Lu Xun borrows the crucifixion frame but rewrites its spiritual logic.
At the beginning, the crowd humiliates Jesus through mock worship and physical abuse. The spectacle reveals a sick psychology:
mocking the persecuted creates a temporary illusion of superiority for the powerless.
Refusing Anesthetic
The text emphasizes that Jesus refuses the myrrh-mixed wine (pain relief).
Why refuse it?
To remain fully conscious while witnessing how the people treat the one they claim to await.
His stance combines two opposing feelings:
- pity for their future,
- hatred for their present cruelty.
A Different Revenge
There is no miraculous retaliation.
No heavenly fire.
Instead, revenge becomes lucid endurance:
the more violently the crowd celebrates, the deeper its moral self-condemnation.
This is “watching you walk toward ruin while fully awake.”
From Son of God to Son of Man
Lu Xun intensifies tragedy by removing guaranteed theological redemption.
When “God abandons him,” the event is stripped to brutal social fact:
a would-be savior is tortured by the very people he came to save.
This resonates with the fate of many pioneers in modern history:
those who try to awaken the masses are often consumed by mass spectatorship.
The Social Disease
One especially bitter detail: even the criminals crucified beside him mock him.
This is one of Lu Xun’s recurring diagnoses:
the weak often cannot strike the powerful, so they redirect violence toward peers or those even weaker.
Thus the net of hostility tightens from all sides.
In this piece, revenge is not victory.
It is clarity in catastrophe.