Essay Sample on Limits of Realism

Introduction

In the concept of realism, Lu Xun is successful in portraying 'others'. However, there are some limits that Lu Xun encounters while attempting to narrate about 'others'. Lu Xun's "The True Story of AH Q" narrates its protagonist's execution from the viewpoint of the victim. Throughout the narration, Ah Q remains in an important sense, an anonymous figure; like the case of sacrificial victims. Lu Xun's "The Diary of a Madman" portrays others in attempting to understand the concept of realism. Lu Xun's perspective on realism describes how, upon observing his countrymen's indifference to the execution of one of their own, decided that literature would be crucial in reforming the country. Lu Xun's realist writing in the collection mirrored the society of the time and provided sharp criticism to the weak and deluded national psyche.

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Lu Xun is successful in depicting Ah Q without a surname. Ah Q's lack of a surname is the initial sign of his abstruse status in a society where people are most strongly adjoined through familial links. The name has a culturally precise pictorial value. The author is successful in portraying Ah Q feelings. He notes that Ah Q feels expended by the eyes of the crowd, which is conflated into a single monstrous eye: the psychosomatic storytelling is quickly fragmented by the cry 'Jiu ming'. The storyteller them then restrains himself noting that Ah Q did not utter a thing (Anderson, 23). This apparition appeal is successfully the climax of the narrative, substituting the anticipated explanation of Ah Q's demise. The presentation of this narrative shows that Lu Xun is successful in narrating the concept of 'others'.

Lu Xun is successful in portraying the madman in the 'The Diary of a Madman'. The madman refers multiple times how his stare distract those he believes are exploiting him. In the exchange of gazes between the authoritarian and the victim, the path of violence is briefly inverted; nevertheless, the 'observed' becomes the observer, and the observer (the Chinese audience and by leeway, the readers themselves) becomes 'the observed'. In an instant, the readers sense that the crowd's violence is ingrained in just the sense of fear their actions stimulate in their victim. Lu Xun's narration of these stories shows that he was effective in depicting the concept of 'others' He easily showed the paucity of internal monologue which becomes that basis of understanding the author's stance. The narration also permits Lu Xun to present his appeal for the character's salvation.

Lu Xun faces the challenge of proving that Ah Q has a surname. Although he tries to build the perspective that Ah Q is powerfully linked to other people through family ties, it is clear that the claim that his surname is Zhao may be viewed as unreliable. Lu Xun's faces the problem of making the audience understand Ah Q. The character's name is unclear; Ah is a pointless preface and the Western letter Q, which openly declares its alien sources every time it is ingrained in the Chinese text. Lu Xun's misrepresentations in the portrayal of 'others' are never assimilated into the history of the work; they function only at the expansive or representative level of the texts (Ying, 40). They can exemplify confidence only if the reader agrees to the interposition of the writer's exterior symbolic fiction.

Lux Xun also faces challenges in narrating the 'Madman's Diary'. The narrative starts with an introduction from someone other than the madman. A person that the reader assumes is sane, lending authenticity to the diary texts. The introduction is authored in classical Chinese, while the diary entries are authored in vernacular Chinese. Although the diary may appear realistic, it is a challenge for the author to understand the reader's perspective on the ext. It is a challenge for Lu Xun to explain how the diarist's descent into madness brings him closer to truth and backwardness. Lu Xun appears to experience a hard time integrating the truth and reality concepts. Although Lu Xun attempts to show that the main character is insane, the diarist is no longer insane and takes a new position in the feudalistic framework which he deplores. This may represent a variation in Lu Xun's purposes for writing the narratives.

Conclusion

The 'Madman Diary' and 'True Story of Ah Q' are Lu Xun's work narrating the concept of realism. Realism did not provide practical merits to Lu Xun in his promotion of reform in his works highlighted in this study; it granted a way of taking an elite status over popular literature at the time. The opening to critical awareness that Lu Xun's narrative desire to open is a rotating door hinged on the antithetical but from which once entered, the audience can never leave. Lu Xun reveals and hinders the fictional impacts he establishes by shifting between hope and disillusionment. Lu Xun's cruel introspection infers by disrupting the model of realist fiction he borrowed from the West by undermining the objectivity of 'others' and their reaction.

Works Cited

Anderson, Marston. The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Print.

Ying, Li-Hua. The a to Z of Modern Chinese Literature. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2010. Internet resource.