Chapter One：
- Chinese Hi-story is no longer valid as a framework of intelligibility for the changes taking place, which is here listed as the many difficulties to narrate a story;
- Identity crisis and split personality, because China was uprooted from her traditions
“Autobiography?” But I am obviously not Ah Q. If I were to call this an “unauthorized biography,” then where is his “authenticated biography”? The use of “legend” is impossible, because Ah Q was no legendary figure. “Supplementary biography” ? but I do not know whether I belong to the same family as Ah Q or not, nor have his children or grandchildren ever entrusted me with such a task. If I were to use “sketch,” it might be objected that Ah Q has no “complete account.” In short, this is really a “life,” but since I write in vulgar vein using the language of hucksters and peddlers, I dare not presume to give it so high-sounding a title..
Chapters Two and Three
- Ah Q as an average Chinese becomes a national allegory (文化比喻) in several senses; no cultural credentials recognized by advanced nations; “In addition to the uncertainty regarding Ah Q’s surname, personal name, and place of origin, there is even some uncertainty regarding his “background.”
- 未庄 (the not-yet village) epitomizes a China which Anglo-Saxon people such as Smith consider to be devoid of human compassion and benighted by its conservative traditions;
- Ah Q allegorizes the China, unable to deal with her shortcomings and trying to ignore reality; 癞疮疤(ringworm scars), a feeling of shame with which 郭嵩涛 was only too familiar
- His psychological victory 精神胜利法 is but a perversion or satire (ridicule) of the attitudes, beliefs and values of a Confucianism; “君子动口不动手“, Ah Q pretends to be a gentleman in defeat and resorts to self-deception as a placebo. the fate of Confucian China in modern ages
- The village is a network of victimization, with Ah Q as the victim as well as the victimizer (to the little nun); like the madness of Lu Xun’s Madman 狂人日记 paranoid of being cannibalized by his family and fellow villagers, again a national allegory
- “long bench” versus “straight bench” ridiculing archaic and limited Chinese knowledge:
Ah Q, again, had a very high opinion of himself. He looked down on all the inhabitants of Weichuang, thinking even the two young “scholars” not worth a smile, though most young scholars were likely to pass the official examinations. Mr. Chao and Mr. Chien were held in great respect by the villagers, for in addition to being rich they were both the fathers of young scholars. Ah Q alone showed them no exceptional deference, thinking to himself, “My sons may be much greater!”
Chapter Four
- The depth of a national crisis of cultural identity when Ah Q without any means of livelihood embodies the national survival; on the allegorical level, the “tragedy of love” states the need to rejuvenate the nation on the brink of total collapse, under the weight of imperialism and colonialism.
- The tragedy reveals traditions, etiquettes about female chastity / virtues and man’s sexism out of sync with modern nations, staging the reasons for Fukuzawa’s Datsu-A Ron and showing a picture of “conservativism” as Smith characterized China to be.
Chapter Five
- Wei Zhuang Village is a Darwinian jungle in which only the strong survive; Whisker Wang, Young Di and Ah Q fighting for job opportunities to stay alive;
- The Zhao family (赵家人), synonymous with the powerful elite in China, represents the landed gentry class who needed social order and hierarchy as much as Ah Q needs the 1912 Republican Revolution to democratize China
Chapter Six
- Ah Q’s desires for money and livelihood are as strong as the promises of the Republican (1912 辛亥革命) Revolution; he goes nowhere with his diligence and cunning, he wants to join the revolution for all the wrong reasons, a critique of the revolution by Lu Xun drowned in his pessimism. He thought lowly of the change and created Ah Q as a revolutionary-to-be; dreaming to kill the Zhao family and become them, with money and women.
Chapters Seven and Eight
- Ah Q misses out on the opportunity to make revolution on the rich and powerful; to the masses who have no idea of themselves as the citizens of civic society and a republic, the revolution was but a chance to redistribute social wealth in the old ways
Chapter Nine
- A vicious cycle of what Rene Girard refers to as mimetic rivalry and sacrificial crisis completes itself one more time when certain individuals or social groups were scapegoated to restore social order. This was how Lu Xun imagined “social progress” to be like; as an activist and progressive, his skepticism about “a world history” throws him in the darkness of despair. The only difference between Fukuzawa and Lu Xun is the latter’s ambivalence and the former’s firm stand on modernization by way of Westernization.
- Ah Q is executed in front of a cheering crowd and finally wakes up to Lu Xun’s view of China as a cultural of cannibalism, a meat grinder, utterly indifferent about human suffering, like clearly stated by his younger brother Zhou Zuoren 周作人 who called China “non-human”