Historical Criticism of Mans Fate

Historical Criticism of Mans Fate

Man’s Fate is a fictional story based on the 1927 Chinese revolution in Shanghai. The main characters, Ch’en, Kyo, May, Katov, and Old Gisors represent different facets of Malraux’s belief system and personality.

The story opens where Ch’en is in the room of a sleeping man who he’s about to assassinate. The assassination of the businessman can be seen as the destruction of the capitalism Malraux saw as the cause of the “oppressed and exploited Chinese” (Greenlee 59). Malraux came from a broken home and had great empathy for the working class. As Ch’en is holding the dagger, he focuses on his victim’s foot because he is about to destroy a living thing. Ch’en is conflicted “…torn by anguish: he was sure of himself, yet at the moment he could feel nothing but bewilderment ” (3). We can see Malraux’s own conflict here. In 1923, Malraux made a trip to Cambodia where he and his wife, Clara, “...were arrested by the Surete and charged with archaeological theft a moral failure that Malraux now at last recognized in himself” (Lebovics)

Assassination and violence were a common occurrence in China during the revolutionary years. The peasants were abused by the wealthy citizens and landowners,...it was from among their relatives and protégés that those who oppressed and lived off the peasantry were recruited: the bailiffs and stewards who not only collected the rents and debts due to their masters, but also took a substantial cut for their own benefit; the tax-gatherers in whose registers the landlords’ holdings were on an authorized ‘special list’, allowing them to pay taxes in inverse proportion to their wealth, or not at all. (Chesneaux 81-82).

Malraux wants his readers to understand the reasons behind the revolt. Time and again, Malraux draws vivid scenes of violence and deprivation. The meeting place to which Ch’en flees after the assassination is that of a poor European shopkeeper, Hemmelrich. “At last a squalid shop ” (11). Kyo is the main character in the story; he is determined to do everything in his power to lead the Shanghai revolt. “Kyo was one of the organizers of the insurrection, the Central Committee had confidence in him.” (14). Kyo wanted to see fairness for the proletariats. Likewise, Malraux was involved in leftist politics.