A Hidden History throughout the Stories: Lu Xun
             Chinese scholars have fought to find freedom from their traditional past and identify themselves as individuals. Lu Xun is a prominent Chinese writer who, like many, wanted to free China of its traditional civilization. He wrote two different, yet similar pieces of literature in which he expresses anger toward his culture. Diary of a Madman and Upstairs in a Wine shop shows stages of a society being consumed by its past tradition. Lu gives an uninviting portrayal of an entire culture that has failed.
             The first story is well-named Diary of a Madman, which is told by a narrator who seems to be insane, as the reader takes on the view of the sane society. The preface opens in a well-constructed classical Chinese way. This seems to show the false yet polite social appearances in the traditional Chinese literature. As the parable begins the narrator shows us his fear of people and his paranoid way of life. He begins to think everyone is scared of him yet at the same time wants to hurt him. "The meanest looking of all spread his lips wide and actually smiled at me!" here, we begin to see his mind frame and the big role society plays on his madness. The character goes on to believe that the children who also act this way must have learned it from their parents. Xun is beginning to show the ongoing tradition within Chinese culture that is continuously taught down from generation to generation.
             The diarist no longer sees people as they truly are; he gets a glimpse of "green faces and protruding fangs" as if these people were no longer people but monsters. Through reading history and the old traditions the narrator believes that society wants to eat him, as they practiced literal cannibalism in earlier times. Xun uses this diary to show how Chinese society consumes its members. It seems the narrator's world feeds from itself and its children. Nobody is ...