The Passive Perspective of Sunflower Kernels and the Allegory of National Character in "Eating Melon Seeds"

Abstract

In 1930s China, social crisis coexisted with the routines of urban everyday life. The humorous and leisurely familiar essay, while offering emotional relief in circulation, also concealed expressions of anxiety about reality Taking Feng Zikai's prose essay "Eating Melon Seeds" as its object of study, this paper focuses on how the passive perspective of sunflower kernels generates an allegory of national character. In terms of methodology, the study integrates close reading with contextual analysis, and adopts narratology, rhetorical analysis, and imagistic analysis as its core analytical instruments. On the one hand, it offers a structured examination of key narrative devices in the essay, including shifts in perspective, chains of action, and sound rhythms such as "gepei" and "didi." On the other hand, it cross-validates the essay's expressive strategies and semantic extensions through comparison with different editions of Essays of the Yuanyuan Hall and with existing scholarship. The study shows that the work shifts the center of narration from the eater to the passive presence of the object, constructs a palpable experience of time through action and sound, and, through irony and ellipsis, allows criticism to emerge naturally from quotidian detail. In the end, the repetitive act of private amusement reaches a point where it leads to the dissipation of vitality and the formation of collective spiritual inertia. This paper argues that, in the light and flexible form of the familiar essay, "Eating Melon Seeds" achieves an allegorical mode of expression. Its value lies not in explicit admonition, but in its ability to activate readers' self-vigilance and reflection on modernity through a narrative mechanism.