Relationship Between the Individual and Society

1361 Words6 Pages
East 250 Spring 2011 Midterm Paper Relationship Between the Individual and Society From the late Qing Dynasty to the early Republic of China, China was in the social transformation era. More accurately, people was in the alternating period of the feudal traditional conservative ideology and emerging modern thoughts. Hence, the authors always wrote the stories about how individuals reacted to such social changes. Like three stories, Lu Xun’s “A Madman’s Diary,” Yu Dafu’s “Sinking,” Mao Dun’s “Spring Silkworm” which depict how the individuals’ respond when they face two totally different ideologies or moral codes. These three stories show three different conditions, three different choices, and lead to three different results. One common thing is that all protagonists are suffering in that old society. First, Lu Xun’s “A Madman’s Diary” describes a madman who is the first rebel in modern literary history. The madman was born in the feudal scholar-bureaucrat family, everyone lived around him was bound by the feudalism. However, he was not one of them, he had modern thoughts and yearn for a just society. Unfortunately, he could not find a person with a like-minded goal, and everyone else saw him as a madman. He thought that society was an “eat people” world. For example, he read history intently half the night until he saw the whole book was filled with the two words “eat people”. He thought the history were all wrote about how the powerful people oppress the poor. And he felt sorrow that such merciless history still continue in his world. The madman had dual image, “mad” and “not mad”. On the surface, the Madman was described as a mad person, for example, his words, lifestyle, and thoughts were all unacceptable by that society. But inner, his advanced ideology was a symbol that dared to challenge the feudal society. He hoped people
Open Document