Madman Cannibalism

With Diary of a Madman, one is presented with an unorthodox storyline. The work mainly consists of a series of diary entries written by an estranged supposed madman. The madman is in disarray as he confronts the reality that many around him including his older brother are cannibals. Notably, woven throughout the work are multiple instances animal imagery, using many different kinds of animals to serve as symbols of a larger framework. For instance, several mentions are made of a dog in the Chao house that possesses the power to perceive “unusually high spirits” in a person. As cannibalism is equated to traditional Confucian Chinese values, Lu Xun’s employment of animal imagery in Diary of a Madman serves to highlight the primitive and feudalistic nature of the traditional …show more content…
Later, because their outlook changed, some of them stopped, and because they tried to be good they changed into men, changed into real men. But some are still eating—just like reptiles.”
Here, Lu Xun is presenting that what constitutes a “real man” as opposed to a lesser “beast”, for he describes the “man-eaters” as beastly. This is noteworthy because the “man-eaters” in Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman in a larger context refer to individuals who have subscribed to what Lu Xun perceives to be the backward traditional Confucian views. For often it is the morphological differences that separates the man from beast, but Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman offers a different set of parameters. The behavior of certain characters in the work are depicted as animalistic due to their cannibalistic tendency. Even the madman claims to have eaten human flesh in his younger days. However, he has rejected this societal custom and as such is a real man. Beast are such because of their savage and primitive manner while real men have become enlightened enough to see the errors of their ways. Moreover, revealed in the