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.
Symbols & Motifs
Gold
Every member of Lucy’s family is obsessed with gold. Ba spends his whole life prospecting for it after foolishly throwing away the first nugget he ever found. Sam continues in his father’s footsteps as a prospector and actually succeeds in accumulating the ore. When he and his comrades are robbed, he steals the gold back. Sadly, there are negative consequences to this foolhardy action. Ma, who seems outwardly unconcerned with the precious metal, is actually the greediest member of her family. She hoards the family’s last lump of gold inside her cheek to protect it from robbers. Afterward, she uses it to make her escape, leaving the others to fend for themselves.
Lucy’s relationship with gold is a bit more complicated than that of her parents and brother. While she is fascinated with the ore, she is equally fascinated with the land from which it comes. She sees the dry California hills as a different form of gold. The hills hold all her memories of the past and of her family, so they represent another kind of riches.
The value of gold the color and gold the ore seems to be echoed in the book’s title. Much like the novel’s unpunctuated and ambiguous ending, the title could be read as a question or an exclamation. The question “how much of these hills is gold?” suggests a prospector assessing a piece of land to figure out how much ore can be extracted from it. The exclamation “much of these hills is gold!” might be uttered by a person who finds value in the golden beauty of the land itself or in the golden memories that it contains. Much like Lucy’s vague self-definition, gold can be interpreted to mean a variety of things.
Burials
The book begins with the dilemma of how to properly bury a person. Ba has died. In keeping with Ma’s instructions about proper burial, Lucy and Sam try to find the right spot and the silver coins necessary for the ritual. A proper burial is essential to keep a soul from wandering and haunting the living.
Metaphorically speaking, all the burials in the novel represent a way of burying some part of the past. Lucy wishes to put her memories of an abusive father behind her. This is why she takes such great pains to inter Ba properly. After Ba and Ma set the disastrous fire that kills 200 Chinese workers, Ma insists on performing some kind of burial ritual. She is haunted by the thought that her plan to kill two guards resulted in the deaths of hundreds of her countryfolk and needs to clear her conscience. Ba says, “I taught her bury, and she taught me how. Silver. Running water. Something to remind of home” (185).
Burials are also performed on objects. These, too, represent painful memories that need to be concealed below ground. Lucy performs this ritual when she orders Sam to cut her hair short. She buries her long braid in the ground as a gesture that this version of herself no longer exists: “Down into the grave they lay that long, shining hair that Ma intended to pass to both her daughters. Before they tamp the dirt, Sam drops in a piece of silver” (237).
Tigers
Although Lucy’s family frequently moves in their quest for gold, Ma always draws a sketch of a tiger in the dirt as a protective talisman around their various homes. When Lucy and Sam are trying to find a place to bury Ba, they see the bleached skull of a predator and immediately conclude it must be a tiger. It is probably a mountain lion, but throughout the novel, the siblings refer to large cats as tigers. In Chinese mythology, tigers are reputed to repel thieves, ghosts, and fire. Ironically, despite Ma’s talismans, the family encounters all three disasters in the story.
Nevertheless, when the children find the tiger skull, they interpret it as a sign that Ba should be buried in a spot where a tiger can watch over his spirit. Ma taught them a song to summon the tiger as part of the incantation to protect their homes, and the children sing the words at various points in the story.
Other than at the burial site, tigers crop up as a motif throughout the novel. Despite their fearsome reputation as predators, tigers function as protectors in the book. Ba claims he was attacked by an unseen tiger one night after the fire and that this is how he became lame. He believes the tiger was sent to punish him for stealing coins from the dead.
In Sweetwater there are rumors of a tiger prowling around town after dark. Lucy later learns that Sam has been mimicking the call of a tiger to frighten the townsfolk. He has stolen chickens and some beef to feed himself, and everyone blames the tiger. Once again, the tiger has exerted a protective influence to divert suspicion away from the real thief.
