how does the red candle predict the sucess of lindo and tyan-yu's marriage?

When Lindo Jong is married, she and her husband light a red candle with a wick at each end. The name of the bride is marked at one end of the candle, and the name of the groom at the other. If the candle burns all night without either end extinguishing prematurely, custom says that the marriage will be successful and happy. The candle has a symbolic meaning—the success of the marriage—within the Chinese culture, but within the story it also functions as a symbol of traditional Chinese culture itself: it embodies the ancient beliefs and customs surrounding marriage.

Lindo feels conflicted about her marriage: she desperately does not want to enter into the subservience she knows the wedding will bring, yet she cannot go against the promises her parents made to her husband’s family. In order to free herself from the dilemma, she secretly blows out her husband’s side of the candle. A servant relights it, but Lindo later reveals to her mother-in-law that the flame went out, implying that it did so without human intervention. By blowing out the flame, Lindo takes control of her own fate, eventually extricating herself from an unhappy marriage. Thus, the candle also symbolizes her self-assertion and control over her own life.

It is important to consider the candle’s original symbolism as a sign of tradition and culture, for it is by playing upon the traditional beliefs and superstitions that Lindo convinces her mother-in-law to annul the marriage. Her act of blowing out the candle would have been meaningless without an underlying, pre-established network of belief. Thus the candle, first a symbol of tradition, then of self-assertion, ultimately comes to symbolize the use of tradition in claiming one’s own identity and power.

If it burns from both ends without going out, it will presage a happy marriage.

I have a thought that is a little different than what is spoken in these paragraphs.

Because both prospective husband and wife got together in front of the families and Church Ministering Teams it show that the commitment was there from the start.

The depictation of the soldier telling his sweetheart he would wait for her when he returns from his tour of Military Service to marry her but during the time away has a change of heart to marry someone else shows that time was well spent proving the authencity and success of the Nupial's and Marriage of the success of their lives together.

So many overseas brides came home to the daunted looks and feelings of perspective brides over the centuries.

Yours in Christ, Roger H Frost