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
Wei’s family think he is meditating when he sits still with closed eyes, but he isn’t. If he waits patiently enough the noise and light will fade away and he can conjure up the image of his dead wife Liang. It feels like the only moving picture he ever saw in a theater with Sheng, not long after the Communist Party takeover and shortly before Tao’s birth. Like the heroine of the movie (which was a propaganda piece about the evils of capitalism and bourgeoise excess), Liang’s hair went prematurely gray. But that didn’t bother her, and she refused to color it. Wei adored his wife. He met her when she was still a student at Lingnan University, where he taught. He misses her terribly. In the noise and bustle of the hospital, he cannot hang on to her image long enough to be comforted.
Just a few pages earlier, Kai Ying envied Wei for his peacefulness. Now, readers can see that he’s not peacefully accepting the realities of his current life but is instead trying to escape into his past. Tao’s fall has already shown this to be a bad idea: trying to return to the past prevents—rather than allows—growth, acceptance, and peace. In his attempts to escape his pain, Wei prolongs his own suffering. The act of conjuring up Liang is inherently selfish, in its own way. She’s a ghost, and he owes nothing to her, so this isn’t a relationship he has to nurture and she’s now a fellow person he has to care for.
Themes
Wei worries that Tao’s injury might be cosmic retribution for his own selfish absorption in his own work and interests. He didn’t follow his father into business and was unhurried about marrying and having children. His academic studies took up most of Sheng’s childhood. And then, when he finally retired and had time for her, Liang died. Wei tries to make up for his mistakes with Tao, and he lavishes his grandson with attention. He can feel Kai Ying, the daughter-in-law who he’s grown to like and respect, looking at him. He opens his eyes and sees the concern on her face. He wishes he knew what to say to her, but Liang and Sheng always were more empathetic than him.
In a way, Wei recognizes his selfishness, like his inability to connect with Sheng as a child, and the degree to which he took Liang for granted during her life. He interprets her premature death, Sheng’s arrest, and Tao’s injury as karmic retribution for this selfishness. But he cannot yet bring himself to make different choices. Although he pours energy and effort into his relationship with Tao, he still excuses his coldness toward Kai Ying by claiming that he just isn’t as empathetic as other people.
Themes
