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The Wounded Wolf: A “Sigh” toward Closed Spiral of Loneliness on Rise of Reborn China

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Cover Art for Lu Xun's Wandering

With the proclaimed end of the Qing dynasty and the fall of imperial China, the country itself did not embrace a promising civilization as expected. The ensuing wars and the continuous onslaught of opium added to the woes of an already crumbling culture. During that era, “language” was the only weapon for individuals who barely possessed any power.

Written in 1925, The Misanthrope tells the story of an intellectual Wei Lianshu who is gradually smoothed out by a hostile and stereotypical environment in China and eventually ushered in the end of his closeted while regret-filled life. The wolf does not appear as a character in this story, but rather through a metaphorical way of visualizing the state of a human being in extreme grief using the image of a wounded wolf. The wolf howling throughout the story are only those two moments, yet both originating from the death of an individual who lives a life different from the others and thus being challenged by the rest, the so-called “misanthrope”. The sound made by human beings like a wounded wolf holding in the wilderness at the dead of night, anger and sorrow mingled with agony when faced with the appearance of the cycle of death, is a mirroring of the wail of a new generation of social outcasts against social injustice in China. This imagery of isolation, combined with the despair aggravated by death, adds a touch of deliberate debasement from the author to the social context in which this novel is set. In other words, why is the “fictional world” in Lu Xun’s writing so hostile and lonely? When we enter the world of the Lianshu, education is incomplete, new ideas are despised, and only the traditions left behind by the feudal society are praised by everyone. Ironically, such a hostile world seems hardly different from the real China where Lu Xun once lived. As a politically marginalized literati figure1 just like the fictional characters in this novel, Lu Xun uses his imaginative language to build a bridge between the novel and the real world, subtly showing us the saddening reality of intellectuals being marginalized and disrespected during the period of political and cultural upheaval.

Thus, we see Lu Xun skillfully using the unique sound of the wounded wolf howling as a medium to convey the desperation and loneliness from a myriad of unrecognized ideas, educational philosophies, and new concepts on the rise of modernity in China. Through the microcosm of the lives of lonely beings in this novel, The Misanthrope reinforces the fact that during the time when China is undergoing rapid and uncontrollable evolution, there are those passionate youngsters just like Lianshu and Shenfei who are willing to innovate and help rebirth this society, yet they end up being like the wounded wolves, abandoned by their own packs and become isolated beings.

The presence of wolf divides humans in society into two groups, those who keep the stereotypes left behind by feudalism, and those who are willing to innovate and break away from the already stale traditions. While looking back to history, the Chinese society in which Lu Xun lived chose the former, regarding the minority of the latter as alien and ostracized them. So, will this “closed spiral of loneliness” that stems from isolation last forever? Lu Xun gives his answer at the end of the story - the narrator “I” eventually gets infinite relief after the wolf howling, which also symbolizes that “I”, unlike Lianshu, chooses to break the continuity of loneliness and walk on “my” own path. Therefore, even being surrounded by such a hostile social environment, Lu Xun still gives hope to his readers and finally dissolves the wolf howling of despair, giving people the courage to insist on a frank attitude even in the face of questioning and isolation. This is precisely why, when we look back at the chaos of the 20th Century in China, even after the failure of the Xinhai Revolution and the disintegration of the New Culture Movement, there were still people like Chen Duxiu and Lu Xun who were willing to challenge the authority and go their own way for the sake of cultural progress.

1. Cheng, Eileen. Literary Remains: Death, Trauma, and Lu Xun’s Refusal to Mourn. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2013, https://doi.org/10.21313/9780824837808. P. 11

The Wounded Wolf: A “Sigh” toward Closed Spiral of Loneliness on Rise of Reborn China