Comparison On satire in Luxun’s and Mark Twain’s Works
HUANGHE S&T COLLEGE SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
ZHOU ZHAN JUN (黄河科技学院外国语学院热闹的反义词 北京过年哪里好玩周战军)
Abstract: 学生手工Living during the period of 19th-20th century, Lu Xun and Mark Twain are two great reprentatives of Chine and American novelists respectively. Both of them are masters of writing in satire. This article compares the similarities and differences in their satire and has the conclusion that their influence is still far-reaching.
好习惯名言Key Words: comparison; satire; direct satire; roundabout satire
. Purpo of the thesis
Both Lu Xun and Mark Twain are masters of satire and contribute a lot to Chine and American literature respectively. They had great influence upon writers after them, especially for their writing vehicles—satire. So far many rearchers have become increasi
ngly interested in Lu Xun’s satire or Mark Twain’s satire. However, few studies have made on the comparison of Lu Xun’s satire and Mark Twain’s satire. This is one of the reasons why I’m interested in this topic. For other reasons, they had a large number of similarities: Lu Xun was the penname of Zhou Shuren; Mark Twain, pudonym of Samuel Clemens. The life span of the two writers covered nearly the same age, Lu Xun was born in 1881, and died in 1936; while Mark Twain lived from 1835 to 1910. Meanwhile, Lu Xun was the founder of modern Baihua; while Mark Twain played a very important role in spreading American Colloquialism. Both Baihua and Colloquialism are milestones in literature. The most important reason why I’d like writing this is that I appreciate Lu Xun and Mark Twain’s prominent satire.
Some experts had analyzed Mark Twain’s satire, they pointed out that Mark Twain mixed humor with satire. Some scholars even argued that Mark Twain’s writing style was transferred from humor to satire. Still, other studies have shown that Lu Xun described the psychology and performance of characters to criticize the unawake people. In this thesis, I want to make a comparison on Lu Xun’s satire and Mark Twain’s satire, to have
a preliminary study on the style of their satire. In order to finish this job, some books are helpful, such as Lu Xun’s Kong Yiji, The True Story of Ah Q, The Medicine, Mark Twain’s The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras Country, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg. Meanwhile, some writer’s views about Lu Xun and Mark Twain’s satire are also very important, such as Li Chuanpen, his article “On Lu Xun’s satire” argues that Lu Xun made full u of people’s appearance, psychology and action to criticize people’s apathy. [1] He gives us an example―Kong Yiji’s words and clothings. Ye Mang, “On the Satire of Lun Xun’s Novel”, published in June 15th 2007, points out in The True Story of Ah Q, Lu Xun ud Ah Q’s view to satirize the people’s indifference. Wei Desan, “On the Satire of Mark Twain” argues that Mark Twain made full u of the arrangement of the plots and humorous words to criticize the evil. [2] He Dongyan, “On Mark Twain’s Humor” points out Mark Twain mixed humor and satire to satirize the injustice. [3]
The purpo of this paper is to make a comparison on Lu Xun’s and Mark Twain’s satire, to find out the differences and similarities of their satire. This paper falls into 3 ctions: s
ection one is to tell the purpo of this writing; ction two is about the comparison on the style of their satire; ction three is a conclusion that there are similarities and differences between Lu Xun and Mark Twain’s satire.
. Style of Satire
. The style of Lu Xun’s satire
饥荒后期最强人物For the styles of satire of Lu Xun and Mark Twain, we should be familiar with two key styles, one is direct, and the other is roundabout or indirect. Lu Xun belonged to the former, while, Mark Twain the latter. We couldn’t say which one is better or which is wor. The only conclusion we can make is that Lu Xun and Mark Twain’s styles of satire are different. The direct style of satire criticizes things and persons very riously, with no space left. But, the roundabout style of satire leaves some space for the reader. The difference between direct and indirect styles is just two kinds of speech, direct speech or indirect speech. We’ll take veral of their books as examples. Lu Xun’s Kong Yiji and Medicine expod the ugliness and darkness of human nature. Lu Xun said, “Kong Yiji is
打开蓝牙the only person who wears a long gown but stands there drinking”. From this, we can say Kong Yiji has not enough money; otherwi he would not stand there. But in order to show his arrogance, he wears long gown, which is the symbol of wealth and position. Directly speaking, Kong Yiji is a bookworm. Lu Xun satirizes Kong Yiji’s hypocrisy in a direct way. Kong Yiji pretends to be a wealthy man, also a knowledgeable person. He has veral ridiculous proposals, such as “Stealing books doesn’t make you a thief.” For every one of us, when we first heard this, we would burst into laughing. But after laughing, we have a kind of feeling to appreciate Lu Xun’s direct satire. Lu Xun criticized Kong Yiji’s arrogance. We know stealing books is an action of theft, but Kong Yiji refus to acknowledge this. Then a vivid picture appears in everyone’s mind. We can also find examples in Xun’s Medicine: The story is to criticize the peasant’s apathetic and unconsciousness in a direct way. The main character, Hua Laoshuan wants to buy medicine for his son, Xiao Shuan, who has got a strange illness, which needs a special medicine. One kind of ingredients is the human blood, mixed with steamed bun. The story happens in the chaos of Republication Revolution of 1911. As we all know, at that ti海底椰片
me, lots of patriots, who strived for people’s independence and freedom were killed by local governments. Lao Shuan goes to the killer to get some blood for his son. From the main story, we can easily find Lu Xun’s direct satire on the apathy of people. Many youths died for the majority of people’s great future, however, people had no passion for the death.
中国共青团历史
. The style of Mark Twain’s satire
For Mark Twain, his style of satire is a little different from Luxun’s. He adopted the roundabout way, or in other words, the indirect way. Mark Twain criticized people and things in an indirect way. This kind of satire creates an effect of humor. According to some experts, this is the reason why Twain was called a humorist. Several years ago, there was a debate on whether Mark Twain is a humorist or a master of satire. As far as I’m concerned, we should know the aim and the influence of Mark Twain’s humor, it is also to criticize the injustice. In other words, we can say that Mark Twain is a master of satire in an indirect way. Examples are as the followings: Mark Twain satirizes people’s dishonesty
in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg. In the past, Haleyburg was famous for its honesty. But in the end, everybody in the town lies in order to get a big bag of gold. Twain speaks highly of the town, for its honesty, for its unity, for the people there. People around there are very proud for their pure character. In order to prove that they pretend to be pure, Twain first says they are honest, not criticized them. As times goes on, a stranger with a bag of gold comes to this town. After that, everything is changed, people’s mask is falling off, people’s greed is expod to readers. Twain satirizes the corrupted Hadleyburg in a roundabout way, with the hidden meaning that money is the evil of society. We can find more examples in The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras Country. In this novel, Mark Twain criticizes the speculation in America, but he does not say it directly. Twain choos one character, a bet man, Simon Wheeler, and describes him “a bet man on a hor-race, dog-fight, cat-fight, chicken-flight, if he even es a straddle-bug start to go anywhere, he would bet you how long it would take him to get to wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would fouler that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road”. Simon Wheeler was
a typical character of that time, becau we know the overview of American society, which was full of speculation. Twain satirizes this phenomenon, but in an indirect way. Just as some critics said that “Twain was dancing with a mask”. Mark Twain would not show his real intention at first; he would show it in a roundabout way. So readers must read the books carefully.
. Conclusion
From the above analysis, we can obtain a conclusion that there are similarities and differences between Lu Xun and Mark Twain’s satire. For the similarities, both Lu Xun and Mark Twain wanted to u the satire to wake up people’s minds, people’s awareness, to criticize the corrupted governments, to satirize the greedy people. Also, Mark Twain criticizes the church and traditional family rules. Their satire is just like a monument to Chine literature and American literature. Their satires to today’s authors are still valuable; many writers benefit a lot from their satire. So, at prent there are many institutes and scholars devoting to the study of Lu Xun and Mark Twain. For the diff
erences, we know, Lu Xun tended to u the direct satire; while, Mark Twain preferred to satire in a roundabout way. Direct satire is like a sharp tool, it can touch the esnce of things. Roundabout way satire has a mask, and sometimes has the effect of humor. So Mark Twain’s humor can be also regarded as satire in another aspect. Lu Xun was the founder of Modern Baihua; Mark Twain was famous for his colloquial English. Baihua and colloquialism, as we said before, are turning points in world literature. Therefore the popularity of Baihua and colloquialism is obvious. Lu Xun’s satire and Mark Twain’s satire still has left much space for us to rearch on and I will concentrate more on that later on.
