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 Wei and Kai Ying head home from the hospital through congested streets, Kai Ying finds herself resenting every mother she sees walking with a healthy child. At home, she pauses in the courtyard for a moment, standing beneath the kapok tree and trying to steady herself. Wei goes into the empty house; the Changs have gone to visit their daughter in another city. Kai Ying realizes gratefully that Tao’s fall left no bloodstains or other permanent marks in the courtyard. She loves the tree, in part because its living grandeur reminds her of her the countryside where she grew up. It contrasts with the bustling, hard-edged city landscape. She can’t imagine why Tao tried to climb it, unless it was from the impulsiveness he shares with Sheng.
Kai Ying’s relief that Tao’s fall left no permanent marks suggests her own impossible desire for things to return to the way they were before. If there’s no evidence of the fall and Tao recovers fully, it will be like it never happened. But of course, she cannot rewrite reality in that way. Readers know that Tao’s fall—like Sheng’s arrest and the family’s other trials—will always be a part of their story. Only by facing these trials with bravery can they move into the future stronger than before.
Themes
Wei emerges from the kitchen with something glinting in his hand, and before Kai Ying realizes what it is, he’s hacking at the trunk to the kapok tree with a meat cleaver. She grabs his arm. She doesn’t want him to harm the tree, which is an official symbol of the city. The family doesn’t need any of their neighbors turning them in for holding dissident or disgruntled opinions. As she takes the cleaver from Wei’s hands, he recognizes—and shares—the fear, grief, and frustration she sees in his eyes. But she has no soothing words. She wishes for Wei’s customary serenity to return as she looks up at the tree with the sense that she and Wei are falling, too.
The kapok tree represents not just strength but also resilience—apart from the seasonal cycle of flower, leaf, and bare branches, it has remained unchanged for generations. As Kai Ying looks at it, fantasizing about life going back to the way it was before Tao’s fall, Wei attacks it. The wound will heal over and the tree will survive, but it will have a permanent scar. This scar suggests that only through surviving suffering can people find strength, resilience, and wisdom.
Themes
