4 ideas
When Ah Q is beaten, he reframes the defeat in his head ("it's as if I were beaten by my son") or even slaps his own face, then imagines he was the one who struck the blow, and walks away feeling he has won. The imagined win removes the pain of losing, so nothing about his situation ever changes. Self-deception here works as a painkiller that also blocks any correction.
Ah Q is a landless day laborer in Weizhuang with no fixed name or origins. He hears of the 1911 Revolution, pictures it as a chance to take goods and women, and is turned away by the local revolutionaries. He is then arrested for a robbery he took no part in. He cannot understand his own trial, and his main worry is that the circle he must draw as his signature is not round enough, before he is paraded through the streets and shot to entertain a crowd.
The 1911 Revolution reaches Weizhuang only as a change of labels. The same gentry, such as the Zhaos and the Fake Foreign Devil, make themselves revolutionaries, keep power, and shut out the poor. A political overthrow that leaves people's habits of mind untouched just puts the same oppression under new names.
Ah Q cannot fight back against those who humiliate him, so he bullies people weaker than himself. He pinches a young nun and picks fights with Young D, restoring his sense of rank at their expense. Seen this way, a rigid hierarchy keeps itself going because each victim pushes cruelty downward instead of challenging those above.