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
As the doctor cuts the cast from Tao’s leg, Tao clings to Kai Ying’s hand. He remembers a time when he was four years old, and his hand slipped from hers in a busy downtown area. He remembers trying to follow her through the crowd, getting more scared by the minute. Eventually, a stranger had to help him find Kai Ying. The memory still haunts him. As the doctor unwraps the leg, he tells Tao to avoid climbing trees in the future. Tao nods: he has no intention of climbing the kapok tree or getting lost in a crowd ever again—he knows his weak leg won’t allow him to keep up with his mother.
Earlier in the day, Tao lay in bed and told himself that as soon as the cast came off, his life would go back to the way it was before his fall. But his flashback to a frightening childhood experience of being lost suggests he recognizes, at least subconsciously, that this is impossible. Even before Sheng’s arrest, bad and scary things happened. And all of the events that happen to Tao become part of his unfolding experience, shaping the way he looks at the world going forward. Still, he finds strength in his mother’s presence, and this points yet again to the power of family to provide a place of safety and comfort.
Themes
The next afternoon—the afternoon of the Moon Festival—it rains. Tao stands up from the dinner table and walks, slowly but without the crutches the doctor told him to use while he rebuilt his strength, to the window. It bothers him that, after all those weeks of immobility, his leg isn’t fully healed. When Wei asks if Tao wants to hear the story of Huoyi and Chang’e, Tao refuses. It’s not the same without the moon. Wei says they still have the story, and besides, the moon is there, just behind the clouds. But Tao wonders to himself if the moon has a point when it’s hidden. It certainly won’t light Sheng’s way home.
As if to emphasize the cruel truths that life involves suffering and that things will not be going back to normal any time soon for Tao or the rest of the family, it rains on the night of the Moon Festival. According to legends, this is when the full moon brings Huoyi and Chang’e close enough together for their one reunion a year. When Tao rejects Wei’s story, he’s registering his disappointment at discovering that things aren’t going to magically get better any time soon.
Themes
