The poor are good at themselves, and the poor are good at the world. - Mencius, "Dedication to the Chapters and Sentences"
"Hometown" is a short story, through the description of my (Mr. Lu Xun)'s return to his hometown to deal with the old house and memories, shaping the image of Yang Erjie and Yan Tu, two low-level working people, expressing Lu Xun's strong dissatisfaction with reality and strong desire to transform the old society and create a new life.
Through this short story by Mr. Lu Xun, I got to know The LeapIng Earth.
However, I don't want to know Yan Tu, his tragic experience makes me unable to let go for a long time, I hope that someone can help him, so that his life can be better, do not have to run so hard for life, and be tortured by life like a soulless puppeteer.
So I thought of Mr. Lu Xun, why didn't Mr. Lu Xun help the leap soil?
Is there no way to help?
However, at that time, Lu Xun's family was still relatively rich, and if he wanted to help, he could still help some.
Does that mean you don't want to help?
After all, Lu Xun's acquaintance with Yan Tu was only a few days of the New Year's festival, and there was not too deep affection between the two, and Lu Xun's memories of Yan Tu were mostly a few days together when he was a child.
Today I re-read "Hometown" with these two questions, and through the dialogue and character actions of Lu Xun and Yan Tu, I dissect the untold secrets hidden behind the characters.
He was the younger son of a helper in Lu Xun's family, because Lu Xun's family had to hold a great sacrifice activity during the New Year, and there were too many people to live, so his father brought him over to help take care of the utensils used for sacrifice.
In the impression of many friends, the leaping earth should be a shy, afraid of children, but this is actually just the image of the leaping earth when he was a child, and after 30 years into the middle-aged leaping soil, the vicissitudes of the appearance are unbearable to watch a second time.
Leaping Earth in Youth:
He was in the kitchen, with a round purple face, a small felt hat on his head, and a dangling silver collar around his neck, which showed that his father loved him very much and was afraid of his death, so he made a wish in front of the gods and Buddhas, and used the circle to trap him.
30 years later, it is the leap soil of the father of 5 children:
He had doubled in stature; his round purple face had turned grayish-yellow and had added deep wrinkles; his eyes, like his father's, were swollen red all around him, and I knew that the people who farmed by the sea were blowing the sea breeze all day long. On his head was a torn felt hat, and he was covered in a very thin cotton coat; he was carrying a paper bag and a long pipe, and the hand was not the red and round hand I remembered, but it was thick and clumsy and cracked, like pine bark.
When they meet again thirty years later, the closeness between Lu Xun and Yan Tu is no longer the same as when they were teenagers, and the two seem to be separated by an invisible barrier.
Lu Xun recognized the leaping earth at first sight, but he couldn't believe that the other party had changed so much, in Lu Xun's words: "Although I knew it was a leaping earth at first sight, it was not the leaping earth in my memory." The helpless "old man" after a struggle in the land indicates that the two will never return to the relationship they talked about when they were young.
"May you go through a thousand sails, and return to be a teenager", this is destined to be only a beautiful vision, and this reunion 30 years later has had a great psychological impact on both Yan Tu and Lu Xun, which is the distortion of pure humanity in the old society.
After Lu Xun hid in the kitchen and cried and was dragged home by his father, the two never saw each other again. Before the reunion after 30 years, Lu Xun did not know the situation of the leaping earth.
If you don't know the situation, naturally you can't talk about helping The LeapIng Earth, so why didn't Lu Xun help him after he knew the current situation of the Leaping Soil?
There are two reasons for this:
First, Lu Xun's economic situation at that time was not good, and this time he returned to his hometown because the house in his hometown had been sold to others, and he needed to go back to clean up the scattered things.
Second, the spirit of the leaping earth has long been numb, and the only way to help him is to help him financially, and it is impossible to change his mind to help him.
Lu Xun's grandfather Zhou Jiefu was serving as the cabinet secretary in the dprk at that time, and when the imperial examination was about to be held, he wrote a letter asking Yin Mou, who was serving as the chief examiner in Jiangnan, to take care of the descendants of the next Zhou family, but unexpectedly, the next person who went to deliver the letter dug a big pit for Zhou Jiefu and personally pushed the Zhou family into the pit (including himself).
In the Qing Dynasty, cheating in the imperial examination was a felony, but by the Guangxu years, cheating methods such as thorough examination questions and asking for sought-after examinations had become commonplace, of course, this was only an unspoken rule of the officials, and the emperor and the common people were not clear.
When this subordinate delivered the letter, Duan Was drinking tea with the local officials in Suzhou, and he did not see whether the situation was suitable or not, so he handed the silver ticket and the letter to his entourage and handed it to Duan. The entourage saw that the letter from the cabinet secretary did not dare to be sloppy, and gave it to Duan in front of the local officials in Suzhou, and the atmosphere was frozen on the spot, and the officials in Suzhou pretended not to see it when they drank tea.
Originally, this was nothing, after all, Zhou Jiefu was the cabinet secretary, everyone would give him face, and this matter passed like this. Who ever thought that because the people under the Zhou family did not get a reply from Duan, they thought that Duan received money and did not do anything, and shouted loudly outside. The entourage thought that something bad was wrong, and hurriedly stopped him from shouting anymore, but the next person screamed even more ugly, saying that Duan Mou took the money and did not do anything, and the nearby people gathered to watch.
One by one, Duan and the officials in Suzhou could not get off the stage, and in a fit of anger, they took the silver tickets and letters to the Yamen to handle the case, and Zhou Jiefu was sentenced to the crime of "beheading and waiting" for eight years, and the children of the Zhou family on the letters were also exempted from meritorious names, and the Zhou family fell from this family road.
As the saying goes, "A skinny camel is bigger than a horse", so a big family naturally won't suddenly disappear because of the grandfather's affairs.
After his grandfather went to prison, Lu Xun's family actually had a good life, after all, the family business was supported for many years, and this situation continued until the grandfather died and the Zhou family divided the family property.
Because his father Zhou Boyi was seriously ill, his father had no say in the Zhou family, and he had been selling valuable things in the seller. After my father's death, there was nothing of much value left in the family.
After the death of his father, Lu Xun's voice in the family was even smaller, and when the family property was divided after the death of his grandfather, the uncles only gave him a small part of the family property, in fact, there was no money at all. By the time Lu Xun returned home to deal with his old family's house, in fact, the family property from the family had long been used up, and Lu Xun relied on himself to work outside to support himself and his family.
I believe that friends who have read the above should also have the answer in their hearts, Lu Xun is not that he does not want to help the land, but that "the poor are left alone."
In fact, if you insist on helping, it is not impossible, it is nothing more than to give the land money so that he will not be so hard, but the land soil family has 5 children, counting the wife and the land there are 7 people, so how much should be given to improve their lives?
Giving money is only a way to cure the symptoms, and if you want to cure the root cause, you must teach the leap soil how to make money, that is, as the saying goes: "It is better to teach people to fish than to teach people to fish."
However, Lu Xun knew very well that once a person's thinking was formed, it was difficult to change it, and the leap earth had been smoothed out by the suffering of life and turned into a puppeteer who seemed to have no soul. How can such a person make him change his mind? Maybe you can pull them, but you don't have to pull them up.
"Hometown" is one of Lu Xun's novel collection "Screams", named "Screams", is to hope that their shouts awaken poor people like Yan Tu, hoping that they can liberate their minds and stand up straight!
This is also the purpose of Mr. Lu Xun's abandonment of medical practice, to help more people stand up by sharing spiritual wealth.