Diary Of A Madman And Other Stories !FREE!
Diary of a Madman and Other Stories Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis tohelp you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:Plot SummaryChaptersCharactersObjects/PlacesThemesStyleQuotes This detailed literature summary also contains Topics for Discussion onDiary of a Madman and Other Stories by Lu Xun.Diary of a Madman and Other Stories is a book of Xun Lu's short stories. Although some locations and characters cross over from one story to another, each story's plot is unique. What these stories do have in common is that they all take place in China in the early twentieth century and reflect Chinese culture and the norms of the day. The various plots show the relationships between various characters and how they deal with daily struggles and the politics of the day.
Diary of a madman and other stories
Through these stories, it is revealed that Lu Xun and his friends scoff at much of Chinese culture and do not see beyond past and current Chinese leaders. He frequently pokes fun at these Chinese leaders as well as Chinese literature and culture as a whole. The traditionalists in this story are frequently portrayed as fools, while non-traditionalists are viewed as loners who are misunderstood and mocked. It is clear which type of person Lu Xun was or at least wanted to be. This also makes it clear why he tired of fighting for a new China, one whose natives loved one another and lived honest lives. His own personal struggles are clearly seen in the lives of many of the characters in these short stories.
Literature is not born in a vacuum. Instead, it is shaped by the ideological climate of the times in which it is written. Despite hailing from different eras, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Nikolai Gogol were both deeply influenced by Orthodox Christianity in their personal lives, and used their fiction to explore themes related to their individual faith journeys. This paper engages the personal writings of the two writers (Dostoevsky's letters and Gogol's Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends) to find their beliefs about the Christian journey in 19th Century Russia, and then applies this context in a critical analysis of the outcomes experienced by characters in the two authors' work. Due to their own experiences with Russian society, each writer had a focus on repentance, condemning the characters who chose not to expiate their sins (or their actions which were perceived as sins by their authors), and valuing those who repented even more than those who chose not to sin in the first place. This dynamic has a particular impact on whether characters in either Dostoevsky's or Gogol's stories are rewarded with happiness or worldly damnation at the end of their tales. While other works have examined the role of sin in Dostoevsky's fiction, adding Gogol's similar motivations to the picture allows for deeper examination of the influence of Orthodox Christianity, and its conception of repentance and redemption in particular, had on two of the most celebrated fiction writers in Russian history, and lends a deeper level of understanding to their writings, particularly with regard to their indelible characters. 041b061a72