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
After his trip to the park, Song walks Tao to school in the morning and Suyin walks him home in the afternoon. Secretly, Tao likes coming home with Suyin, who doesn’t make a fuss over him. She doesn’t make him talk if he doesn’t want to, and she helps him out—taking his bag or slowing her pace when his leg is tired—without making a fuss about it. In crowded areas, she holds on to his sleeve to keep him close. She doesn’t know how much he appreciates that.
With his trip across the park, Tao intended to prove to himself and his family that he could be independent. But it had the opposite effect, underlining his dependence on others for safety and protection—after all, he remains an inexperienced young child. And that’s how Song treats him. But not Suyin, who watches over him protectively, but also respectfully, without encroaching on the small measure of independence and privacy he possesses. She takes on an increasingly familial—and increasingly welcome—role in Tao’s life, because she treats him more like Wei treated him.
Themes
On this afternoon, unexpectedly, Suyin asks where Tao went on the afternoon he disappeared. Tao says he was just taking a walk, but Suyin points out that he looked like he was running away from something when he returned. After a moment, he decides to answer her question, but he realizes she’s no longer at his side. He turns to find her frozen on the corner, staring down the street. She doesn’t say what she’s looking at and when he follows her gaze, he just sees a busy street filled with people: a grandmother and grandchild, two boys in front of a store, an arguing couple. Finally, Suyin shakes herself and tells Tao that the two boys are her brothers.
As she’s shown Tao respect, Suyin has earned his trust and started to earn his affection. Now, she and Tao each entrust the other with one of their deepest secrets, and this shared knowledge confirms and strengthens the bond between them. This allows Suyin to become closer to the Lee family on the whole, and continues to suggest that like Auntie Song, she’ll become a chosen member of the family.
Themes
Later that afternoon, Tao stands outside Suyin’s room, full of curiosity about her family and renewed empathy for her loneliness. When she invites him, he joins her and the baby in the room. They talk a little about the baby, about how Suyin needs to give her a name. She asks Tao for ideas, but the only thing he has ever named was a stray cat that wandered into their courtyard when he was younger. He named it “Mao,” after the Chinese word for “cat”—not after the Communist Party chairman. He cried when it disappeared. Now he worries that Suyin and her baby will just disappear, too. Promising to think about names, he backs out of the room.
In this moment, Suyin clearly becomes a member of the household rather than a stranger in Tao’s mind. The intimacy of the request to help name the baby reflects this shift in Tao’s and Suyin’s relationship, while Tao’s flash of concern that the baby and Suyin will disappear reflects the recent, traumatic string of disappearances in his life. And it shows that he already considers her a valuable member of his family, one he’s afraid to lose.
Themes
