Panpacific University: College of Teacher Education

PANPACIFIC UNIVERSITY
Urdaneta City, Pangasinan

College of Teacher Education
SEMI DETAILED LESSON PLAN IN AFRO ASIAN LITERATURE
I. OBJECTIVES:
At the end of this lesson, the student should be able to:
a. explain the aspects of Lu Xun’s life as he describes them in his preface,
which led him to write the short story “Diary of a Madman”,
b. summarize “Diary of a Madman”,
c. analyse “Diary of Madman” for form and content, and
d. formulate a theme statement for “Diary of a Madman”
II. SUBJECT MATTER:

Topic: Lu Xun’s “Diary of a Madman”
References: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lu-xun/1918/04/x01.htm
Materials: Powerpoint, Videoclip, Hand outs
III. PROCEDURE:
A. PREPARATION
Greetings!
B. MOTIVATION
Let the students study and read the story Lu Xun’s “Diary of
Madman”
C. LESSON PROPER
 REVIEW OF THE PIECE

 This English and Chinese bilingual edition of a "A Madman's
Diary" was first published in 1918 by Lu Xun, one of the greatest
writers in 20th-century Chinese literature. This short story is one
of the first and most influential modern works written in
vernacular Chinese and would become a cornerstone of the New
Culture Movement. The story was often referred to as "China's
first modern short story". This book is selected as one of The 100
Best Books of All Time. The diary form was inspired by Nikolai
Gogol's short story "Diary of a Madman, " as was the idea of the
madman who sees reality more clearly than those around him.
The "madman" sees "cannibalism" both in his family and the
village around him, and he then finds cannibalism in the
Confucian classics which had long been credited with a
humanistic concern for the mutual obligations of society, and
thus for the superiority of Confucian civilization. The story was
read as an ironic attack on traditional Chinese culture and a call
for a New Culture.
 May Fourth Movement
 On May 4, 1919, students in Beijing demonstrated against the

Chinese government’s humiliating policy toward Japan, resulted
in a series of strikes and associated events.
 Throughout the 1920s, students, activists, and new intellectual

leaders promoted an anti-Imperialist campaign and a vast
modernization movement to build a new China through
intellectual, literary, cultural and social reforms, which were
later dubbed as a part of the “May Fourth Movement” or “May
Fourth New Cultural Movement.”
 Traditional Chinese culture was disparaged as the reason for the

country’s “backwardness,” while Western ideas of science and
democracy were believed to be the remedy to “save China”.
 The official adoption of the vernacular - the spoken language - in
writing was one of the most important achievements. It was
deemed as the only fit medium for the creation of a living,
“modern” Chinese literature.
 Beginning in the May Fourth period, various branches of Chinese
literature also took new directions. Novel/fiction (xiaoshuo 小説)
has since become the most popular and prominent literary
genre.
 The debunking of Chinese (Confucian) tradition entailed an unambiguous

construction of Chinese tradition and Western modernity as oppositional
dichotomies in cultural terms.
■ China
 old, past
 traditional
 passive
 spiritual
 feudal, agricultural
 family based
 intuitive
 pessimistic, fatalistic dependent
 West
 new, present
 modern
 active
 material
 democratic, industrial individualistic
 rational
 optimistic, progressive independent
Lu Xun and His Writing

 Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881-1936)
 Pen name of Zhou Shuren
 A leading figure in the May Fourth Movement
 A founding member of several leftist organizations, including League of
Left-Wing Writers, China Freedom League, and League for the Defense
of Civil Rights.
 His 25 short stories were published in two collections, Calls to
Arms/Outcry 呐喊 (1923), and Wandering 彷徨 (1926). A Madman’s Diary
was published in New Youth, 1918.
 What could have gone through Lu Xun’s mind when he saw the slide picture
depicting the execution of a “fellow Chinese” by the Japanese military?
 “I felt that medical science was not so important after all. The people of a
weak and backward country, however strong and healthy they may be, can
only serve to be made examples of, or to witness such futile spectacles; and it
doesn’t really matter how many of them die of illness. The most important
thing, therefore, was to change their spirit, and since at that time I felt that
literature was the best means to this end, I determined to promote a literary
movement. ” (P. 4, Reader)
Lu Xun, Preface to the Call to Arms,
In Shaoxing Hostel there were three rooms where it was said a woman had lived who
hanged herself on the locust tree in the courtyard.... For some years I stayed here,
copying ancient inscriptions....the only visitor to come for an occasional talk was my
old friend Chin Hsin-yi. He would put his big portfolio down on the broken table,
take off his long gown, and sit facing me, looking as if his heart was still beating fast
after braving the dogs....
"I think you might write something...."
I understood. They were editing the magazine New Youth, but hitherto there
seemed to have been no reaction, favourable or otherwise, and I guessed they must
be feeling lonely. However I said:
"Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible,
with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation. But you know
since they will die in their sleep, they will not feel the pain of death. Now if you cry
aloud to wake a few of the lighter sleepers, making those unfortunate few suffer the
agony of irrevocable death, do you think you are doing them a good turn?"
"But if a few awake, you can't say there is no hope of destroying the iron
house."
What do you think of the story of “an iron room with no windows or doors (p.6,
reader)”? What sense of hope or future, if any, does Lu Xun convey?
A Madman’s Diary 1918

How to read a narrative text:
 Story ( or Content) is the sequence of events abstracted from their
specific telling in the text. In other words: what happens in the story.
 Discourse ( or Expression), is the specific telling of a story. In other
words: how the story is told.
 Narration is the process of producing those words by an agent (narrator)
who is responsible for the act of telling the story. It is through the
narrator(s) that we are presented not only with the plot but also with the
ideas and feelings of the characters.
 What is the type/genre of the text?
 First modern short story in Chinese literature
 What form/structure does it take, and why?
 Two-tiered narration: preface and diary
 Who is telling the story? What kind of language(s) does it use? Why?
 Inner narrator and outsider narrator (two first person narrators)
 Classical Chinese language in preface; Vernacular in the diary
 Contrast between false yet polite society and insane man’s sanity
 For whom the story is written?
 The poor; peasants; oppressed Chinese people
Readership influence symbols and writing style.
Further Thinking
 What is the madman criticizing? Is this story about actual cannibalism? What
does cannibalism stand for?
 Is the madman a cannibal too, perhaps without knowing it? Why does he vomit
after eating a dish of fish? What do people do to each other that makes them
into cannibals? Are we all cannibals in some respect?
 Lu Xun ends the story with the famous line “Save the children.” How is this
story connected to the historical situation of Lu Xun's time? Is modern
capitalism any better? What about the experience of Chinese and Russian
communism? What sort of a society was Lu Xun striving to bring about? How is
it possible to "save the children"?
 What does his being cured implicate? Is he eaten?
 If “Dairy of a Madman” is deemed as an example of the “new” May Fourth
literature, then how effective is the story in achieving the goals of the
movement?
“Madness is sanity”
Madman as a rebel and social critic
 To expose the cannibalistic feudal society;
 To condemn the oppressive nature of Chinese Confucian culture;
 To provoke patriotism and nationalism;
 To promote social change;
 To convert people from "cannibalism" to a higher level of humanity.
A discourse of modernity or a discourse of madness? – An alternative reading

Why does modernity have to be uttered through insanity?
 Madman’s voice & Lu Xun’s inner voice
 First-person narrative suggests an individual power in collective
(cannibalistic) society;
 “A vertiginous interplay between madness & rationality”
 The higher fidelity is to madness, the more susceptible the story to self-
deconstruction
 Kuangren:
 a positive & romantic self- address for many subsequent revolutionists.
 Individualistic “I” vs. totalization “we”
CR.: a counteraction or a logical culmination of May 4th?
D. ACTIVITY:
In a long yellow paper, make a summary of the story “Diary of a
Madman”
E. GENERALIZATION:
The story contains thirteen fragments from the diary of a man who has
lived in confusion for thirty years and suddenly gains spiritual insight
from the moon. This lunatic sensitivity leads him to paranoia. Barking
dogs, people’s glances, children’s stares, a mother’s cursing words to
her son, a brother’s caring, and a doctor’s treatment—all converge, in
his mind, into a sinister scheme about eating him. On a sleepless night
he reads through a Chinese history with “Virtue and Morality” written
on each page but finds the words “eat people” between the lines. Then
he discovers his brother’s accomplice in the plan for eating him and
realizes that his mother is also collaborating. He even discovers his
unwitting involvement in eating his sister’s flesh. The story ends with
the madman’s desperate cry: “Save the children.” In addition to
revealing the cannibalistic nature of four thousand years of Chinese
history and its governing ideology and ethics, “The Diary of a
Madman” exposes the ubiquity of such cannibalism and how everyone
is an accomplice in the game of eating and being eaten.
Lu Xun uses realistic characterization to compose an intriguing story
and symbolic realism to convey his moral concern. In a preface to the
story that is fiction cloaked as nonfiction, the author states that he
copied out a part of a patient’s diary for the purpose of medical
research. Lu Xun’s previous study of medicine and his knowledge, in...
(The entire section is 594 words.)
F. EVALUATION:
For you to familiarise the story “Diary of a Madman” by Lu Xun. Please
write a theme statement, explaining how that theme emerges.
IV. ASSIGNMENT:
For your assignment please make a critic to the story “Diary of a

Madman”. Print in a long bond paper with a font style of Rockwell size 12.
Justified and to be submitted next meeting.
Are there any questions? If none
Then let’s call it a day.
Goodbye class.
Prepared by:
Renato N. Motea
BSE-English

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PANPACIFIC UNIVERSITY

Urdaneta City, Pangasinan

SEMI DETAILED LESSON PLAN IN AFRO ASIAN LITERATURE

II. SUBJECT MATTER:

 REVIEW OF THE PIECE

 May Fourth Movement

 On May 4, 1919, students in Beijing demonstrated against the

 Throughout the 1920s, students, activists, and new intellectual

 Traditional Chinese culture was disparaged as the reason for the

 The debunking of Chinese (Confucian) tradition entailed an unambiguous

Lu Xun and His Writing

A Madman’s Diary 1918

A discourse of modernity or a discourse of madness? – An alternative reading

For your assignment please make a critic to the story “Diary of a

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