# data[].attributes.body
- starts on train, train station
- goes to uncle Chinh's place, communist party cadres school
- goes mr Khoa's building where Chinh works as a housekeeper
- Hang gets onto train
- goes to domitory
- hears aunt Tam is sick, goes back to moscow, Bohemian sends her to airport
- returns to childhood village in Hanoi

# data[].attributes.body
- She longs for a father-daughter relationship that she's never had
However, despite feeling a sense of loss and confusion due to the lack of protective parental figure in her life, she begins to recognise that friends and even strangers can provide the same support for her.
This is projected onto her traveling companion, where she reflects on their mutual care for each other along the way: 'We walked out of the station together, as if we were a father and daughter here' p199

-  Her utter disappointment in her uncle is clear from his manipulative lies to use her Russian speaking abilities, and she cannot bear any more of her mother's urges for her to help her uncle. She does not share the same value that self-sacrifice is necessary because it is her duty as the daughter. She feels increasingly oppressed under these traditional values, and goes as far as to wish to become Japanese, jealous of their freedom and 'respectability'
'I still remember how I had liked him instantly, how happy I was. That was another time.'
'Japanese: The name alone was like a certificate of respectability, a passport that opened all the doors in the world to them. Just like that'

# data[].attributes.body
- classmate at institute of social sciences - hang's school in moscow
- critisices Uncle Chinh for being in the communist party and trading in the black market
- helps Hang leave russia and return to Vietnam
- the idea of Hangs longing for affection and protection is shown throughout (eg. when she sees her travelling companion is treating her as a father would for a daughter - 199), and the bohemian fills this role through his protective gestures (211)
- Hang's interactions with him reflect her growing maturity, independance (218, 224)

# data[].attributes.body
takes advantages of sacrifices Que, and now hang made: shown by his faking of illness to call Hang to Moscow and help him sell goods on the black market as she could speak russian, even though Hang is sick = shows his selfishness and greed

# data[].attributes.body
- Hang arrives in Moscow and leaves her traveling companion
- Finds Uncle Chinh and eats dinner with a group of men (talks about the oppressive revolutionary party)
- discuss how uncle Chinh sells goods on the black market and is protected - landed him a position in the Party leadership
- Bohemian talks about a deputy director that frequently criticised others morality, but molested a young, mentally ill girl himself
- Bohemian says his generation is often humiliated and degraded by people like Uncle Chinh because if they did not fit their expectations, they would be traitors to the party
- criticises how uncle chinh panders to powerful men
- Next day, the Bohemian tells Hang that Uncle Chinh isn't sick, he only summoned her for money and Russian speaking skills - reminds her not to help him
- Finds out Aunt Tam is dying
- Bohemian helps her get back home
- She spends time with mom and their relationship seems to improve, but Que questions about Uncle Chinh which angers Hang
- Hang goes to find aunt Tam
- Hang feels pain to see her in such a state
- Aunt Tam leaves her inheritance
- Hang doesn't know if she should sell the house
- Aunt Tam wants Hang to keep house (legacy) but Hang thinks it's a burden
- Aunt Tam says shes seen hell before passing away, leaving Hang devastated
- Hang organises her funeral
- Hang finds Aunt Tam's trunk filled with trinkets from her youth

# data[].attributes.body
- both Hang and Que make sacrifices for family (Uncle Chinh), and continue to do so even when he takes advantage
- they support the men (the 'heirs') in the family which shows the traditional value of men having more power in social structure
- the idea of finding happiness for family before individual (collectivism) vs Hang's independence from pressure she feels: emphasises the freedom she feels from breaking away and questions whether aunt tam had a fulfilling life working and making sacrifices for her family rather than for herself
- author questions whether familial values are worth upholding to preserve/continue traditional idealogies

- while aunt tam works for her families happiness, supporting Hang to eventually pass down the family legacy to her, it is shown how her dedication to her family doesn't make her happy
- the sacrifices she has made for her family don't reflect her own happiness, views Hang as someone who will carry on family legacy
- que also shows the same image as aunt tam, valuing family happiness over her own, but shows the role of gender in these traditional values (her submission to men, esp uncle chinh)
- these two women reflect the confucian culture (respecting elder, the 'heir's' (men)) and traditional (working for family happiness>individual)

# data[].attributes.body
The Bohemian talks about how the revolution has ruined his family and generation and gives the example of the child molester who also lectured others on morality
- the hypocrisy of party leaders who abuse the immense power they hold (corruption)
He compares Uncle Chinh to the man, as they share similar worldviews - that everyone should devote themselves to the revolution
If people did not fit their expectations of an ideal party member, they would be considered traitors
Criticizes how men like uncle Chinh bow down low to powerful men

'The old child molester had never set foot on a dance floor. Of course, he did like to lecture his workers about how dancing was decadent, how their generation indulged in shameful pleasures, and how everyone should devote himself to the revolution. He had the same worldview as you, the same tastes.' (214)

Uncle Chinh is involved with the Party despite actively dealing with the black market

# data[].attributes.body
- Hang in Russia, flashback to staying in Hanoi after mothers accident, talking to aunt and uncle Chinh
- uncle Chinh wants to sell smth on black market but aunt says that the only thing that is his is the house and tv

this flashback structure shows Hang looking back at her childhood and how she was blinded by the beauty around her to not recognise the cycle of poverty and the oppression of traditional values and confucian culture that trapped them in it. It evokes Hang's nostalgia and disenchantment towards her naivety and innocence.

# data[].attributes.body
- Hang visits cemetery again, realises she has been idealising her memories
- sells some of Aunt Tam's gold to guy on motorcycle, realises disillusionment (flowers make it a beautiful place which blinds them from oppression = paradise of the blind)
- has a vision of a woman hanging
- sells Aunt Tam's house (climax)
- sits and dreams of university auditorium and faraway airport where plane can come and go

# data[].attributes.body
cemetery, her house

# data[].attributes.body
- works for Aunt Tam
- tries to get Hang to sell Aunt Tam's house to him

# data[].attributes.body
- in chapter 11 she leaves Hang everything she has and to keep the house as an "alter to their ancestors"
- but Hang sees that no matter how much Aunt Tam has sacrificed for family, and become wealthy, it has not made her happy/fulfilled
- is why she chooses to sell house, to find happiness elsewhere as she knows honouring her ancestors won't make her happy
- Aunt Tam is representative of the traditional Vietnamese culture/values as well as some western independent mindset (independent as in works for her family instead of finding happiness for herself, she finds this honourable but it is oppression which she is blind to)

# data[].attributes.body
- turns completely away from her family as she realises that these traditional values and Confucian culture her mother and aunt tam honour are forms of oppression from finding happiness and fulfilment in her own life - her selling the house is a form of her making a fresh start, and overcoming her past that had been 'wasted' from the oppressive social and cultural norms that have been projected onto her all along
- finds liberation in choosing to live her own life instead of one for her ancestors/uphold family tradition

# data[].attributes.body
- Hang viewing her childhood as paradise, loved by her mother and beauty around her
- her innocence as a child blinded her from the poverty and suffering around her, but now older and matured, she recognises the beauty that masks this poverty and so her aim of writing this book is shown to be directed towards the people in vietnam who don't recognise these forms of oppression
- communism, another form of oppression, creating 'paradise' for the poor, when it was making them suffer (eg. Chinh communist, selling things on black market for money)
- Hang selling the house and finding her own happiness shows her breaking out of this cycle of oppression
- oxymoron? only a paradise to those who can't see
- captures Hang's ambivalence towards her family's actions
- this novel has moments of both suffering, and beauty and pleasure (food, love, beauty around)
- expresses affection for land and people but adds negative comments towards those blinded by this beauty

# data[].attributes.body
- strong ideals and values towards them surround the familiy bonds reflect the confucian principles in the novel
- result in conflict between Hang and Mother and Aunt
- Hang becomes painfully aware of these family bonds and structure when she visits their ancestral village with mother
- recalls thoughts on meeting Aunt
- "She's a drop of his blood, my neice", Aunt Tam obsessed with passing on legacy to family member to honour ancestors (implied that she is only interested in bloodline, not Hang herself), shows her passionate traditionalism
- "She was a lost replicate of my father" - Hang, as Aunt Tam fills fathers role by sending food, and her earned wealth. Aunt's extreme sacrifice and ardor over her as representative of her father seems unnatural to Hang "like throwing flower petals on an abandoned grave"
- Mother obsessed with self-sacrifice for family: "I realised she had a mission now, a new source of happiness: to serve the needs of my little cousins. How intoxicating it can be, self-sacrifice"
- Mother becomes distant and sacrifices herself for Uncle and his family ('heirs'), representative of confucian ideology (men>women, old>young)
- When Hang sells house: "Forgive me, my aunt: We can honour the wishes of the dead with a few flowers on a grave somewhere. I can't squander my life tending these faded flowers, these shadows, the legacy of past crimes."
- clarifies Hangs final choice, all the flashbacks have lead to this decision
- "like throwing flower petals on an abandoned grave" vs "We can honour the wishes of the dead with a few flowers on a grave somewhere." - irony, treating Aunt Tam as she treated her, Aunt Tam saw her for her blood and Hang saying that she can do the same but sees no value in it ("few flowers" "somewhere"), makes it clear that she doesn't hold the same perceptions as her Aunt
- uses objects to show her negative connotations/views on Aunt's materialistic views (earrings - sinister, flowers)
- throughout the novel there are flower references but now they are nothing but faded, "faded flowers"
- "these faded flowers" - being tied down to traditional values and obsessing over family bonds = faded flowers, beauty fades, not being able to find happiness and fulfilment for oneself if cannot recognises these principles as forms of oppression, restricting them for blooming
- "legacy of past crimes" indicates land reform, redistribution of land among peasants, resulting in execution of land owning class, attempted to remedy the situation with Rectification of Errors (Chinh large advocate for land reform movement in his village, is the campaign that results in Ton losing his farm, fleeing the village due to his persecution and his mother's death)
- Many farmers (like Aunt Tam in Paradise of the Blind) were reclassified from the landowning class to the middle peasantry and their land was returned to them, although often in much worse condition than it had been prior to the reform.
- the legacy her family lives under is considered 'crimes' and she resents the past
- These crimes commited by ancestors, and masking/being blinded by them for honouring them is wrong - Hang says she can't spend the rest of her life tending these crimes for the sake of her ancestors, emphasised by "squander"
- shadows: vietnamese people
- Aunt Tams death releases Hangs emotions towards her and her past

# data[].attributes.body
- depicts both the beauty and oppression of life permeated by confucian culture and traditional ideology and shows in its hopeful ending, that it is possible for determined individuals to resist and transcend these powerful forces, to break out the cycle of poverty
- exposes the naivety of people in Vietnam and forms of oppression masked as tradition and culture that tie them to the poverty cycle
- it is only paradise to those who are blind, who can only see the beauty around them and not the forms of oppression

# data[].attributes.body
- Hang's first person perspective emphasise her journey to find her own individual purpose
- flashbacks in novel of family situations and traditional events, contrast in setting between Russia and Hanoi, and symbols to make clear her maturing in recognising that the things she saw as beauty and culture masked the oppression and poverty, and establishes theme that one must find their own purpose to the Vietnamese people
- novel flows from flashbacks to present, and feelings paralleled with the different events

# data[].attributes.body
- represents Hangs major struggle in novel
- duckweed flowers = her disillusionment with her seemingly idyllic childhood
- later notices the ponds and surrounding areas = contains both beauty and ugly elements, parallels Hangs thinking about her own life as she progresses from a childhood she saw as paradise to adulthood that is filled with pain, poverty and suffering, reality
- her pursuit of duckweed flowers = her growing understanding of the landscape, emphasises the fact that growing up has made hang reflect on her memories and surroundings in a more complicated and nuanced way, acknowledging both hardships and beauty
- symbol of shift in Vietnamese culture, shows major struggle which she must go through to find her purpose

# data[].attributes.body
these 2 chapters provide a shift in the novel by Hang embracing modern society and rejecting traditional culture

"To me, autumn was a unique, foreign kind of beauty. Soon, it would be winter, and snow, endless snow." (225): autumn (hope), winter (suffering) - foreshadows something bad will happen

# data[].attributes.body
- In Hanoi, each street vendor has “her own song, with its own trills and low rumblings” (41) emphasising the individuality of each street vendor, foreshadows Hangs journey to find self-purpose
- Russia’s setting is described in a different way than Hanoi’s, thus portraying a group identity rather than individuality, communist ideals, lack of individuality

# data[].attributes.body
moon - metaphoric
shine of light, hope, enhancing life through education

end up with bohemian?