User:Sonny00033/Selected Stories of Lu Hsun

New Year's Sacrifice draft

New Year’s Sacrifice (祝福）by Lu Xun is a painful story of a woman who is exposed to a sad life that eventually forces her to the external scopes of societal moral standards. The story which was written in the year 1924is a way for motivating social changes. It has distinctive consideration to women’s dilemma by taking into account women's liberty concepts. The story which occurred in the early era of the 1911 revolution is a religious ceremony that occurs on the impressionable New Year’s Day in China.  Lu Xun the narrator is an educated person who seeks change in the Chinese culture. Being that he was challenging social issues via his writing, his goal was to illustrate the prejudiced treatment of women in Chinese society.

Protagonist

Xiang Lin's Wife

The protagonist is Xiang Lin’s wife a widow who has been used by the author to depict a country against which women who possess a low social position are prejudiced against. The wife of Xiang Lin is driven crazy by the forces of primitive marriage, her villagers' naivety, and religion. Additionally, the woman was struggling with loneliness and depression on account of how the Chinese community perceived her as a widow. All through the story, she is seeking blessings from her neighbors and the family that employed her as a maidservant. Members of society look at her as being beneath them. The story explores the theme of marriage tradition, the rights of women, superstition, and religion.

The Story

The story “New Year’s Sacrifice” is about the life of a 25-year-old widowed woman who goes to a house as a servant because her husband who was 10 years older than her has died. She works hard and thrives in her current home specifically at the time of the sacrifice. However, on one fateful day her ex-mother-in-law who supposedly own her orchestrate her kidnap, and she is returned to the village she came from which is located in the mountains. Her family takes away her earnings and she is forced to marry a man in a rural region. However, since she is accustomed to life in the house of an educated man, she fought. She swears, curses, and hits her head on the altar.

Eventually, she surrenders and one year later she appears satisfied with her new son. Later she goes back to the house of the educated man after the death of her son and husband. Since she is considered unlucky, she is faced with apprehension and forbidden from touching the sacrifice regalia due to the fear of aggravating ancestors. The same causes her to be distressed and she faces ridicule for persistently being stupid by allowing the wolf to take her child away. Ultimately somebody informs her that she will face punishment in the afterlife as her deceased husbands will tear her apart by fighting for her.

People stipulate that marrying two times was a crime and the only way of atoning for this crime is by contributing money to the threshold of the temple. To hinder the punishment, she complies employs all her savings in acquiring a threshold to ensure that she does not get punished in the future. However, despite her effort to make amends for her sins, she is not able to get rid of the discrimination she was facing. For instance, believing that she was purified, she gets upset when she is stopped from participating in the sacrifice. She is finally let go and becomes a beggar and on New Year’s Sacrifice’s eve, she is deceased from the explosion of the firecrackers.

Theme

The New Year’s Sacrifice story chronicles the distressing story of a lady who deals with a lot in her life and illustrates how it impacts her all through her ensuing years and the fears she has regarding the impact it would have on her hereafter. The harrowing events that occurred earlier in her life and the profane comments from the individuals in her society caused her to be fearful of what would occur when she died.

Marginalization

The story indicts the mainstream Chinese beliefs. Xiang Lin’s Wife is marginalized. Initially, she loses her husband and has to escape from the rest of her kin. Being a widowshe is considered a secondary citizen in the eyes of the members of her community. Although she is determined to have a simple and quiet life the family, she escapes from kidnaps her and compels her to remarry to gain capital. Since the second marriage challenges her religious ideals, she desperately fights to escape it.

Double Stands in Chinese Belief for Women

Through the character of Xiang Lin’s wife, Lu Xun highlights the issues in belief and manages to convey them via the story in a manner that motivates readers to question the beliefs. In constantly showing the woman experiencing dreadful life-changing experiences and illustrating how people who are supposed to take care of her do not sympathize with her situation he can disclose the flawed beliefs to the public. Ultimately, forced into compliance she gets married, and she becomes physically and mentally annihilated in the story. Eventually, she adapts to her new life, and even though it is implied that he is not as happy and bright as she used to be she is once again fulfilled in life. Once more she is tested unimaginably when her son dies in the hands of a wolf and her second husband passes away. She goes back to the town where she worked before and her former employer a crushed person without her previous spirit and only faces treatment of an outcast and superstition. The resultant incidents makers her question her religious ideals and in this case, Lu Xun manages to illustrate the double stands in the Chinese beliefs regarding women. The book digs deep into major details depicting the mainstream views and the way they can be employed to harm society and restrict people's minds.

The Movie

In the year 1956, the book was adapted into a film of a similar name by the Beijing Studio. The film maintains the dignified, severe style as well as the grim mood that imbues the book while illuminating the cinematographic features. It focused on the depiction of characters via their facial expressions and body movements as well as unveils skillfully the temperaments of the characters by mainly portraying the characters' visual images. The film has elements that are not present in the book. For instance, the setting where Mrs. Xiang Lin is hacking at the temple threshold is an extension of the main novel. In the year 1958, the film received the Silver Cap Prize at Mexico International Film Festival.