My hometown describes what I saw and heard when I moved back to Shaoxing and Beijing. It depicts the changes of my neighbors and friends in my childhood, such as tofu beauty and soil moistening. Compared with the young and middle-aged images, the young one is lively, cute, smart and capable, while the middle-aged one is numb and timid, which reflects the profound influence of traditional ideas on people, while the image of Yang Er's bean curd sister-in-law Xi Shi has also changed from a beautiful woman to a vulgar and selfish woman.

In the novel, Lu Xun mainly shows two aspects. On the one hand, it reflects the objective reality. By comparing the hometown in memory with the hometown witnessed by reality, the work reveals the sufferings caused by imperialist aggression and feudal oppression, and reflects the reality of rural bankruptcy and farmers' painful life before and after the Revolution of 1911.

On the other hand, it embodies the significance of Lu Xun's exploration of "human nature". The work profoundly points out that due to the influence of traditional concepts in feudal society, the working people are greatly bound in spirit, which highlights Lu Xun's rescue of "national character". This is not only the author's deep thinking about the reality of rural life in China at that time, but also his dissatisfaction with the history and culture that ruled China farmers. So he wants to "escape from a different place, take a different road and seek a different life", hoping that the younger generation will have a new life.