Created in 1921, "Hometown" was originally published in the magazine "New Youth", Vol. 9, No. 1, and later included in the first collection "The Scream".
"Hometown" is a very wonderful work of Lu Xun, although it is a bit of a prose type, but the ideas contained in the work are very deep. The story unfolds from the perspective of "me". There are various contrasts, the former hometown and the present hometown, the former leap soil and the present leap soil, the contrast between the former Yang Er's sister-in-law and the current Yang Er's sister-in-law. There are also various typical characters, the "me" when I was a teenager, the current me, the leap earth when I was a teenager, the current leap soil, Yang Er's sister-in-law and so on.
In particular, the technique of comparing the before and after of the leap soil directly reveals the essence of the society of that year, and nothing has changed.
When he was a teenager, he wore a small felt hat, a bright silver collar around his neck, and a pair of red and round hands, lively and cute, wise and brave, and full of childlike fun.
In the deep blue sky with a golden full moon, a young man of eleven or twelve, wearing a silver collar and holding a steel fork, stabbed at Yiru with all his might, but Naru twisted his body and fled from under his crotch.
Twenty years later, when "I" saw the leap earth again:
"The round purple face had turned grayish-yellow, and it was deeply wrinkled; His eyes, like those of his father, were swollen and red all around; On his head was a broken felt hat; There was only a very thin cotton coat on his body, and he was covered in scarf; The hands weren't the red round hands I remembered, they were thick and clumsy, and cracked like tree bark. ”
The change in the image of the leap earth surprised "me", and of course, the bigger change was the mentality. Runtu called out to "me" "Master". A sentence of "master" made "me" break the defense in an instant. Because behind the "master" is rank, servility. Let "I" see the essence of society, hierarchy, servility and **. And what made the leap earth have significant changes in body and heart are "many sons, famine, harsh taxes, soldiers, bandits, officials, and gentry".
It can be said that this is the main content of the work "Hometown". ** The oppression and exploitation of the rule, the plundering and robbery of the soldiers and bandits, the excesses and amnesty of the imperial court's excesses and miscellaneous taxes, and the poison that can be enduredThis is the root cause of the change in intercalary soil.
Although the Great Revolution overthrew the rule of the Qing Dynasty, the social status quo did not change at all. The society is still the first society, and the vast number of people are still living a life of increasing poverty, hunger and cold, and no rights.
"I think before the revolution, I was a slave; Not long after the revolution, he was deceived by the slaves and became their slaves. ”
The monarch or warlord has a high degree of monopoly on power, and "everything in the world is determined by the top" and "the power of the world is vested in one person". The monarch has supreme power, and the decision-making power of all major affairs lies in the monarch, and the power is not subject to any restrictions, restrictions, constraints and supervision.
The monarch rules completely by his own assumptions, even his mood, he is willful, he does whatever he wants, he decides how he wants, and he deals with it as he wants, which is very easy to go to extremes and partiality, and there is no error correction mechanism at all, and he does not dare to come out to correct mistakes.
The monarch determines and exercises power through top-down appointments。Power is monopolistic, closed, exclusive, hierarchical. Officials have the power to their superiors, so they don't need to ask the people at all. Power without restraint and oversight inevitably leads to abuse. Even a little power must be used to the fullest.
**Society magnifies the evil of human nature, and the officials who hold power, even if they have the most basic and smallest power, they will use the smallest power in their hands to make it difficult for others to the greatest extent. They have a hundred ways to exploit you, oppress you, enslave you, and never turn over.
As a result, under this kind of oppressive rule, under economic exploitation, the people live forever in poverty, exploitation, oppression and slavery. Culture, the control of thoughts, and the enslavement of the spirit make them increasingly insensitive, indifferent, and become spectators, full of servility. And from generation to generation, even if there is a change of dynasty and a change of monarch, it cannot change the essence of this servility and dynasty. Here it is.
"The country is easy to change, but the nature is difficult to change".Thousands of years of ** rule has already formed a kind of collective unconscious in the hearts of the people, and this collective unconscious is the national character, that is, the national nature that is difficult to change. It is difficult to change a person's nature, but it is conceivable that it is even more difficult to change the national character with a collective unconscious.
If a person himself does not have the motivation to change, then no matter how hard the outside world tries, it will be in vain. If one person is like this, it is even more difficult for a group of people. Therefore, even though Lu Xun has been shouting for many years, there is still no change, and this is the reason.
Our history is very long, the culture is also very long, in the long history, the change of dynasties is very frequent, some years, some more than ten years, the longest is not more than 200 years. But no matter how the dynasty changes, the nature of society has not changed. The new dynasty is still the continuation of the system of the previous dynasty, a master, a monarch, the old road, the reincarnation of ** society one after another, and the fate of the people or slaves, has not changed in the slightest. This is the iron ** and national servility, the flowing dynasty and the monarch.
For thousands of years, we have been passed down from generation to generation in this cultural system, and it is still the same until the era in which Lu Xun lived, and this is the essence of society that Lu Xun saw.
References for this article:
Lu Xun. "Scream Hometown".
"Hometown" is included in Lu Xun's anthology, just buy the anthology directly!
Both versions, both are available.
Hometown