An Appreciation of Lu Xun's Work "The Hurt Locker

Written in 1925 by the modern literary scholar Lu Xun, The Hurt Locker is Lu Xun's only novel based on the theme of love and marriage between young men and women.

The Hurtful Death is different from the popular works of the time that glorified the supremacy of love, and also different from the tragedy of dying for love in traditional masterpieces. Lu Xun used the novel to link the problems of women's marriages and young intellectuals with the changes in the whole social and economic system, in order to inspire the youth to explore a new path through the liberation of their personalities and personal constraints.

"The Wounded and the Dead" tells the story of Juan Sheng and Zijun, who broke through the obstacles of feudalism and pursued the autonomy of marriage to set up a warm family, but soon the love failed, and finally ended with a "wounded" and "dead" ending. "The end of the story.

The heroine of The Wounded and the Dead, Zijun, is a new woman who has accepted the liberation of individuality during the May Fourth period. She pursues freedom of love and autonomy of marriage, and opposes the interference and constraints of feudal forces on her love and marriage. Therefore, she solemnly declares to Juan Sheng, "I am my own, and none of them has the right to interfere with me!" .

And at the risk of falling out with the old feudal family, she ignored the sneers of the "old things", "little things" and passers-by, and frankly fell in love with Juan Sheng and formed a small family as if no one was there. However, when she got Juan Sheng's love, she thought she had found happiness and achieved her goal in life. As a result, she no longer reads, no longer thinks, and even when she fell in love in the past, "there were occasional conflicts of argument and misunderstandings of meaning."

And resting on the role of a small housewife, happy to cook, feed the chickens, feed the dog, the small family life as the whole meaning of its life, and even for the oil chickens and the landlady fight, character has become timid, and the former courageous and fearless is gone, and thus become mediocre, which makes Juan Sheng dissatisfaction, anger, and then despair in love. Obviously, although Zijun has accepted the new ideas, she has not yet dragged out the old ideas. In essence, she is rushing from one cage into another and has not achieved liberation in the true sense of the word.

Juan Sheng, the hero, is a young man with a democratic ideology under the influence of the May Fourth Movement. He talks to Zijun about family tyranny, about breaking old habits, and about poetry. He boldly courted Zijun and fell in love with her with passion and innocence. After living together, Juan Sheng is dissatisfied with Zijun's inactivity, and realizes that "love must be renewed, grown, and created," and believes that "peace and happiness are to be solidified."

When unemployment struck and family life became unsustainable, he quickly realized that "one must be alive for love to attach itself." Instead of indulging in the small circle of love and family, he sought to make a living in the larger society around him, so he worked hard to write novels and translate books. This is a sign that Juan Sheng is more open-minded than Zijun.

But he felt that Zijun was "pounding on her own horn", making it difficult for him to get out of his immediate predicament, and to travel far and wide in search of a new life. The fact that Juan Sheng said "I don't love you anymore" to Zijun led to the breakup of their love and separation, and finally Zijun died of depression

Through the depiction of Juan Sheng's and Zijun's love, marriage, and their tragedy, the novel explores the issue of women's emancipation and the pursuit of life of the petit bourgeois intellectuals; it also reveals the problem of women's liberation and the pursuit of life of the petty bourgeois intellectuals. Through the portrayal of Juan Sheng and Zijun's love and marriage and their tragedy, the novel explores the issue of women's liberation and the pursuit of life of petty bourgeoisie intellectuals; reveals that women's pursuit of personal freedom and happiness can hardly be realized without social reforms; and graphically points out that only by recognizing the reality and casting off the illusions can we stand firm in the harsh reality.

At the same time, The Hurt Locker also reveals the reasons for the tragedy of Juan Sheng and Zijun's love, the oppression of the society is the social reason, and more importantly, Juan Sheng and Zijun's personalized emancipation is not thorough enough to be the cause of their tragedy.

Extended information:

Compositional background

During the May Fourth period, complaining of the pain of unfreedom of marriage was a common theme among many young people. During the "May Fourth" period, the pain of not being free was the public opinion of many young people, and the fight for the freedom of love and marriage had become an important part of the ideology of personality liberation at that time. Therefore, the novels written in the 1920s accounted for 98 percent of the total number of novels that depicted men and women in love, and the most of them were written about the lack of freedom of marriage.

Lu Xun fully recognized the anti-feudal significance of the emancipation of individuality, but at the same time he was keen to discover the crisis hidden behind the freedom of love and marriage. As early as the end of 1923, Lu Xun pointed out in his speech "What happened after Nala left". To emancipate women, we should fight for economic rights with "fierce battles", and "if the economic system is even reformed, then the above is, of course, complete nonsense".

By 1925, Lu Xun's worldview was on the eve of a fundamental change, and he advocated using "fire and sword" to revolutionize the social system; "The Hurtful Death," which he wrote in October 1925, was different from the popular works celebrating the supremacy of love at the time, and also from the traditional tragedy of the martyrdom of love by death.

Lu Xun used the novel to link the problems of women's marriages and young intellectuals with the change of the whole social and economic system, in order to inspire the youth to get rid of the constraints of individual liberation and personal struggle, and to explore a new way.