To Save The Dying Fire In The Dark Night

Lu Xun is a unique existence in the history of Chinese modern literature. His long-cherished wish to reform the nationality of the Chinese mainly depended on his remarkable creation of novels and essays. However, his secret inner world is shown through his prose poetry, Weeds. Nowadays, the study of Weeds is still one of the arguing focuses in the field of the study of Lu Xun. Therefore, I have chosen Weeds as my object of study in order to understand his great and painful soul better and to enrich the existing achievements of Weeds studies.Weeds contains Lu Xun's philosophy of life, and it also possesses extremely high artistic quality. The two of them merge into one organtic whole mainly depending upon the images and the image groups in the text. In this way, the anthology gets its flowing life. These images or image groups through most of the texts makes it become a perfect independent existence.Literary images are the images which have been chosen by the poets through their esthetical experiences and then given the thoughs and feelings of the poets. They are the organic combination of subjective feelings and objective appearance.. Literary images obviously contain subjective emotions and unique artistic style. They make thoughts filled with feelings and also materialized. They are rich of contents. What's more, they can create new and unusual artistic appearance or ideal condition, bring more meaningful space for readers to choose from and strengthen the charm of the artistic works. Meanwhile, they convey meanings more strongly and prolonged unforgettable artistic effects.There are numerous images in Weeds,and they are unusual, flowing and meaningful. This makes the texts difficult for readers to understand. However, the images provide a possible passage to get nearer to Lu Xun's inner world, because they contain his deep experience of the reality and their opposition and collision completely correspond to his complex psychology. Therefore, I explore the main implications in Weeds by reading the texts attentively.According to their spiritual directions, the abundant images in Weeds may be divided into two contradictory groups into which the author put different feelings. One group refers to the external environment that cause depression and anxiety to the author. The other contains the people and things that reflect characters of the author himself. The former includes"the dark","the night sky","the dust","the cold and desolate open country","the onlookers","the slaves"and so on. The latter includes"the jujube tree","such a soldier","the traveler","snow of the north","the frozen fire"as well as"the fool"and so on. The former can be named"the dark night"image group which take"the dark night"imange as its core. And, the latter can be called"the jujube tree"image group whose core is"the jujube tree"image.The presence of"the dark night"image group in Weeds leads readers into the cloudy and cold atmosphere. At the same time, they find"the jujube tree"image group fighting against the former with a strong will. These two image groups are always twisting round each other. The former tries its best"to cover","to press"or"to kill"the latter. On the contrary, the latter makes up its mind"to pierce","to resist"or"to perish together with"the former. Yet,"the jujube tree"image group can only exist in the dark night. Thus, the two of them show an extremely sophisticated relationship and cause the texts to present srong and full tension, producing the multiplication and the infinite ultimatum of the implication of the texts.From many angles, we can find possoble answers to why the author choose these images and what kinds of feelings that he have towards them. But the most important one is based on the contradiction between his standpoint of enlightening the people and the difficulty of the work. The decay of the society and the ignorance and selfishness of human nature forme the strenghth like boundless darkness. It is necessary for the torchbearer to struggle with it in order to bring brightness. Simultaneously, the darkness causes the effort of the torchbearer disappear just as a clay ox goes into the sea. Not only the work of enlightening but also trivial matters cover Lu Xun like a net, which he cannot get rid of with any effort. All of these have bad effect on him and arouse mighty waves in his inner world. The torchbearer has to think deeply about how to save the people as well as how to save himself in the great pain. And finally he goes on his way without turning back. To understand Lu Xun's inner world, including his"being exhausted but stubborn", his sense of undertaking and his spirit of self-sacrifice in special circumstances, it is helpful to analyse the two image groups through attentive reading, studying their power balance and their relationship. Therefore, this thesis mainly analyse how the two image groups are designed, what cause them to become into being and what meanings lie in them. Thus, the readers can peep the complete picture of Weeds in a spot.What's more,"the form is also the content". The esthetic characteristics that the images present also display the author's deep thought mechanism. Thus, this thesis deals with the esthetic characteristics of the two iamge groups to show their beauty of art and analyse Lu Xun's thinking mode as well as his character. As a famous pear in the prose poetry field, Weeds has a high quality in using meaningful and refined language. It also has many symbolic usages and metaphors. At the same time, from the microscopic angle of images, readers can see that it has charming beauty of art. These images lie between all kinds of contradictions, such as"far and near","motionless and action","unusual and common"and"cold and hot". When reading Weeds, readers are experiencing all kinds of new things and their thoughts are moving with the lines of the texts. This fully demonstrates the author's open and exquisite horizon, the radiatin and polymerization of his thoughts as well as his vast love and profound hatred.Weeds gives out much information about Lu Xun, including his search for the meaning of life, his choice of way of life, his undertaking the task in the dark and"the intermediate"consciousness which means sacrifice for the development of the mankind. There is limitless darkness outside Lu Xun. On the contrary, there is the enthusiasm in his heart to restart the frozen fire. The pain which is shown in Weeds is precisely a mirror that reflects Lu Xun's dream of waking the Chiese people. The stronger the darkness is , the more greatly the torchbearer performs. Just because the task is difficult, it arouses Lu Xun's great pain in his lofty soul and his enthusiasm of fighting. In the crash of the dark reality and his self-awareness, the fights about reality ,emtion and philosophy both against the outside and in the heart happen to Lu Xun. However, he finally makes up his mind to go forwards firmly, no matter what the result will be.