Friendship Theme Analysis

Although her home life is abysmal, Adeline’s childhood is full of genuine and affectionate friends. Though they do not realize it at the time, these friends and the love they show to Adeline are critical in keeping her from utter despair. The power of Adeline’s friendships suggests that a strong network of friends is crucial to enduring a traumatic situation and can even compensate for a lack of family support.

Adeline’s primary school friends offer her the loyalty and love that she never receives from her siblings or parents. Adeline’s close primary school friend Wu Chun-mei cherishes Adeline in a way that Niang and Father never do. When it is time for Chun-mei’s birthday party, she refuses to have it until Adeline will be able to attend, even though it is less convenient for others, demonstrating that she believes Adeline to be her most precious friend and more important than her party. In this way, it is shown that the love and affection that should come from one’s parents may be at least partially substituted by one’s friends. While Adeline’s parents refuse to ever celebrate her achievements, Adeline’s school friends go out of their way to do so. When Adeline is elected class president, her friends follow her home to throw her a surprise party. Niang, enraged that Adeline is being celebrated, screams and beats her within earshot of Adeline’s friends. They are shocked and saddened, but nevertheless remain loyal to Adeline, now even more determined to love and celebrate her. The commitment of Adeline’s friends demonstrates how good friends may offer the affirmation and loyalty that one’s family may lack.

Adeline’s cousins Claudine and Victor, and their mother Aunt Reine, are an example of how a healthy family ought to interact with each other. Victor and Claudine have an affectionate relationship as brother and sister, contrasting sharply with Adeline’s own relationships with her brothers. While Victor does like to tease Claudine, he is sensitive to her feelings and very careful not to take a jest too far. While they are aboard a ferry, Adeline is shocked to see Victor gently teach his sister how to equip a life-vest, an act of kindness and protectiveness that her own brothers would never do for her. Aunt Reine, in contrast to Niang, is not demanding or controlling but kind and self-sacrificing, demonstrating the way a mother ought to act towards her children. Aboard the ferry, Adeline, Aunt Reine, and Claudine are to sleep together in a small room with two beds and one cot on the floor. Adeline, conditioned to be self-deprecating by Niang, assumes that she will take the cot. Aunt Reine instead decides that the three of them will draw lots for it, meaning that it is possible Aunt Reine will take the worst sleeping arrangement even though she is the matriarch. Aunt Reine’s willingness to be uncomfortable for the sake of treating Adeline fairly paints a vivid contrast with Niang and becomes an important point of reference for Adeline to see how a loving mother should act. Aunt Reine, Claudine, and Victor are simply a normal, healthy family—and yet, to Adeline, they seem saintly. Critically, Adeline’s cousins demonstrate to her how pleasant and loving a properly functioning family can be. In this way, Adeline’s cousins illustrate the importance of good friends—including extended family—to help a traumatized individual maintain a connection with reality and understand that their own dismal circumstances are not the way that life has to be.

Adeline’s friends become a source of hope, a light in a dark time, effectively demonstrating how, even when family has become a wretched and fearful thing, the love and kindness of others can help to carry one through difficult times.