Saturday, October 12, 2013

The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan


Characters
San Francisco – current day
Changmian - 1864
Changmian – current day
Olivia – narrator
Parents – Jack Yee and Louise Kenfield
Brothers – Kevin and Tommy
 
Kwan – half-sister
George – Kwan’s husband
Virgie – George’s cousin from Canada living with them
 
Simon Bishop – Olivia’s husband
Elza – Simon’s deceased girlfriend
 
Samantha – Olivia and Simon’s daughter
 
Bob Laguini – Louise’s 2nd husband
 
Yin people
Miss Banner
Nunumu
 
 Yiban Johnson
 
General Cape
 
Lao Lu
 
Zeng
 
Missionaries
 
 
 
 
 Big Ma – died in accident day Kwan arrived
 
Du Yun/Du Lili
Buncake – Du Lili’s deceased  daughter
 
Kwan (Pancake)
 
Andy – Boston grad student
 
 
 
 
SPOILER ALERT!  Chart at end with reincarnations

 For discussion:
NOTE:  Page numbers are from paperback edition.

1. Miss Banner learned to sense the world like a Chinese person (sight, touch, hear, smell, taste) but was never able to eliminate “her American sense of importance.”  (Chapter 3, page 49)  How did this affect Miss Banner and Nunumu?

2. A visitor found Changmian populated and vibrant one month after the Manchu soldiers set fires at the cave entrances.  Were the people real or ghosts?  If real, how did they survive?  (Chapter 22, page 339)

3. Do you think Kwan is really Olivia’s half sister or was she switched with Buncake?  (End of Chapter 17)

4. What did you think about Simon’s sterility and Elza’s pregnancy?  At the end of the book he was not sterile and the doctor’s thought the diagnosis had been a mistake.  Did you think Elza was lying or that she was pregnant by someone else?

5. What is the difference between tradition and superstition?   (Chinese tying rooster to lid of coffin to help ghost body fly away and American tales about Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy)
 
6. The Chinese and Americans had different reactions after witnessing the accident on the way to Changmian.  Kwan says that in China, the driver is always at fault, but Olivia says that “A dead pedestrian is a dead pedestrian, no matter whose fault.”     Kwan told Olivia and Simon that, “In China you always responsible for someone else, no matter what.  You get run over, this my fault…”  (Chapter 14, page 199)    Can you understand this difference in view?  What is your opinion?

7. Would you be willing to go to Changmian and live and explore like Olivia and Simon?  Would Olivia have gone if she had known the actual conditions?

8. Did Kwan and Olivia really see ghosts?   At one point Kwan pretended to see Elza but Olivia really saw her and heard her say, “Simon, wait for me.”  What alternative explanations are there?  (Pages 105, 107)

9. Do you think Kwan has been reincarnated in Samantha?

Reincarnations:
Olivia was Miss Banner Olivia; Elza was Olivia’s mother two lifetimes ago
Simon was Yiban Johnson
Kwan was Nunumu
George was Zeng

No comments:

Post a Comment