Journal Entry: the True Story of Ah Q

With the readings of “The True Story of Ah Q, Lu Xun” I was appalled the way the main character was a jerk, but overall I saw the character lost. At first the story seems to just be a recollection of the escapades of a local embarrassment. Ah Q often gets drunk, gets into fights, has a terrible attitude towards women, steals, views himself as superior to nearly everyone, and eventually tries to join a revolutionary group just to get rid of the people in town he doesn't like and steals from the richest ones.

Another example of Lu Xun's criticism of classical views is Ah Q’s extremely sexist views. After making fun of a nun whom curses him to remain childless, Ah Q begins to think that he should take a wife and start a family. However, as he begins to think, Ah Q begins to rant about in his mind that women have been the downfall of countless ancient emperors and that they are naturally liars and whorish. “The majority of Chinese men could become saints and sages, were it not for the unfortunate fact that they

are ruined by women.” Page 13.

Finally, Lu Xun provides hope for the future and possibly redemption for Ah Q at the very end of the story. In the beginning of the chapter Ah Q is arrested by government officials for stealing from the Chao with the revolutionaries when as the reader knows he was not allowed to join them. As he is being taken to be executed publicly, Ah Q looks to the crowd gathering and sees them as wolves looking upon until the "merge into one, biting into his soul," meaning that Ah Q has seen the way that the Chinese classical system can eat away a human being's life.