The Diary of a Madman

In the story, Diary of a Madman, by Lu Xun, we come across a man visiting his brother, only to realize something is not right, but as the story goes on, the protagonist seems to be unfolding a horrific secret about the village, though is the village the horrific one, or has the protagonist gone mad? Lu Xun's way of telling the story by using the character’s perspective, the pace of the story and the wording can affect the meaning or interpretation for the reader.
As the story name implies, the events that unfold in the village are in the perspective of the protagonist, and the villagers view him as the madman; leading to his inevitable imprisonment. In the story, the reader constantly questions whether the villagers are savages, or the protagonist is over thinking and correlating things, creating a conspiracy theory. His conspiracy started to build up in Part III, when he overheard a mother scolding her child and saying she would consume him, because she was so angry. The protagonist correlates that with an incident, where a farmer was beaten to death, and his organs were harvested, to that the village people were eating people and he would be next. The protagonist thinks to himself, saying, "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 no see that their speech is poisoned, their laughter knife-edged, their teeth fearfully white - teeth that eat people" (Lu Xun, Part III, p.23). A reader may feel that the protagonist is actually crazy, for who would actually conjure up such a crazy idea and how would that possibly be true. To look away from what the protagonist thinks, but to actually look at the evidence he pre...

... middle of paper ...

...rs, but then, the interesting bit, is that this happened when he reported there was a “famine”, implying that a lack of food is about to come, so the villagers decide to eat him right then and there.
Lu Xun’s storytelling is exceptional and the vocabulary is very subtle, yet distinctive enough, for a person to read through the story and get some hints, Lu Xun may or may not have wanted the reader to pick up on and decide for themselves the meaning of the story. The speed of the story, adds onto the rush of a person, the correlation of how a paranoid person can rapidly correlate words and actions into a fabrication or a conspiracy proven reality. The perspective of the character adds a layer on top of the words and storytelling, thus leaving the ultimate decision on whether the village was actually eating their own people, or if the madman is actually psychotic.