The ideological trend of root seeking literature is an influential literary movement in the mid-1980s, but the literary circles have always had different views on root seeking literature. There is no unified concept about the theoretical concepts of root seeking, such as "root", "culture", "tradition" and "fracture", which makes the root seeking novels have "many semantic fields" and the tendency of various cultural interpretation, especially the differences on "traditional culture" are very obvious. Therefore, it is particularly important to clarify the relationship between root seeking novels and traditional culture, so as to deeply grasp the cultural meaning of root seeking novels. It is worth noting that the traditional expression of root seeking writers is based on the connection with the contemporary humanistic environment, and conceives the original natural picture of all things with the help of traditional culture, showing the worship and admiration of the original nature, the direction of freedom and independence, and the romantic concept of survival and primitive consciousness. Based on the "primitive image" proposed by Zhao Peilin in the origin of Xing, this paper analyzes and explains the spiritual and mysterious image codes in the representative works of root seeking novels White Deer Plain, tree king and northern river, and probes into the traditional cultural concepts and root seeking consciousness transmitted by the three primitive images of "deer", "tree" and "River".