Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Bonesetter’s Daughter, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Secrecy and Misunderstanding
Memory, Culture, and the Past
Storytelling
Women’s Solidarity
Summary
Analysis
Ruth returns to LuLing’s apartment and begins to throw away all that trash. However, when she starts to clean out her mother’s room and finds that she cannot part with a make compact and bottles of unused perfume, Ruth realizes she shares LuLing’s sentimental attachment to objects from the past.
Ruth has spent years trying to distance herself from LuLing only to find that she has unconsciously absorbed certain aspects of LuLing’s personality.
Themes
Hours later, Ruth assembles a bag of things to give away. As Ruth assesses the place for repairs needed to ensure LuLing’s safety, she peels back the rug to uncover the area underneath the floorboard where LuLing hoards her most valuable possessions. Ruth lifts the floorboard and finds her mother’s gold serpentine bracelet. Ruth searches for her mother’s other hiding places. She removes a brick from the unused fireplace and discovers a roll of bills there. Ruth remembers how she used to take from this money when she was younger, thinking she deserved it for all the chores she did for LuLing.
LuLing’s impulse to hide her special items shows how guarded she is about her past. It also suggests a life characterized by loss: she hides her treasured items because she has learned that there are no limits to the losses one may endure. LuLing is well acquainted with loss, having lost two husbands and Precious Auntie.
Themes
Ruth thinks back to her childhood. Growing up, she’d vowed to be the opposite of her miserable, anxious mother. She’d expressed these thoughts in a diary that Auntie Gal gave her. Ruth loved writing in her diary, feeling as though the book immortalized her and gave meaning to her life. However, it soon became apparent that LuLing was reading the diary when Ruth was out of the house.
Ruth has long vowed to be different from LuLing, yet she has still inherited LuLing's anxiety. Ruth’s diary also ties her to LuLing: both women document the important events of their lives in writing.
Themes
Ruth began hiding her diary, but LuLing would always find it and claimed a daughter shouldn’t keep secrets from her mother. Ruth began to rebel by writing in pig Latin and Spanish and using complicated language to confuse LuLing. She wondered if LuLing realized that it was her need to know the truth all the time that drove her daughter away from her.
LuLing’s snooping is hypocritical. She withholds so much from Ruth yet expects Ruth to keep no secrets from her. While LuLing’s secrecy adversely affects her relationship with Ruth, it’s also true that having no secrets can be harmful in a relationship, as evidenced by Ruth’s adverse reaction to LuLing’s snooping.
Themes
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Suddenly, Ruth remembers the last place she hid her diary. She runs to the kitchen and retrieves the book from its position on top of one of the cabinets. Upon opening the diary, Ruth feels suddenly 16 again. Slowly, Ruth opens the book to a page near the end—to the words that had almost killed her and LuLing.
Ruth’s life story—documented by her teenage self—transports her back to her childhood. Her remark about this particular entry almost killing LuLing reflects Ruth’s awareness of the power of words to bring about real, lasting consequences.
Themes
The weeks before Ruth had written these words were chaotic. In a flashback, LuLing catches Ruth smoking one night, and a horrible fight ensues. Ruth tells LuLing she wouldn’t care if she died. Later that night, Ruth writes in her diary, composing a detailed, cruel passage about how much she hates her mother, knowing that LuLing will read it. She writes that LuLing should kill herself, since it’s all she can talk about anyway.
Ruth unwittingly wishes onto herself the very same tragedy that LuLing had to endure—namely, the suicide of her mother. But because she doesn't know that Precious Auntie is LuLing's mother, she has no way of knowing how profoundly the diary entry will affect LuLing.
Themes
The next day, Ruth takes her time coming home from school, anticipating a massive fight to ensue as soon as LuLing reads the diary. But when Ruth returns home, Auntie Gal greets her, not LuLing. Auntie Gal explains that LuLing suffered a massive head injury after falling from a window. She’s in the hospital, and the doctors aren’t optimistic. Ruth breaks down, knowing she is to blame for her mother’s injuries.
LuLing’s suicide attempt teaches Ruth that her words have the power to elicit real change. When Ruth successfully used her voice (through her tea-tray-writing) to convince LuLing to move to San Francisco when she was 11, she realized that having a voice allowed her to exercise control over her life and saw this power as a solely positive thing. Now, she sees how her voice gives her the power to inflict harm, too. At the same time, this scene shows how LuLing’s unresolved guilt over Precious Auntie’s death negatively affects her ability to be a good mother to Ruth. Ruth’s words might be cruel, but many teenagers express an immature (and often untrue) hatred of their parents. For LuLing to respond to Ruth’s diary entry in such an extreme way is equally cruel, since she’s willfully inviting Ruth to experience the same guilt and shame that she herself endured after Precious Auntie’s suicide.
Themes
In the end, the doctors determine that LuLing has suffered some broken bones and a concussion. They let her return a few days later. Auntie Gal sticks around to help out, and Ruth is terrified that LuLing will tell her sister the truth about what happened. However, Auntie Gal never looks angry. Her mother doesn’t look mad, either, to Ruth’s surprise, only sad and weak. Ruth wonders why her mother has given up fighting with her. Ruth tries to apologize to her mother, but she keeps quiet after she realizes LuLing wants to pretend the evil words never existed in the first place.
In pretending that her suicide never happened, LuLing prevents Ruth from working through the traumatic experience and finding closure. Her refusal to communicate forces Ruth to take on guilt and shame similar to the guilt and shame LuLing experienced in the aftermath of Precious Auntie's death. It's cruel for LuLing to impose this fate onto Ruth, particularly since she knows firsthand how profoundly painful it is to believe that one drove one's own mother to commit suicide.
Themes
On Ruth’s 16th birthday, LuLing buys her Ruth’s favorite foods. Ruth interprets the gesture as a peace offering. Next, LuLing shows Ruth her gift: a black book, a small purse, and a ring of LuLing’s, gold and accented with jade, that Ruth had always loved. Next, Ruth opens the black book, which is a Chinese Bible. Inside the book is a photograph of a young Chinese woman. LuLing explains that the woman is her mother, but Ruth is too distracted by the ring to pay much attention. Afterward, and much to Ruth’s disappointment, she takes back the presents, explaining to Ruth that she will return them to her later, after she can better appreciate them. LuLing then places the items in a space beneath the cushion of a chair.
LuLing’s gifts are her attempt to tell Ruth about the past that remains too painful for her to discuss in words. When LuLing shows Ruth the photo of Precious Auntie and explains that the photo depicts her mother, Ruth is too distracted by the ring to pay attention to the significance of the information LuLing has just disclosed to her. LuLing takes back the gifts because she is hurt: she tried to share one of her most carefully guarded secrets with Ruth, but Ruth wasn’t interested.
Themes
Ruth wonders whether her mother had shown her the ring to torment her and resolves to pretend that she doesn’t care about it. A few days later, LuLing accuses Ruth of going to the beach without telling her, and their vicious fights resume. Ruth considers throwing away her diary—evidence of her cruelty—but refrains. Instead, she crosses out the fateful entry. Ruth writes an apology on the next page and voices her wish that LuLing apologize, too. Knowing that she could never show LuLing these words, she places her diary on top of the cabinet, where she knows LuLing will never find it.
Ruth doesn't understand why LuLing took back the gifts, and she mistakenly assumes she did so to be cruel. Ruth's misunderstanding causes her to pull away from LuLing and pretend that she has no interest in her life in China. Misunderstanding and secrecy thus prevent Rutha and LuLing from bonding after LuLing's suicide attempt. In the end, it's as though the traumatic experience is all for nothing, since Ruth resumes her rebellious streak and the relationship returns to the way it was before LuLing's suicide attempt.
Themes
Back in the present, Ruth realizes she and LuLing have never spoken about this traumatic period of their past. Suddenly, she remembers how LuLing had mistakenly identified Precious Auntie as her mother at the Moon Festival. She removes the Bible from its hiding place underneath the cushion and sees the same photo of Precious Auntie that LuLing had shown her at the dinner. Ruth wonders if LuLing is delusional or if Precious Auntie really was her mother. Ruth pulls out a stack of calligraphy papers from the same hiding place beneath the cushion and realizes they are part of the papers marked “Truth” that LuLing had given her six years ago.
The urgency of Ruth's current situation allows her to appreciate the important gifts LuLing tried to give her before: LuLing's dementia severely restricts the time Ruth has left to get to know her mother, and Ruth realizes she won't have many more chances to show LuLing that she is interested in her life, family, and history. With this is in mind, Ruth examines the photo of LuLing’s supposed mother more closely than she had 30 years ago and sees that the woman LuLing claimed was her mother is, indeed, Precious Auntie.
Themes
Ruth finds a dictionary and translates the first line: “These are things I should not forget.” She wonders if LuLing has known about her fading about memory for years. She resolves to call Art in Hawaii to help her find a translator, and to ask her mother about her life.
The first line of LuLing’s manuscript reflects the key role storytelling and language hold in preserving and honoring the past. Ruth realizes that showing LuLing that she has read the manuscript is the only way she can atone for the years she has spent being an inadequate daughter.
Themes
