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 looks at the garden, imagining the crops that will spring from the bare earth where she and Tao recently planted seeds. She prays to the goddess Kuan Yin that Wei will be home before the chives shoot up, and that Sheng will be back by the fall harvest. She looks forward to the harvest, even while she cautiously recognizes that nature both gives and takes away. She remembers her second spring in the villa, when incessant rains flooded the garden. When they stopped, she went to the garden to investigate, but her feet quickly got stuck in the mud. A teenaged Sheng pulled her out, laughing as mud spattered his nice clothes. He showed more of Liang’s easygoing temperament than Wei’s serious one. The memory of the first green sprouts that came up despite the flood brings tears to Song’s eyes, as she considers nature’s—and Sheng’s—resilience.
Song’s life has taught her to meet trial and difficulty with strength and hope. Her garden mirrors the lesson with its promise that periods of growth and abundance follow even the most hopelessly barren seasons, like when incessant rains flooded the patch and drowned most of the seeds. But a few survived, rewarding Song’s hope for the harvest. Sheng played an important role in helping Song keep her hope, as he showed her how to handle a difficult situation with ease. Moreover, his actions promise that Song will never be alone again like she was in her marriage to Old Hing. At the villa, there will always be someone to lend a supporting hand.
Themes
