Entanglement Of "Human" And "Beast"

Luxun recorded faithfully and vividly the characteristic national character of China, and thus can be called "history of the Chinese". In the meantime, the "history of the Chinese" displays a special "world of animals". The thinking and behavior of human being is always laid in the connection and comparison with "animal". Through exploring the animal images in Luxun, we can get a new understanding of his thoughts of human being and human mind. The critics have been aware of this, but relative study and discussion is still not enough. The Japanese critic Wanwei inclines to discuss "human" and "ghost" in Luxun, and has published a book named Entanglement of "human" and "ghost". Here I just imitated him and named this thesis Entanglement of "Human" and "Beast"The thesis falls into eight chapters with a preface . The first chapter makes an analysis of twelve animal images in Luxun, as well as the relationship among them, and thus illustrates the structure of animal images in Luxun. The structure of animal images, with a "human world" implied in it, is in fact a system of symbols and metaphors. This world, according to the implied human mind and character, can be divided into two contrary systems, one of which is the system of wolf, owl, snake and cow, a symbol of the awakened modern intellectuals; the other is the system of dog, cat, sheep, mosquito, bees, etc., which symbolizes the modem intellectuals who try to maintain both the tradition and the reality. Luxun's purpose of depicting animals, as his purpose in depicting human, is to "manage to touch the spirit of human".On basis of the above structure, the second, third and forth chapter chooses wolf, owl and snake to have a further and detailed analysis. Thisis actually an adventure in Luxun's own spirit. The analysis on the three animals enables us to see different aspects of Lunxun.The fifth chapter makes an integral analysis on three types of negative animals, namely dog, cat and sheep. This analysis is actually a portrait of the character and role of Chinese intellectuals.The sixth chapter, with a close reading of Luxun's texts and relative remarks, studies Luxun's thoughts of human, especially his consideration of the relationship between human and beast, humanity and bestiality, and therefore explore the components and characteristics of his thoughts of enlightenment. We can see there is a controversy in Luxun's thinking. On the one hand, he holds a negative view on bestiality, and call on the Chinese people to break away from bestiality and march towards modern civilization. On the other hand, he also holds a positive view of bestiality, and herein finds the life power and strength that the Chinese people need. This controversy and complexity of Luxun's thoughts of human and beast, humanity and bestiality is just the charm of Lunxun's thoughts. We can see that Luxun's thinking on humanity and bestiality is not unilateral, but is complexly imbued with different contradictions between sense and mind, emotion and ration, reality and ideal, modernism and didacticism, as well as humanitarianism and individualism. This is where Luxun's appeal lies.The seventh chapter tries to analyze Luxun's way of thinking and his aesthetic target though his structuring of animal images. He holds a counter-traditional attitude towards culture, and then employs a converse way of thinking, which lends his works a powerful strength.The last chapter discusses the reciprocal relations between Luxun's construction of animal images and the contemporary discourse. On basis of this, the chapter sheds a light on both Chinese and foreign cultural sources of his construction of animal images.