Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Hundred Flowers, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Redemption
Journeys and Growth
Suffering, Strength, and Resilience
Home and Family
The Promises and Failures of Communism
Summary
Analysis
In his mother’s absence, Tao consoles himself by thinking about the Autumn Moon Festival, his favorite celebration of the year. He loves the tasty mooncakes, the gold and red lanterns they hang in the courtyard, and the celebratory feast. Each year, Wei tells him a different version of the festival’s central myth, about Huoyi the archer and his wife Chang’e, the Moon Goddess of Immortality.
Tao looks forward to the Autumn Moon Festival, which celebrates, in part, love and reunions. Yet the family will celebrate the holiday without Sheng. Thus, the event becomes yet another reminder of all they have lost and how irrevocably their lives have changed in the past year.
Themes
According to the myth, Emperor Yao gave Huoyi a magic pill of immortality after he saved the earth by shooting down nine of the 10 suns that threatened to burn it up. For some reason (each version of the story gives a different reason), Huoyi’s wife Chang’e swallowed the pill. She flew up to the moon, where she learned she could never return to earth. Huoyi eventually settled on the sun, and now he and Chang’e only see each other once a year, on the night of the Moon Festival. In Tao’s favorite version, Chang’e swallowed the pill to keep it safe from the greedy hands of one of Huoyi’s apprentices.
The myth of Huoyi and Chang’e maps onto the Lee family’s recent history in several ways. On one level, the separation of Huoyi from his wife mirrors the separation between Kai Ying and Sheng. But importantly, in Tao’s favorite version, Chang’e’s exile comes about when she tries to keep the magic pill safe from a bad actor. Likewise, Sheng self-sacrificially accepts the punishment for Wei’s letter to protect the father, whom he loves and respects. The reunion of Huoyi and Chang’e offers hope that the sacrifices the family must make during these hard times might eventually be redeemed and made meaningful.
Themes
Tao finishes his breakfast as he hears Wei in the kitchen. Outside his window, the leaves of the kapok tree wave at him in the breeze. He tells himself that by this time tomorrow, everything will be back to normal: he will quickly catch up at school, where he will entertain his classmates with the story of his fall from the tree. He will exaggerate the best details just a little bit, like his storyteller grandfather does. But still, he won’t be able to tell it like one of the best myths, because in that version, he would have kept flying until he landed on the sun or the moon.
As a young child, Tao clings to the illusion that he can avoid suffering. He does not yet fully grasp the lesson of the kapok tree or his fall: no one can return to or recreate happier times in the past, and no one can escape pain and suffering. Only as he learns to incorporate the fall into his life story—something he practices in his head at this moment—will he be able to find peace.
Themes
