If at that time, you fall in love with someone, hope will blossom again from the earth and embrace life passionately. Thank you, Wentai.
This is a bittersweet moment for Mulan because she has had to sacrifice her love for Wentai in order to support her country. This quote is expressing Mulan’s pain but acceptance that life is not always about getting what you want. When Mulan first found out that Wentai was dead, she lost all hope and became a drunk. She had to rise from the ashes and rebuild herself as a warrior and a woman in order to get over the hole his death had left her. Thus, when she had to let go of him a second time, she was ready to accept it, because she had already experienced the ‘hope’ that loss brings, and the fact that one can continue to ‘embrace life passionately’ so long as you have had a chance at experiencing love.
Someone once said, go too far from home and you will lose your roots.
This quote can resonate both physically and emotionally with Mulan’s character. In one way, the further she gets from home, the more she loses the supposed qualities of the woman she was raised to be, and the more she acquires the traits of men in war. She is blurring the lines between what is expected of her and what she can achieve. In another way, emotionally she is changing, in that violence and war are becoming a daily part of her life and so she begins to ‘lose [her] roots’; the peace, tranquillity and compassion that she has grown up with.
