Lu Xun's Original Manuscript
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Generally speaking, there are three stylized characteristic in Lu Xun’s writing.
First of all, he adopted the Realism techniques based on his personal experience and vividly showed how horrible the society looked like in China owing to the feudal customs. In “The New Year Sacrifice (祝福)”, a widow was finally forced to death because of the old practices of marriage and the lack of women rights in China at that time (Lu, Selected Stories). In reality, Lu Xun had two wives when was alive, the first traditional woman named Zhu An who was chosen by his mom. The young couple barely knew each other but got married under the old-fashioned society customs and the results did not turn well (BestChineseNews). “Kung I-Chi (孔乙己)” illustrated how an intellectual who failed the Imperial Examination in the end lost all his self-esteem and respect (Lu, Selected Stories). In reality, Lu Xun’s dad who was a XiuCai (scholar in the Ming and Qing dynasties who passed the imperial examination at county level), took the Imperial Examination several times before he passed it. But he finally got reported as cheating on the exam and got disciplinary detention. |
A second characteristic of Lu Xun’s writing style is that he applied the irony and satire almost everywhere in his stories. Take “A Happy Family (幸福家庭)” as an example. Lu Xun humorously contrasted what the ideal family looked like in the eyes of a writer, the protagonist, and what the real happy family was. The writer envisioned an elegant and quiet life while in fact he was haunted by the crying of the children as well as the noise of chopping wood (Lu, Selected Stories).
In reality, Lu Xun had an ordinary childhood. He pointed out that “Playing games is the most proper behavior of a child; toys are the angels of children” (Lu, “Quotes”). He felt sorry for the kids who spent their time on homework, instead he took adventures in nature with his friends. He felt thankful for his childhood which cultivated his good creative mind and picturesque imagination. He learned how to observe beauties of nature and also experienced more than the same age children. |
Lu Xun's Calligraphy
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Thirdly, in most of his works, the description of a couple of features of the main character, their personalities can be implied. Lu Xun believed that the most obvious way to shape the personalities of characters through literal words is to describe their eyes. When he created these famous characters such as “Kong Yiji (孔乙己)”, “Run Tu (闰土)” and “Ah Q (阿Q)”, the description of eyes can all be noticed.