Rui Zhang

Rui Zhang

August 20, 2024

Lu Xun, "White Light", Symbolism, Sense of wilderness.

Lu Xun's short story "White Light" has a unique significance in the intellectual genre. The article will explore the internal value and external system of intellectuals in the late Qing Dynasty from the perspective of symbolism, interpret the real situation of intellectuals under the imperial examination system, and explore Lu Xun's ideological state when observing people and writing about things. In the cyclical pursuit and disillusionment of the protagonist Chen Shicheng's hope, the author uses symbolic techniques to interrogate the soul through mental illness, further expressing the thirst for hope in the process of hope disillusionment, including questioning and criticizing feudal ethics and imperial examinations. This expression technique benefits from the inheritance and reference of Chinese and Russian literary creation methods. Starting from the imperial examination system, people can see the loss of personal value of intellectuals under the orthodox ideology, the gap between intellectuals and the people, and as intellectuals in the May Fourth New Culture, what kind of mentality and skeptical attitude did pioneers like Lu Xun view the social situation at that time, thus revealing the emotional and spiritual difficulties faced by intellectuals who called for enlightenment during the May Fourth period.

© 2024, the Authors. Published by ISCCAC

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license