What is the theme of Water Margin? It has been controversial since it came into being. In recent decades, most people advocate the theory of "peasant uprising". A careful analysis of the contents of Water Margin shows that it rarely involves the life of farmers in patriarchal society, nor does it show the economic and political demands of patriarchal farmers. Even if I occasionally write about some farmers, most of them are silent, unrequited and follow the crowd. The elites at the bottom of society written in Water Margin are mostly vagrants or marginal figures. The so-called vagrants are people who break away from the patriarchal network and sink into the bottom of society. This novel describes their struggle to survive and improve their situation. Their "economic need" is a rich material life (drinking wine in an urn and eating meat in chunks). In order to realize this material life, they must change their social status quickly, so "getting rich and running well-off" has become their political appeal. "Water Margin" wrote the successful side of the tramp struggle (Liangshan Juyi), but it failed because of the conspiracy of the dark forces. The Water Margin is a story about the success and failure of homeless people.

As the first oral novel, Water Margin is not only a landmark work in the history of literature, but also provides an unprecedented thought in the history of China's ancient thought. First, it clearly pointed out for the first time that when people are cornered by society and treated unfairly, rebellion is also an alternative way out. The Water Margin points out that it is reasonable for officials to force people to revolt through the stories of Lin Chong, Jie Zhen, Jeb and others. Shuihu also established a discourse system for the rebels, which was not only recognized by the rebels later, but also understood by people of other classes.

In recent decades, the act of wooing An in Water Margin has been criticized, especially those who hold the theory of "peasant uprising" think that wooing An is betrayal. Get rid of some dogmas and make a realistic analysis of the problem of wooing Ann. Zhao 'an was an inevitable product at that time (the turn of the Northern Song Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty), and its significance was not entirely negative.