A Madman’s Diary presents a madman who has now been cured of his paranoia。 After extensively studying the Four books and five classics of old Confucian culture, the diary writer, the supposed "madman", begins to see the words "Eat People!" written between the lines of the texts。 Seeing the people in his village as potential man-eaters, he is gripped by the fear that everyone, including his brother, his venerable doctor and his neighbors, who are crowding about watching him, are harboring cannibalistic thoughts on him。 Despite the brother's apparently genuine concern, the narrator still regards him as a big threat, as big as any stranger。 Towards the end the narrator turns his concern to the younger generation, especially his late sister (who died when she was five) as he is afraid they will be cannibalized。 By then he is convinced that his late sister had been eaten up by his brother, and that he himself might have unwittingly tasted her flesh。 

There are many correspondences between this two novels。 Basing on this, we can find the symbolism is more obvious by making a comparative study of the character of madness, In addition, the “insanity” image also featured a strong color of tragedy。

2。 Literature Review论文网

Since The Yellow Wallpaper was published in 1892, it has impressed many readers than any other American short story。 Although it did not receive much serious attention at the beginning especially after being rejected by the editor of The Atlantic, it earned a reputation when it was published by American writer and critic William Dean Howells in his The Great Modern American Stories。 In that volume he wrote: “Now that I have it in my collection, I shiver over it as much as I did when I first read it in manuscript。 It was too terribly good to be printed。”Generally reviewers recognized the story as a horror story or commented on Gilman’s use of Gothic conventions。 However, when it was republished after being ignored for years, Elaine R。 Hedges wrote the first lengthy analysis of the story。 In the afterword to the volume, she stated that “The Yellow Wallpaper is a small literary masterpiece and a work that does deserve the widest possible audience。”

Gilman once said in her autography, “One must always write ‘with a purpose’ if one’s writing is to find an audience。” It was for the reason that Gilman created The Yellow Wallpaper。 By this story based on her experience, she expressed the expectation for independence and freedom of females and successfully encouraged women to voice for themselves。 Therefore, “The Yellow Wallpaper, the most prominent work of Gilman, should be considered as groundbreaking, paving the way for the development of feminism and society。”(Han 80)

A Madman’s Diary contains thirteen fragments from the diary of a man who has lived in confusion for thirty years and suddenly gains spiritual insight from the moon。 This lunatic sensitivity leads him to paranoia。 Barking dogs, people’s glances, children’s stares, a mother’s cursing words to her son, a brother’s caring, and a doctor’s treatment—all converge, in his mind, into a sinister scheme about eating him。 On a sleepless night he reads through a Chinese history with “Virtue and Morality” written on each page but finds the words “eat people” between the lines。 Then he discovers his brother’s accomplice in the plan for eating him and realizes that his mother is also collaborating。 He even discovers his unwitting involvement in eating his sister’s flesh。 The story ends with the madman’s desperate cry: “Save the children。” In addition to revealing the cannibalistic nature of four thousand years of Chinese history and its governing ideology and ethics, “The Diary of a Madman” exposes the ubiquity of such cannibalism and how everyone is an accomplice in the game of eating and being eaten。