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
Kai Ying cannot sleep because of her concerns about Wei. She worries that he’s cold and achy. She hopes he brought the ginger rub she made for his sore back, and although she wants to search his room for it, this feels like too great an invasion of his privacy. She thinks she hears footsteps in the hall. This reminds her of the ghost stories Wei told her when she first arrived at the villa. He claims that it’s haunted by two of his family’s old servants. Kai Ying cannot imagine having servants. Of course, the Communist Party outlawed the practice as contrary to its ideology of freedom and equality. But even freed from bourgeoise bondage, people don’t have enough rice or oil or coal.
Despite her anger over Wei’s actions—both writing the letter and letting Sheng take the blame for it—Kai Ying loves and cares for her father-in-law, and she cannot stop herself from worrying about him. She already moves towards forgiveness, something that will help her family heal. The idea of family servants points towards some of the positive changes made by the Communist Party, which outlawed servitude and slavery. But, with mismanagement and repression, the Party risks replacing these old injustices with new ones—as evidenced by the labor camp where Sheng is now imprisoned.
Themes
Wei told Kai Ying that his family’s servants, Sun (the cook) and Moon (the housekeeper) lived in Auntie Song’s apartment. By the time he was in school, they were middle-aged and had been working at the villa for decades. They never agreed on anything. But when Moon fell ill, Sun devoted herself to caring for the housekeeper, and she never recovered after Moon died. Wei has never seen their ghosts, but he told Kai Ying that he often felt their presence in the house. Kai Ying yawns and rolls over, trying to clear her mind. But she thinks about Tao asking if she’s ever been to Luoyang. She’s never been farther than her home village of Zhaoquing. She wonders if she would have been brave enough to board the train with Wei.
The story about Moon and Sun shows how disagreement and love are not mutually exclusive. Although the servants fought, they clearly shared a deep and important bond, one that sustained both. And when Moon’s death broke that bond, Sun was irrevocably changed. Their names position them as opposites who balanced each other out and suggest that a family’s strength comes in part from bringing together people with different strengths and weaknesses in such a way that they balance each other out—as Sheng’s energy inspires Wei and Wei’s reserve teaches Sheng to accept what he cannot change about his situation.
Themes
