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
For the first time in the five months since Tao’s fall, Kai Ying stands in the courtyard directly in front of the kapok tree. At this time of year, it has bare, skeletal limbs; it will be months before its vibrant flowers reappear. She reaches out and touches the scar where Wei gashed it. It has grown so faint that only someone who knows where to look for it can see it. In the kitchen, she hears Tao and Suyin deep in animated conversation, and she smiles. The gate opens and she turns, surprised that a patient would come by that late in the afternoon. Instead, she sees Wei.
Standing in front of the kapok tree symbolizes Kai Ying’s readiness—after months of resistance—to accept how radically her life has changed. Of course, by now it has changed for the better in some ways: Suyin and Meizhen have joined the family, giving Kai Ying an apprentice and a surrogate daughter and giving Tao an older sister. She looks at the scar on the tree’s trunk, realizing that although it will never go away, time has softened it. Likewise, this era will leave marks on the family. But in time, the wounds will heal, the scars will diminish, and the pain will fade into the past. Wei enters the courtyard at just this moment, carrying a tiny promise of Sheng’s return with him, and his presence promises that this period of trial and pain will come to an end soon enough.
Themes
