Appealing For The Master Of The Mental World

Abstract:LuXun is one of the founders of the modern Chinese novel in the 20th century. As a scholar of profound knowledge and creative mind, he created new forms of modern Chinese novel. The novels produced by him that reflected farmers'life as well as intellectuals'life in his time have had a great influence on the development of Chinese novel and provided new themes for the Chinese literary history.Preceding researches on Luxun's works concern more with his novels about farmers'life and less with that of intellectuals'. This phenomenon should arouse our attention. Intellectual is the cream of human civilization. The images of them can reflect the cultural life and mental attitude of a nation. Therefore, we should devote much attention to the research of such kind of theme written by LuXun.Before and after the May 4th Movement, LuXun wrote plenty of novels on the intellectuals'life of his time. That indicates his focal point of writing has shifted from farmers to intellectuals. Statistics shows that at the moment, his anthology Appealing and Hesitating contains 25 short stories. Among them , 19 stories concern with intellectuals'life, which make up three fifth of the whole collection.This paper focuses on the discussion of the following questions: Why did LuXun create so many"intellectual"novels? What leads to his focus shifting? What features did his"intellectual"novels present? What theme did his novel reflect? And what significance did his novels possess?In my opinion, the influence of social reform, his favor for intellectual and his inspiration from the Enlightenment are the main factors to encourage him to create amount of such novels. And the essential reason for the shifting of his writing theme lies in the frustration he felt from the Enlightenment.These novels drew their materials from LuXun's own life. Thus they shared the same experience of his life. LuXun is one of the famous intellectuals in China. Moreover, he is a man of integrity. Therefore, his frustrated life, his rich and unique experience laid a solid foundation for his writing career.LunXun created many intellectual characters, almost representing all sorts of intellectuals before and after the May 4th Movement. His novels vividly depicted the life and struggle of the intellectuals at that time and unfolded a picture of their dream, struggle and suffer. All together, LuXun described 11 kinds of intellectuals—sufferer, old liner, introspector, loner, individualist, dreamer, fraternizor, social criticist, explorer, self-center as well as deserter. Through different kinds of characters, LuXun revealed the inner world of the intellectuals, in the hope that they eventually became self-independent.The purpose of his writing is to change the inner world of Chinese people, remove their deep-rooted bad habits and stimulate them to adopt a new pose in the world. So is the purpose of his"intellectual"novel writing. That is, to change the mental attitude of the intellectuals and encourage them to be the master of their own mental world. I believe that under such guiding ideology as to rebuild the mental world of the intellectuals and cultivate their healthy personality, Luxun's novels involve the following three themes:First, propagating new moral values in order to enlighten people. For example, LuXun quoted a line from the"madman"to reveal the"murdering"nature of the feudal society. His idea sounded as a thunder that shook the whole nation. People began to realize that in order to live a new life, the old society must be destroyed completely.Second, diagnosing the diseases in order to cure them. LuXun created plenty of literary characters to show the unhealthy personalities of the intellectuals. By noticing these unhealthy personalities, the intellectuals began to doubt the culture in which these personalities grow into shape. Thus they started to criticize this enslaving culture and cultivate independent personality. This is the genuine knowledge which LuXun obtained by long-term studying of the Chinese history and culture. It inspired the awakening of intellectual's subject consciousness.Third, exploring actively in order to find the way out. By describing intellectuals'life, LuXun revealed the reason why they could not remove the old tradition and began a new life. He implied people that struggling alone could lead to nothing. Timidness and wavering could result in failure. Only by struggling patiently by exploring continuously, could we have the hope of living a new life.