32 pages • 1 hour read
C Pam ZhangHow Much Of These Hills Is Gold
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Deconstructing Myths of the West
How Much of These Hills Is Gold is set against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush of the 1850s. Since these events are well documented in history books, most people assume they know the story. The author’s purpose is to deconstruct the mythology associated with the time and the place by creating characters who contradict the known facts. Ba claims he was the first to discover gold in 1842, not the miners at Sutter’s Mill, as the story goes. Even more at variance with the history-book version of events is the fact that Ba is a native-born American who is entitled to stake a claim to riches. Because he looks Chinese, he doesn’t fit the myth of the hardy Caucasian prospector who heroically wrests riches from the land.
The golden West depicted in novels and movies is a far cry from the dismal ecological disaster area through which Ba and his family wander. Once miners deforest the area and strip minerals from the ground, they leave behind a wasteland that no longer supports life. Rivers dry up, and animals die. The rainy season brings disastrous floods. Nevertheless, Ba pursues his elusive dream of riches because he is driven by imagination. He tells his children stories of giant beasts and a lush landscape that once flourished in the desiccated space they now inhabit.
Just as the novel deconstructs the myths of the frontier, Ba’s own personal myths are deconstructed by his children. Lucy, in particular, is skeptical of her father’s tall tales. When the children actually do encounter one of Ba’s mythical buffalos, it appears to be an aged and forlorn creature, not larger than life. Later in the story, when Sam returns with his own tales of adventure, Lucy is equally suspicious of the events he describes. Imagination and fantasy have little to do with the dull and lifeless world that Lucy experiences as her reality in the Golden State.
Shifting Personas to Manipulate Perceptions
Ma frequently repeats the maxim, “What people see shapes how they treat you” (74). Therefore, it stands to reason that one can manipulate a desired response by modifying one’s appearance. All the major characters change their physical appearance or their behavior in the novel. None of them are exactly what they seem.
In Part 1 the reader forms a negative opinion of Ba as an abusive parent. However, this perception changes as more facts about his tragic past become known. By telling her story nonchronologically, the author allows the reader to participate in the perceptual shift in each character’s identity. As a young man, Ba passes himself off as a work boss over Chinese immigrants because he claims he can speak their language. His superior position is what first attracts Ma to him.
Sam initially appears as a willful little boy. We soon learn that he is a willful little girl who finds life as a female constricting. Still later, we learn that Sam permanently adopted a male persona to relieve his father’s grief over the loss of his stillborn son.
Lucy also undergoes some superficial changes when she moves to Stillwater. Although she works in a laundry, she befriends a rich girl and dresses like her, attempting to mimic the life of a wealthy prospector’s daughter. This is the life she would have had if Ba had struck gold. At a later point in the story, she chops off her hair to pass as male while fleeing with Sam. Finally, she becomes a fantasy storybook princess for her brothel customers.
The most shocking persona shift is illustrated by Ma. Lucy’s memories all depict her as a caring parent who placidly follows her husband from one failed venture to another. It isn’t until the reader hears Ba’s side of the story that we learn just how ruthless and greedy Ma is. More than any other character, she deliberately manipulates perceptions of herself to gain advantages before abandoning her family altogether.
Absence of Identity
While it is clear what Ba, Ma, and Sam want out of life, Lucy has trouble defining her personal desires. She fixates on the idea of finding a permanent home for herself and Sam but can’t really figure out what shape that will take. Five times in the story, she asks, “What makes a home a home?” (261), but she never answers the question. Lucy’s struggle to find a home is related to her struggle to find herself. Her identity is split between her external Asian features and her inner American character. Americans don’t accept her because she looks different; Asians wouldn’t be able to relate to her because she is a native-born American.
Rather than grappling with defining her own identity, Lucy devotes most of the story to fulfilling her duty to others. Initially, she is obsessed with giving her father a proper burial and drags Sam all over the countryside to find the right spot. After that, she is concerned with providing food and shelter for herself and her brother. At the end of the novel, when she is on the brink of securing both of them boat passage to China, Sam’s past catches up with him, and Lucy must step in to protect her sibling, prostituting herself to pay off Sam’s debt to the gold man.
While her actions are partly self-sacrificing, they are also self-serving. As long as she has the distraction of someone else to care for, whether it be Ba, Ma, Sam, or Anna, Lucy doesn’t have to deal with herself. Her fractured identity as an Asian American never resolves itself because Lucy keeps asking questions without digging deep enough to find answers. At the end of the novel, when the gold man asks her what she wants, Lucy’s alienation from herself is so complete that she can’t give an answer. Wordlessly, “[s]he opens her mouth. She wants” (272). There is no period to end the statement. Her want remains open-ended and unfulfilled. Lucy doesn’t know what she wants because she hasn’t answered the most fundamental question of all: Who am I?
