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Assignment Response Paragraph: The True Story of Ah Q |
Lu Xun's "The True Story of Ah Q" is a story about the Chinese at the turn of the century, but above all, it is a story about life and the invisible forces in the routine of daily life. Consider the multipe perspectives of the events offered by Lu Xun's "I-narration" (first-person narration) in the story. How is Ah Q's life presented and seen by himself, other characters and finally us the readers? How does the narrator, the predominant voice in this pseudo-biography, construct the three dimensions of a fictional world? In relation to the various viewpoints in fiction, we discussed in class the different "platform" and "levels" on which the author, characters and readers stand and operate. The theorist of visuality, Michel de Certeau, begins his discussion of "spatial practices" in daily life with a metaphor of skyscrapers. He invites us to imagine "seeing Manhattan from the 110th floor of the World Trade Center." Two modes of vision become evident: one looking down "like a god" (that can be called the "solar Eye vision") and the other looking up as a pedestrian. Let us extend de Certeau's theory from the real of architectural space to the act of reading. The readers are sometimes afforded the a "solar Eye vision" of the plot and psychological development of the characters, as if he were reading Manhattan (in de Certeau's metaphor) as an intelligble text. The characters, on the other hand, are like the pedestrians who tread "the thicks and thins of an urban 'text' they write about without being able to read it." Taking cues from de Certeau's theory about the construction of the space of daily life, we could analyze the construction of a three-dimensional fictional world of daily life in a similar fashion. How does Ah Q tread the "thicks and thins" of a "text" he writes about without being able to read it? Does Ah Q refuse to "read" the reality around him? Is he too ignorant to read it? What role does the narrator play? Does s/he have limitations? Endnotes
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