In the story Diary of a Madman, by Lu Xun, we meet a man who visits his brother, only to realize that something is wrong, but as the story progresses , the protagonist seems to reveal a horrible secret about the village, even if it is the village that is horrible or has the protagonist gone mad? The way Lu Xun tells the story using the character's perspective, the pace of the story, and the words can influence the reader's meaning or interpretation. As the name of the story suggests, the events that take place in the village are in the protagonist's perspective. protagonist, and the villagers see him as the madman; leading him to his inevitable imprisonment. In the story, the reader constantly wonders whether the villagers are savages or whether the protagonist is overthinking and correlating things, creating a conspiracy theory. His conspiracy began to develop in Part III, when he heard a mother berate her son and say that she would consume him, because she was so angry. The protagonist connects this to an incident where a farmer was beaten to death and his organs were harvested, to the fact that the people of the village were eating people and he would be next. The protagonist thinks to himself, saying, "That woman who scolds her son: 'I could eat you!' - those whitened faces and bared fangs, their thunderous laughter; the signs are all there, I don't see that their speech is poisoned, their sharp laughter, their frighteningly white teeth - teeth that eat people" (Lu). Xun, Part III, p.23). A reader might think that the protagonist is actually crazy, because who could actually conjure up such a crazy idea and how could it be true. Looking away from what the protagonist thinks, but actually looking at the evidence he presented... middle of the paper... rs, but then, the interesting thing, is that this happened when he reported there was a "famine ", implying that a shortage of food was coming, so the villagers decide to eat it right then and there. Lu Xun's narration is exceptional and the vocabulary is very subtle, yet distinctive enough, for one person to read. through the story and get some hints, Lu Xun may or may not have wanted the reader to understand and decide for themselves the meaning of the story. The speed of the story adds to a person's haste, the correlation of how a paranoid person can quickly correlate words and actions to a fabrication or proven reality of conspiracy. The character's perspective adds an extra layer to the words and narrative, thus leaving the final decision as to whether the village was actually eating its own people or whether the madman was actually psychotic..