Midnight marks that Mao Dun's creation has entered a new mature stage, and it is an excellent revolutionary realistic novel in China's modern literature. It was written in 193 1 year1month and completed in 19321February. Before I started writing, I went through a long process of preparation and conception.

The contradiction and struggle between Wu Sunfu, a national industrial capitalist, and Zhao, a comprador financial capitalist, is a main thread throughout the book. Around this main line, Midnight reflects the development of revolution around 1930 and the social outlook of China where a single spark can start a prairie fire.

The characters in Midnight are active in such a broad historical background. Moreover, through the development of character and destiny, it clearly and powerfully shows the development trend and grandeur of the whole era. It takes Shanghai as the center and reflects the whole picture of China society. It's about the events of 1993 in two months (May to July), which covered up the context of the past and future of China society. It is the most important place for Mao Dun, as an outstanding realistic writer in China, to show various complicated life phenomena with great historical and social significance through a rigorous and grand artistic structure.

Wu Sunfu, an industrial capitalist described by the writer, is not an insignificant figure. He used to be keen on developing industry in his hometown Shuangqiao Town, and planned to build his "Shuangqiao Kingdom" based on a power plant. However, Shuangqiao Town, with a population of only 100,000, is not a place where "heroes can exert their strength". He developed China's national industry with the aim of "developing enterprises, increasing the number of chimneys and expanding the sales market". He has such ambition to overthrow all "half-dead so-called entrepreneurs" and "hold the enterprise in his own iron fist". Not only that, but he also knows that if we develop national industries, first of all, "the country is like a country and the government is like a government." Therefore, in addition to never tirelessly looking at the interests of enterprises, he also "looks at politics with one eye." He gained knowledge of managing modern industry from his travels in Europe and America. He has courage, ability and bright eyes, and he can often arouse others' ambitious career and is willing to cooperate with him. But Wu Sun-fu, a knight in business, was born at an inopportune time. He did not live in Europe and America in the 18 and 9th centuries, but in semi-feudal and semi-colonial China. China's ambition to develop the national industry had to become an unattainable fantasy. He can't just live a "life of war". He is fighting on several fronts at the same time: he is fighting Zhao, a financial capitalist who is a broker of American imperialism; He could not put out the surging strike movement in the factory; Many small factories he bought wholeheartedly have become "wet shirts" that he can't get rid of. He, Sun Jiren and Wang Sanren painstakingly managed the trust company, which was inevitably destroyed under the conditions of warlord scuffle, rural bankruptcy, overproduction of factories and large-scale economic blockade of Zhao. The Zhong Yi Trust Company, which they initiated, was established less than two months ago, and its "ambitious plan" has become a bubble. Wu Sunfu, who is ambitious, headstrong and confident, has only one way to surrender.

Apart from Wu Sunfu, Mao Dun also created a series of characters with distinctive personalities in Midnight, and their respective ideological outlook and mental state were deeply branded by the times and classes. Tu Yuewei is Wu Sunfu's effective eagle dog. Just as the author deliberately exaggerated Wu Sunfu's talent and courage, he also exaggerated Tu's "alertness, calmness and courage" with a lot of pen and ink. With the strength of Chiang Kai-shek's fascist regime, it has the advantage of overwhelming Wu Sunfu politically and economically. He not only manipulated the bond speculation market in Shanghai, but also seized the throat of the national industry. He is cunning, cruel, fierce, playing with women, dissolute and shameless. Feng Yunqing fled to Shanghai as a "field-eating mound" under the storm of agrarian revolution. He traded the blood and sweat of farmers for a "public house" life in the metropolis, while speculating in the public debt market. Through an ugly drama in which he used his daughter as a "honey trap", the work sharply exposed the shameless spirit of the feudal landlord class, and on the other hand highlighted Zhao's despicable image. In addition, so-called "professors" and "poets" like Li Yuting and Fan Bowen who betray themselves and live on the capitalist's purse have also written their own characteristics. The author once said that he intended to "link the New Scholar of 1993 to the overall structure of the present book". Although this plan was not fully realized, Li Yuting, Fan Bowen and other figures somewhat showed the decadent and empty mental outlook of some bourgeois intellectuals at that time.

Mao Dun also used the description of natural scenery in many places to render the atmosphere and set off the changes of the characters' emotions, thus vividly expressing the characters' personalities. He never writes about scenery for the sake of it. He writes about scenery, so he writes about people. Sometimes it's because of feelings, sometimes it's because of scenery, and the scene is mixed, which is irrelevant. The language of Midnight is concise, delicate and vivid. It has no over-Europeanized language, and occasionally uses ancient idioms, which is just right and interesting. The characters' language and the narrator's language can have different characteristics with the development of stories and characters' personalities, so that readers can feel at home when they hear their voices and see their people. The artistic structure of Midnight is grand and precise. The book 19 chapters, one or two chapters explain the characters and reveal clues; Since then, the seventeen chapters are interlocking, complicated and orderly, each with its own description focus, and obey the center of the book together.