Wednesday, March 26, 2008

What does the madman learn by reading history books? What does he find there? How does he interpret the words "benevolence, righteousness . . .?

In the story, Diary of a Madman, the narrator has this feeling that everyone around him is a cannibal. From this feeling the narrator is intrigued to find our more about the cannibalistic ways of the people. He begins leafing through history books; within the contents of the books he finds the history of the cannibals. The narrator says that there are no dates on the history, but scrawled across every pages were the words BENEVOLENCE, RIGHTEOUSNESS, and MORALITY.

At this point the narrator could not sleep and reading the history did not help him in falling asleep, so he continued to read the history. He read the text very carefully to make sure he understood everything clearly; as he continued to read he began to make out what was “written” in between the lines, it was the phrase: EAT PEOPLE! This reference does not really address the problems of Confucianism. The problems of Confucianism deal the their reluctance to employ laws. The only way this reference would relate is if China were forcing their citizens to believe everything they saw fit to believe otherwise there is no correlation between the two.

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