcetera" (33). His speech epitomizes his separation from the crowd, for the crowd
derives much of their amusement from his inability to express himself in common
vernacular. However, this use of language also makes him part of the crowd: he becomes
a relic of the past, a product of a sociocultural environment that no longer exists. Kong
52
Yiji's narrow-minded pedantry appears not only in his speech, but also in his dress, a
parallel Lu Xun emphasizes by juxtaposing the two descriptions: "His gown was filthy
and torn, as if it hadn't been mended or washed for over a decade. His speech was so
dusty with classical constructions you could barely understand him" (33). Thus, his
speech and his dress indicate a poorly-kept relic whose virtues are no longer relevant.
"Kong Yiji" has no hero. Where "Diary of a Madman" has a strange sort of
Nietzschean optimism, in that the main narrator's sickness, a product of insight, has the
potential to change his community for the better, Kong Yiji's sickness is a result of
absence of change. Kong Yiji represents a past that is unable to reform to the needs of
the future. A scene in which Kong Yiji interacts with the children of the community
shows this clearly:
Sometimes, hearing the sound of laughter, the local children would scurry
over to watch the fun, gathering around Kong Yiji. He would present each
with a single aniseed bean, which they would gulp down; they would then
remain implacably rooted to the spot, eyes fixed on the dish. 'Hardly any
left,' an unnerved Kong would stoop to tell them, his fingers sheltering the
dish. Straightening up, he would glance back at the beans, shaking his
head: 'Hardly any! Are the beans multitudinous in abundance?
53
Multitudinous in abundance they are not.' At which his young audience
would scatter hilariously. (35)
This passage is made especially poignant by Lu Xun's previous conception of children: in
"Diary of a Madman," the main narrator places his hope in the children, as they have not
yet been socialized by the community against which he is fighting. However, Kong Yiji
is ridiculed by children, indicating that the future is unable to accommodate Kong Yiji's
anachronistic and useless character. Consumption of food in Lu Xun is typically
symbolic of more significant consumption, as seen in "Diary of a Madman”:
I now realize I have unknowingly spent my life in a country that has been
eating human flesh for four thousand years. My sister, I remember, died
while my brother was managing the household. He probably fed her
secretly to us, by mixing her into our food. (31)
and "Medicine":
54
The boy picked up [the bun] and studied it. The strangest thing: as if it
were his own life we were holding between finger and thumb.. . . His
parents stood to either side, watching, an odd gleam to their eyes - as if
they wanted to pour something into him, and take something out in return.
(40)
Therefore, Kong Yiji's inability to offer the children anything but a single bean, after
which they "remain implacably rooted to the spot," indicates that Kong Yiji, and what he
represents, cannot offer viable sustenance to the future.
As in "Medicine," Lu Xun uses personal names in "Kong Yiji" to signify the
ideals the main character embodies. "Kong" is an obvious reference to Kongzi, more
commonly known in the West as "Confucius." Therefore "Kong Yiji," similar to "Diary
of a Madman," is a critique of Qing dynasty Neo-Confucian norms and practices. Kong
Yiji is a character who is so "dusty with classical constructions" that his speech is
unintelligible, and who, despite or because of his education, is unable to make a living.
Leo Lee argues that Lu Xun is creating a character, similar to Cervantes' Don Quixote or
Goncharov's Oblomov, who "clings to values of a bygone era which are no longer
cherished" (62). By creating Kong Yiji, Lu Xun argues that modernity has no use for
Neo-Confucian mores. This critique is emphasized by the narrator's discussion of Kong
Yiji's name: "Kong Yiji wasn't even his real name: it was the first few characters - kong,
55
yi, j i - in the old primer that children used for learning to write" (33). By describing
Kong Yiji's name this way, Lu Xun indicates that Neo-Confucianism is an outdated
practice. But Lu Xun is not arguing that the mores of the crowd, such as apathy and
avarice, to which Kong Yiji is unable to conform, are better than Kong Yiji's mode of
living. Evidence of this is found in "Kong Yiji's" narrator.
Leo Lee argues that "Lu Xun must be accredited with initiating and consciously
developing, for the first time in Chinese literature, the complex art of the fictional
narrator" (62). In "Kong Yiji," Lu Xun critique the crowd by employing the "fictional
narrator.” The conspicuously unnamed narrator works at Universal Prosperity tavern,
which provides a contrast to Kong Yiji. The narrator is part of the crowd: he holds a post
at Universal Tavern, shares the ethics of his environment, and shows contempt for those
who do not conform to his standards:
When I was eleven, I was taken on as assistant-barman at the Universal
Prosperity, at the edge of town. But the manager said I looked too dull to
wait on his prized long-gowned customers, and deployed me instead
around the main bar. (33)
This passage shows the narrator's mediocrity, and positions him in relation to his fellow
workers and the patrons of Universal Prosperity. The narrator's presence demands that
56
the reader choose between two evils: the pursuit of useless academic knowledge, or the
narrator's "lamentable absence of academic zeal."
The narrator enables the reader to observe each character's capacity for change, a
prominent theme of "Kong Yiji." Kong Yiji's main indictment is his inability to adapt to
the times, which, as signified by his name, dress, and manner of speaking, renders him
obsolete in modern society. However, the events in the story occur when the narrator
was eleven, which indicates that a significant number of years have passed. Because the
story is being told as a reminiscence, even Kong Yiji's obsolescence belongs to the past,
for he is, presumably, long dead. As such, Lu Xun is not indicating that, at the time of
writing, Qing dynasty Neo-Confucianism is a dying set of social practices, but rather that
Neo-Confucian mores have long since become obsolete.
This passage of time can also be applied to the narrator himself. For all of Kong
Yiji's useless mores, emblemized by his archaic speech and poor dress, he is a benign
character. This is similar to the ambivalent characterization of the crowd in "Tomorrow,"
as applied to Blue-Skinned Ah-Wu and Mrs. Wang. For all their avarice, they are given
one scene in which they act benevolently towards each other: the scene in which Mrs.
Wang makes food for the coffin bearers and Universal Prosperity donates money for
Bao'er's coffin. Similarly, Kong Yiji repeatedly exhibits selflessness, notably when he
gives what little food he can afford to the demanding children. However, this does not
apply to the narrator: he thoroughly and constantly exhibits characteristics of the crowd.
This callousness is exacerbated and highlighted by the narrative device: because it is told
57
in the past tense with a tone lacking regret or remorse, it becomes evident that Kong
Yiji's life and death had little or no impact on the narrator. Therefore, though it lacks
macabre tone of "Diary of a Madman," Medicine" and "Tomorrow," "Kong Yiji" is the
most morbid of the four. It provides the most acerbic social commentary, implying that
the advent of modernity has rendered ancient mores obsolete, while failing to provide an
adequate replacement.
Lu Xun is the most famous and the most impactful of modern Chinese writers.
Both the themes he addresses in his writing and his narration style categorize him as
"modern." His is a world of conflict as he searches for meaning in the early twentieth
century: between ancient Chinese mores and modern utility, between the European
imports and Chinese tradition. The inevitable and consequent ambivalence, characteristic
of Lu Xun's early fiction, is embodied primarily in two characterizations: the sick man
and the crowd. These tropes conflict and conflate in four influential stories: "Diary of a
Madman," "Medicine," "Tomorrow," and "Kong Yiji." These stories, especially placed
in the context of popular thinkers of the time, such as Nietzsche, Marx, Darwin, Andreev
and Tolstoy, encourage rich discussions through their symbolism and multi-layered
narratives, and leave Lu Xun’s readers asking, even a century after their publication: Has
modernity replaced traditional values, and if so, what emotional and spiritual sustenance
does modernity offer instead? What value can be found in modem modes of living, and
is this value preferable to traditional values
58
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