The Impact of the Chinese Revolution

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The impact (or lack thereof) of the Chinese Revolution of 1911 is seen throughout Lu Xun’s stories. In particular the works “Diary of a Madman”, “A New Year’s Sacrifice” and “The True Story of Ah Q” provided evidence of changes (or lack thereof) the revolution brought to China. Focus in particular was paid to the topics of filial piety, female chasteness and Chinese conservatism, respectively in each story.
“Diary of a Madman” was a condemnation of the overbearing authoritarian nature of the Confucian virtue of filial piety, a respect for one’s parents and ancestors that often includes cannibalism, one of the four virtues found in the Sìzì. The story referred to practitioners of filial piety ideology as “man-eaters” who perpetuated a society in which the weak were devoured by the strong. The madman tried to indicate that a change was imperative with his plea “You should change at once, change from the bottom of your hearts! You must know that in future there will be no place for man-eaters in the world. …” He went as far as to say “If you don’t change, you may all be eaten by each other. Although so many are born, they will be wiped out by the real men, just like wolves killed by hunters.” A parallel could be drawn between his pleas and one of the many goals sought by revolutionaries, that of rejecting oppressive traditionalism, ignorance, and conformity. This goal was an attempt at addressing issues relating to China’s traditional ideology, a recurrent issue throughout Chinese history. The rationale of the revolutionaries was that traditional Chinese ideologies such as filial piety resulted in a tradition of self-destruction that had and if left unchanged would continue to repress Chinese growth in not only cultural aspects ...

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...hological construct of ‘psychological victory’ that allowed him to feel victorious.
If the idlers were still not satisfied, but continued to bait him, they would in the end come to blows. Then only after Ah Q had, to all appearances, been defeated, had his brownish pigtail pulled and his head bumped against the wall four or five times, would the idlers walk away, satisfied at having won. Ah Q would stand there for a second, thinking to himself, "It is as if I were beaten by my son. What is the world coming to nowadays. . . ." Thereupon he too would walk away, satisfied at having won.
The aforementioned evidence from the particular works “Diary of a Madman”, “A New Year’s Sacrifice” and “The True Story of Ah Q” supports the summation that the Chinese Revolution of 1911 lacked change to the central topics of filial piety, female chasteness and Chinese conservatism.

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