Ah Q in the work is a poor farmer who lived around the Revolution of 1911. In Wei Zhuang, an isolated and backward rural town in old China, Ah Q was poor and had no place to stand. He has no home and lives in Tuguqi. Without regular jobs, they can only make a living by doing short-term jobs. "When you cut wheat, you cut rice, and when you pound rice, you punt." Their social status is extremely low, and they even lost their surnames. Once he drank two glasses of yellow rice wine and said that he was originally from Grandpa Zhao's family. Grandpa Zhao stopped him and gave him a mouth, forbidding him to be surnamed Zhao. He was finally stripped of his last shirt and even lost the right to love; In the conflict with Grandpa Zhao, fake foreign devils, even Wang Hu and D, he will always be a loser. His real situation is so miserable, but he is always superior in spirit. Ah Q took an incredible attitude of defending and whitewashing his failed fate and slavery. The two chapters of the novel "Victory" focus on Ah Q's "spiritual victory method": He often boasted about the past: "We used to be much richer than you! What are you! " In fact, he is a little confused about his last name; He often hangs up in the future: "My son will have much more money!" In fact, he doesn't even have a wife; Or "forget": I just got a cry stick from a fake foreign devil, and I was humiliated for the second time in my life. After clapping my hands, I forgot everything and felt a little happy. Or vent your anger on the weak (such as a little nun) and satisfy it by passing on humiliation; Or belittle yourself, live in backwardness and be enslaved: "I am a bug-don't let it go?" After these failures, he deluded himself that "my son beat Lao Zi" and "won with satisfaction". In his self-fantasy, he turned the real failure into a spiritual illusory victory: "He felt that he was the first person to belittle himself" and "Isn't the champion also the first?" "What are you!" Even "punch two mouths in your face" and "as if you punched someone else", you will be calm and the world will be at peace. The "spiritual victory law" made Ah Q unable to face up to his miserable situation of oppression despite being exploited and bullied.
The work highlights Ah Q's "spiritual victory method" and shows many other complicated factors in his character. Ah Q's character is full of contradictions. On the one hand, he is an exploited farmer with good labor force, simplicity and stupidity. Influenced and poisoned by feudalism for a long time, he kept some ideas in line with the Bible's biography of saints, and did not change the narrow and conservative characteristics of small producers: he upheld the "great defense of men and women" and thought that revolution was rebellion; I despise city people because they call the "bench" a "bench" and add finely chopped onions to fried fish; Anything that doesn't conform to Wei Zhaung's living habits is "heresy" in his view. On the other hand, Ah Q is a bankrupt farmer who lost his land. He wandered around and was forced to be a thief, which infected some vagrants: he didn't admire Grandpa Zhao and Grandpa Qian and dared to "glare" at fake foreign devils; I also think the villagers in Wei Zhuang are ridiculous. They have never seen fried fish in the city, and they have never had their heads cut off. Some characteristics of Ah Q's personality are not possessed by ordinary farmers in China's feudal countryside. Look down on both city people and country people; From self-esteem to inferiority, and from inferiority to self-esteem, this is a typical character in such a typical environment as a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society. On the one hand, the "spiritual victory law" in The True Story of Ah Q is the expression of the complex social contradictions in rural areas of modern China after the invasion of foreign capitalist forces, on the other hand, it is also determined by Ah Q's own specific experience. Based on his life track and personality characteristics, Lu Xun followed his habit of artistic creation-"a model does not need a certain person", followed the needs of the subject, and highlighted a certain point of the complex personality of the characters when his thoughts were melted.
In the novel, Ah Q's method of spiritual victory is obviously branded with the class brand of unconscious rural drifters and farm labourers, who go bankrupt rapidly in modern society, unable to control their own destiny and find a way out. The description of Wei Zhuang's typical environment in the novel profoundly reveals the connection between Ah Q's spiritual victory law and the feudal traditional thought and feudal hierarchy that ruled the whole society, as well as the connection with the backward, closed, conservative and weak position of small producers. In this sense, Ah Q is a typical backward farmer. On the other hand, Ah Q's method of spiritual victory is the product of China's humiliating status in ancient times. It was "enslaved by foreign nations twice" in history and failed in succession in the face of modern imperialist aggression. It is a national mental state that loses national self-esteem and self-confidence, and is content with and covers up the fate of national backwardness and enslavement, which is what Lu Xun called "national mourning." Lu Xun found from his long-term and profound research on the history and present situation of the Chinese nation that Ah Q's spiritual victory method is one of the most serious ideological obstacles to the awakening and rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. His True Story of Ah Q is our nation's greatest self-criticism, from which he seeks the hope for the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. This is the theme and historical value of The True Story of Ah Q. From this point of view, Ah Q is undoubtedly a typical example of this kind of people in the Chinese nation who have the weakness of spiritual victory. The Soul of an Old China Farmer written by him has a very broad historical summary.