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
GaoLing tells LuLing the Japanese will come for all of them any day now, so she might as well hold off on killing herself so they can die together. LuLing reminds herself that she should also care for Teacher Pan and her students. Ultimately, Sister Yu is most convincing: she tells LuLing that she won’t be able to join Kai Jing in Christian heaven if she dies by suicide. Reluctantly, LuLing decides to live and wait for the Japanese to take them. Meanwhile, she visits Kai Jing’s resting place every day and places the oracle bones he’d dug up over the past few months atop his grave.
Once more, GaoLing demonstrates a more practical approach to hardship and tragedy than LuLing, insisting that it is more logical for her to remain alive so the sisters can comfort each other in their final days. Ultimately, though, LuLing chooses to live not out of devotion to her sister but based on the spiritual or superstitious belief that she won’t be able to join her dead husband in the afterlife if she dies by suicide. LuLing’s decisions are consistently rooted in superstitious belief rather than her obligation or affection for other people.
Themes
Soon after, Miss Towler dies, as well. Her death profoundly affects Miss Grutoff, who begins to sew American flags to memorialize her. When the Japanese finally come for them, they are in the main hall, in the middle of their Sunday worship. They shoot down Miss Grutoff’s many flags, and the girls begin to cry. When the Japanese are done shooting the flags, they leave.
Miss Grutoff’s response to make flags after Miss Towler’s death shows how essential memorializing and honoring the dead is to the grieving process. This reaffirms how difficult it was for LuLing not to find Precious Auntie’s bones and return them to their proper resting place. It explains why her shame is so consuming.
Themes
Miss Grutoff tells everyone what she learned from her friends on the ham radio a few days ago: the Americans are now fighting against the Japanese. She thinks this might ensure a faster victory for China. Everyone smiles, though nobody is convinced that this is true. Later that night, Miss Grutoff tells the teachers that she has also heard that Peking Man’s bones have been lost or destroyed. The news shakes LuLing, who realizes that all Kai Jing’s archaeological work has been for nothing.
In 1941, the Peking Man fossils were supposed to be transported from the Peking Union Medical College to the United States for safekeeping during the Second Sino-Japanese War. However, they were lost after a Japanese warship attacked the American cargo ship on which they were loaded in preparation for their overseas journey. The fossils remain lost to this day. To LuLing, the loss of these fossils is particularly tragic because it erases Kai Jing’s story: the bravery he exhibited in doing his work and the great sacrifice he made to do it. With the tangible objects that tell his story erased from history, his sacrifice will soon fade from memory and cease to exist.
Themes
The Japanese return the next day to take Miss Grutoff to a prisoner-of-war camp. Miss Grutoff cries to Teacher Pan not to let the students forget the lessons of the apostles. After the Japanese leave, Teacher Pan leads everyone to the main hall to show them what Miss Grutoff meant. He twists off the hand of the statue of the apostle. Inside the hand are pieces of silver, gold, and, most importantly, a list of former students who are now in Peking. When things become too dangerous at the orphanage, they will try to take the girls to stay with these students in Peking a few at a time. Each teacher is assigned to a different apostle statue, each of which is filled with refuge money.
Miss Grutoff is another example of one of the resilient women who have supported LuLing and made sacrifices to aid in her survival. The disappearance of the Peking Man remains, which was briefly touched on in the previous scene, took place in 1941, which was the same year the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor, the U.S. naval base located in Honolulu, Hawaii. The attack marked the U.S. entry into World War Two. It's in response to this development that Japanese soldiers took Miss Grutoff, an American missionary, to a prisoner-of-war camp.
Themes
Get the entire The Bonesetter’s Daughter LitChart as a printable PDF.
Three months after the Japanese take Miss Grutoff, Teacher Pan announces that it’s time to leave. The teachers and older students each take a small number of girls. LuLing insists on being the last to go so that she can visit Kai Jing’s grave as many times as possible. Despite her bravery, LuLing’s time alone at the orphanage with her four assigned girls is terrifying. She constantly fears that the Japanese will come for her and the girls and prays nonstop. Finally, on their fourth day alone, she receives a message via radio to go at once: the trains are running. LuLing covers her face in porridge. When it dries against her skin, she looks like an old woman. She packs chicken blood in a thermos and sips some to appear that she is coughing up blood, thereby ensuring that no Japanese soldiers bother them as they make their journey.
LuLing’s decision to remain behind to afford herself additional time with Kai Jing’s grave shows how highly she values traditional beliefs about honoring the dead. With Kai Jing, she performs the ceremonial grieving she couldn’t do with Precious Auntie. Risking her life to transport the younger orphaned girls to safety is LuLing’s way of honoring and repaying the women who have enabled her to survive. LuLing demonstrates resilience and resourcefulness by using unconventional materials to disguise herself as an ill, older woman to avoid receiving unwanted attention from enemy Japanese soldiers.
Themes
Eventually, LuLing and the girls arrive in Peking, where they reunite with GaoLing. The girls settle in with former students. Over the next few years, some marry. GaoLing and LuLing live in the backroom of the old ink shop, and Teacher Pan and Sister Yu eventually join them. Meanwhile, Chang—the man LuLing now knows killed her father and grandfather—owns the shop and orders them to sell more ink. LuLing lives in the ink shop but plots her revenge.
It’s especially difficult for LuLing to work for Chang now that she has read Precious Auntie’s manuscript and realizes Chang’s central involvement in Baby Uncle’s and the Bonesetter’s deaths—and, of course, now that she knows just how thoroughly Chang ruined Precious Auntie’s life.
Themes
The war ends in 1945. GaoLing consults with a fortune-teller to determine if her husband has died in the war but receives inconclusive feedback. GaoLing gets a more definitive answer the following afternoon, when Fu Nan returns to the ink shop. Fu Nan is still addicted to opium and informs GaoLing that he’s sold the whole shop. Teacher Pan reasons they can leave and now that the war is over, but GaoLing refuses, determined to protect her family’s ink shop and preserve their legacy.
Unlike GaoLing and LuLing, who have made the best of the many hardships life has thrown their way, the Changs squander their wealth on opium and make reckless business decisions. GaoLing’s decision to remain behind and protect her family’s business is similar to how LuLing chose to stay at the orphanage and visit Kai Jing’s grave. Like LuLing, GaoLing feels that she has an obligation to protect her family’s legacy, even if it puts her in harm’s way.
Themes
That afternoon, Sister Yu leaves for the medical school and informs them that Miss Grutoff has been released from the prisoner-of-war camp but is very sick. LuLing, GaoLing, Sister Yu, and Teacher Pan visit Miss Grutoff, who is extremely weak and recovering at another foreigner’s house. Miss Grutoff informs her visitors that the orphanage has been destroyed. Next, Miss Grutoff announces her plans to return to San Francisco to be treated by a doctor there. She asks if someone would be willing to accompany her there—they can arrange for them to obtain a visa.
Even in her weakened state, Miss Grutoff goes out of her way to support her friends. The visa offers an opportunity to emigrate to the U.S. that would have been nearly impossible to obtain otherwise. It’s notable that LuLing doesn’t see this fortuitous turn of fate for the lucky twist that it is, choosing instead to fixate on the negative aspects and perpetuate the narrative that she is cursed and doomed to remain unhappy.
Themes
In the end, they decide that GaoLing will go first to escape her evil husband. She vows to sponsor LuLing’s emigration as soon as she is able. In the meantime, LuLing will wait in Hong Kong for her sponsorship papers to process. LuLing is initially upset with GaoLing. Later that night, LuLing mourns her lost opportunity to escape, but she ultimately feels happy that GaoLing will be able to escape Fu Nan Chang. She decides to accept whatever her New Destiny has in store for her. Three days later, the friends hold a small gathering before they depart for Hong Kong. They hope to see one another again soon.
GaoLing’s willingness to accept the visa shows that, while she clearly cares about LuLing, she is the less selfless of the two sisters. In contrast, LuLing has the chance to go to the U.S. but selflessly offers the visa to GaoLing instead. Once more, LuLing sees their contrasting fates as evidence of a curse rather than her accommodating nature and willful decision to act in ways that perpetuate her misery. At the same time, though, LuLing’s actions also show her willingness to make sacrifices to help her sister, thus underscoring the fondness and close connection she feels with GaoLing.
Themes
