Preface to Call to Arms In the preface, signed on December 3, 1922, Lu Xun describes the evolution of his social concerns. An important thread to this preface is his encounters with traditional
Chinese medicine and the problems of health care, which bears directly on several stories in the collection. Lu Xun also describes one of his overarching objectives as a writer and social critic: he sees society as "an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation." Is it possible to help them? Or will he only make them suffer unnecessarily by intervening?
A Madman's Diary (狂人日記, (CTA), dated April 1918) This story ostensibly reveals the delusions of a man who has passed through a period of madness, and has now returned to sanity and participation in "normal" society. A theme in the story is the nature of reality, and the difficulty of attaining a perspective from which to see reality clearly. "I begin to realize that during the past thirty-odd years I have been in the dark . . ."
Kong Yiji (孔乙己, (CTA), dated March 1919) This is the story of a local intellectual who falls afoul of his community. A major theme in this story is the way in which
traditional Chinese society's system of advancement for intellectuals left many discarded and useless. "[Kong] had studied the classics but had never passed the official examination. With no way of making a living, he grew poorer and poorer, until he was practically reduced to beggary." In
Medicine, the characters are told, "A roll dipped in human blood . . . can cure any consumption!" Despite its earthy topic, the story has a carefully wrought structure.
Summary Old Zhuan and his wife, the proprietors of a small tea shop, save their money to buy a folk medicine cure for their son, Young Zhuan, who is dying of tuberculosis. The story opens with Old Zhuan leaving their shop and going to the home of the person selling the cure, a "roll of steamed bread, from which crimson drops were dripping to the ground." The crimson drops, we soon learn, are blood from a young man, Xia Yu (夏瑜), who was recently executed apparently for revolutionary activities. Xia Yu's name, his surname the name of a season and his given name a character with the jade radical, is often seen as an allusion to the name of
Qiu Jin (秋瑾), a friend of Lu Xun who was beheaded for revolutionary activity. The cure does not work and the mother of Young Zhuan meets the mother of the executed revolutionary in the cemetery. Here they both behold a mysterious wreath on the revolutionary's grave, a wreath that Lu Xun, in his introduction to this collection (which he entitled A Call to Arms), describes as one of his "innuendoes" to "those fighters who are galloping on in loneliness, so that they do not lose heart."
Tomorrow (明天, (CTA), dated June 1920) This story also concerns a sick child and
traditional Chinese folk medicine. It raises the question: what if the ability to change the course of events is largely illusory? Do we still go on? "Something which had never happened to her before, and which she had thought never could happen, had happened. . . . She was only a simple woman. What solution could she think of?"
Forging the Swords (鑄劍 (OTR), dated October 1926) In another story based on traditional myths and themes, Lu Xun weighs the cost of seeking justice (and, by extension, of wielding the sword of truth), and suggests that great sacrifices are most certainly required in this particular pursuit. == References ==