lives. In the 1920s the most common critical sentiment argued that "Ah Q" was a masterpiece. In 1926 Zheng Zhenduo stated his belief that Lu Xun had finished the story too quickly. In literary terms questioned why Ah Q would die in such a casual manner after the story had already determined that being a revolutionary was already not satisfactory. In response to Zheng, Lu Xun said "So week after week passed, and inevitably the problem arose whether Ah Q would become a revolutionary or not. To my mind, as long as there was no revolution in China, Ah Q would not turn revolutionary; but once there was one, he would. This was the only fate possible for my Ah Q, and I would not say that he has a dual personality. The first year of the Republic has gone, never to return; but the next time there are reforms, I believe there will be revolutionaries like Ah Q. I only wish that, as people say, I had written about a period in the past, but I fear what I saw was not the past but the future — even as much as from twenty to thirty years from now." Gloria Davies, the author of "The Problematic Modernity of Ah Q," said that many Marxist critics criticized "Ah Q" because the betrayal of the Communists after the 1927 Northern Expedition "bore a dangerous resemblance to Ah Q's fate in front of the firing squad." Davies further explained that "[i]t is perhaps also not too far-fetched to suggest that the Marxist dogmatists perceived in "The True Story of Ah Q" a realism with sufficient power to undermine even their own adamant and much-vaunted belief in the imminent arrival of a Communist utopia; for not even the most foolhardy dogmatist could ignore the countless acts of political violence and betrayal taking place around him, borne variously of the ruthlessness, ambition, cynicism, fear and ignorance, in all, the darker side of the human condition that Lu Xun had portrayed so vividly in "The True Story of Ah Q"." Lu Xun's last response regarding "Ah Q" itself was his reply to Zheng. During the debates on revolutionary literature in 1928 and 1929, Lu Xun decided not to comment on the criticisms of the story. A leftist critic, Qian Xingcun, wrote an essay "The Dead Era Of Ah Q" (死去了的阿Q时代, "Sǐqùle de Ā Q Shídài"),