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
Song hasn’t been so stressed since Old Hing died. She never told anyone how he really died, not even Liang. But soon after she met Kai Ying at Herbalist Chu’s shop, she returned and asked for something to help with her “rat problem.” It was easier than she expected to poison Old Hing; she sprinkled the provided herbs on his dinner and within days he was bedridden and struggling to breathe. She remembers him staring at her, trying to figure out if she’d had the courage to murder him. She saw him conclude that she was too weak, so she whispered a confession in his ear, ensuring he died knowing it was because of her. Their neighbors all chose to accept that the 85-year-old man had died of natural causes. She waited for someone to accuse her, but no one did.
Readers now learn that Song came by her resilience and strength by surviving truly terrible circumstances. When she counsels Kai Ying or Wei to trust that things will turn out as they should, or to patiently face their current trials, she knows what she’s talking about. That her marriage was so terrible that she felt compelled to murder her husband, meanwhile, highlights that marriage doesn’t make a supportive family. Rather, people become family when they choose to support one another. This is why Song is now a valued member of the Lee family, despite not being related to any of them.
Themes
Song usually compartmentalizes feelings of dread and despair, but she cannot keep her concern for Wei under control. She prays to the goddess Kuan Yin for his safety. She chides herself for failing to stop him or talk sense into him before he left. She tells herself that he’s a smart man and will find his way, but she struggles to believe it. She worries that in letting him go, she has let Liang down.
Song understands the importance of acting for survival and for personal growth. But she has deeper reserves of strength than Wei, who has been sheltered by his family throughout his entire life. Stuck at home, neither Song nor Kai Ying know that he has found a friend—a source of support and a means of redemption—in Tian.
Themes
