Hometown Journal In this story of slight melancholy and heavy nostalgia, the quote that most jumps out

at me comes near the end when the narrator muses, Even though were irrevocably cut off from each other didnt Honger start to miss Shuisheng when we had barely set out? There ought to be a new life for them, a life that none of us has ever known (99). This sentiment plays with the cyclical nature of generations, as Honger and Shuisheng fall into the exact situation that the narrator and Runtu experienced so many years before. Lu Xuns narrator here advocates a break from traditional modes of Chinese life from the ground up, beginning, as it were, with a New Youth, in order to bring the numb crowd of individual Chinese citizens into a warm, active, solidarity. He goes on the think, Cant let go of that superstitious idol-worship of his for a single minute! But what was this thing called hope if not an idol that I had fashioned with my own hands (99). Runtu, in the narrators mind exemplifies the section of society that follows old traditions in the face of shiny new ones arriving from dominant foreign powers, stubbornly insisting on getting in the way of the narrators desired social flux. However, unlike many other examples in Lu Xun, this passage is not a bitter or a biting one. Rather, he lightly chastises the Runtu character for his faults while laying bare his own; that he, through the narrator, expresses a lack of belief that his own cause will succeed, a doubt gnawing at his mind. Finally though, the narrator dreams a hopeful dream, saying Hope isnt the kind of thing that you can say either exists or doesnt exist Its like a path across the land its not there to begin with, but when lots of people go the same way, it comes into being (100). This passage struck me because it so, uncharacteristically, open to the positive. In nostalgia, Lu Xun seems able to let down his heavy cynicism and believe, however slightly, in the Chinese and the human spirit.