The Good Earth Essay
Owning land in China during the 1920’s was the symbol of someone’s wealth. Most of the Chinese peasants during this time were poor tenant farmers who worked for rich land owners. However, there were also some independent farmers who grew their own food for their families. The main character in the book, The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, was an independent farmer. His name was Wang Lung and he was a hard working farmer who made his living off his land. Wang was a very old fashioned man who lived off the crops he grew on his land. As Wang went through good and bad times in his life his values were ever-changing. Wang went from being an old fashioned farmer, to a thief, and then to a wealthy and conceited land owner. As Wang
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This connection displays his best traits which are his love for family, work ethic, and his spirituality. Wang was a very hard working man and he believed in his heart that all he needed was his land to survive, “He had no articulate thought of anything; there was only this perfect sympathy of movement, of turning this earth of theirs over and over to the sun, this earth which formed their home and fed their bodies and made their gods.” (Buck, 29-30) Wang was forced to marry an unappealing slave woman from the House of Hwang. His new wife’s name was O-Lan and she was the perfect wife to Wang. Wang was very happy with his wife, O-Lan, at this time because she was with a child and she was doing all the chores in the house and helping out in the fields with him. Wang became even more excited when O-Lan had the baby and it was a male. Wang and O-Lan were very resourceful with their land and only bought what they absolutely needed. They saved up enough money to buy a piece of land off of the Hwang’s and this was the start of the fall of the House of Hwang and the rise of the House of Wang. Wang and O-Lan lived a very simple life style and worked very hard every day to maintain their land. Wang Lung and O-Lan had another baby and it was another male. They were having really good fortune at this time. They took care of their sons and Wang Lung’s father, worked extremely hard every day on their land, …show more content…
Wang found out that his wife O-Lan had stolen some very expensive jewels the night the city was attacked. This meant that Wang and his family could buy even more land and hire people to help him maintain all of the land he now owns. Wang bought 300 acres of land from the Hwang house. It solidified the Wang house’s dominance over the once powerful and extremely wealthy Hwang family. Wang because of his new wealth did not stay true to his once old fashioned morals. He had so much land now that he started caring about his wealth and status. When all Wang had was his little share of land he did not care about his wealth or status, but now that he has a lot of money and can move up in society he starts to care. He started purchasing things that he would of never thought of buying before. He bought expensive clothes, slaves as concubines, servants, and hires land workers. He also builds a separate court and fishpond. The result of this was that Wang Lung stopped working on his land completely and became a totally different person than he was before he became rich. The effects of the vast amount of wealth was rubbing off on his boys as well. They were becoming moody, irritable, and selfish. His first son turned arrogant and obsessed with appearances. He rejects the values that made his father rich. Wang’s second son is more crafty and intelligent but he also ends up rejected his father’s traditional ways. Wang’s third
Chapter 1: Chapter one introduces the reader to the narrator Nick Halloway and most of the other other characters of the story. Including his cousin daisy, her husband tom and their friend jordan - the golfer. Nick comes from a wealthy family; however, doesn’t believe in inheriting their wealth. Instead he wishes to earn his own wealth by selling bonds in the stock market. Chapter one also talks about the separation of the rich. Where the east egg represents the inherently rich whereas west egg represents the newly rich. The people in the east also seem to lack social connections and aristocratic pedigree. Whereas the people in west egg possess all those qualities usually lacked by people in the east.With nick living
The story began in the day of Wang Lung's marriage. Precisely, the author gives a brief description of the routine obligations of Wang Lung as a son. Waking up early in the morning so as to boil the water and prepare the breakfast for his father and cleaning the house are not just what Wang Lung did in every single morning, but he also went to the field to do farming so that his family, which most of the time included his uncle's as well, would not be starved to death. He did manage the farm very well, and year by year he worked the field, produced the food, and sold to the market. He did these things cleverly. To increase the farm productivity, he practiced crop rotation method. Importantly, although he was not educated and could not even figure out any letter, he was quite a good businessman which was not commonly found. He kept his products and waited until the demand went high and supply went scare before selling for a good price. And this gave him `silver'. Remarkably, not a single piece of silver had he spent carelessly. He did not even go to the tea house where people of his age and the elders usually went to and spent their money as easily as water flows. Indeed, he saved little by little in hope of getting married and improving his life and to care for the old man, who stayed at home but did nothing except demanding food, demanding care, complaining, and so on like a little hungry child.
Wang Lung is a responsible man who uses his money wisely. He uses his money to buy things that his family has a necessity for and saves some for the winter or for the upcoming year. He puts his money into important investments that will promise him great wealth in the future. He is a very compassionate man who cares for his children by buying clothes for his children, feeding them healthy servings of food, and he also still manages to take care of his ever-aging father. Wang Lung values money and would never think of using it in ways that would hurt his family of himself in any way.
The Death of Woman Wang, by Jonathan Spence is an educational historical novel of northeastern China during the seventeenth century. The author's focus was to enlighten a reader on the Chinese people, culture, and traditions. Spence's use of the provoking stories of the Chinese county T'an-ch'eng, in the province of Shantung, brings the reader directly into the course of Chinese history. The use of the sources available to Spence, such as the Local History of T'an-ch'eng, the scholar-official Huang Liu-hung's handbook and stories of the writer P'u Sung-Ling convey the reader directly into the lives of poor farmers, their workers and wives. The intriguing structure of The Death of Woman Wang consists on observing these people working on the land, their family structure, and their local conflicts.
The Good Earth. Wang Lung is a rice farmer who gains all his wealth through the
of three sons. But as time goes on, Wang Lung becomes rich and he loses his attraction for
While, both are extremely dedicated to what they are doing. Chunming from “Factory Girls” and Guo Hulin from “Eating Bitterness” are both driven by extravagant situations but have their own personal challenges to overcome in their everyday life. Chunming being successful is spiritually driven while being morally confused. Yet, Guo Hulin is morally focused and clear, while being spiritually unsettled and confused.
People might ask themselves, how, whether they have strayed away from their parents' beliefs or what their religion expects of them? Some would say that they do not go to church enough, others might say that they have done some things that their parents of which they would not approve. When Wang Lung was growing up, and until he was wealthy, he had to work in the field all day to keep his house and to feed him and his father. Lung accepted the customs that his family had always valued. However, when he becomes wealthy, his sons, instead of being raised as Lung was raised, are raised as young lords and their values differ from their father's. In The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, Wang Lung's children are raised in an atmosphere of privilege, leading them away from their family’s traditional values.
Wang’s father tells him that he will get an ugly woman if he wants her to help him in the fields. Nevertheless, Wang Lung learns to love his wife, O-lan. After becoming the rich man everyone comes to know, Wang Lung becomes disinterested by the shops he had always visited as a poor man. He begins to explore and finds a teahouse where there are beautiful women he thought only existed in dreams. He goes home and realizes how dissatisfied he is with the way O-lan looks. Wang Lung thinks he deserves a more beautiful woman now that he is a rich man. O-lan is a great wife and both were happy and relied on each other. She is very dear to Wang Lung but this quickly changes as soon as Wang becomes wealthy and this, sadly, is not a
In the sixteenth century, there were several ways political and economic changes affected patterns of cultural life in different parts of Afroeurasia. Many larger regions began to spread more extensively. In the Ming dynasty, the rapid growth of city populations and a surge in economic change helped. Influences with new people and different products from abroad, brought a new way of life for this dynasty. During this time, Wang Yangming was a public official and a military officer. Wang's ideals differed in the fact that he preached individual creativity, education for the poor and respect for women's intellectual abilities. This caused conflict in many ways, amongst neo-confucian officials that believed in male authority and strict
Have you ever wondered if humans could survive on Mars? In this essay, I am going to be talking about The Martian by Andy Weir and how this novel impacts society. The Martian impacts society with its incredible technology and science as well as its view of society. In the novel, the main protagonist, Mark Watney, is left on Mars after a storm had caused his crew to leave him. He has to figure out how to survive with the intriguing technology, until NASA can rescue him.
Wang Lung was a caring and compassionate man with a strong sense of family and adaptation to simple life. For example, Wang Lung showed extreme respect and appreciation for his wife in a time when women were considered to be no more then slaves. In the early chapters of the novel when Wang Lung was poor, he gave O-lan four silver pieces so she may return to the House of Hwang in grand style. He also offered to pay five thousand silver pieces for her recovery after he discovered she had a "fire in her vitals"(170). He then spent the rest of her days by her death bed and bought her the best quality coffin. Furthermore, Wang Lung had a special relationship with his first daughter,
Together, Wang Lung and O-lan grow a profitable harvest from their land. O-lan becomes pregnant, and there first child is a son. Meanwhile, the powerful Hwang family is falling apart. Wang Lung is able to purchase a piece of the Hwang family's rice land. He enjoys another profitable harvest. O-lan gives birth to there second son. Wang Lung's new wealth catches the attention of his uncle. Custom says that Wang Lung must show the utmost respect to the elderly especially relatives. So obligated he loans his uncle money despite knowing that the money will be wasted on drinking and gambling. The Hwang family's finances continue to fall apart, and the Hwangs sell another piece of land to Wang Lung.
influence in the farmers’ point of view. The farmers in the book translate to adults in real
The novel is made up of thirty-four chapters and falls into two main parts. The first fourteen chapters establish Wang Lung's commitment to the land and depict his solid family relationships with his wife and father. His achievement of modest prosperity is followed by a sudden reversal in the form of poverty and famine which drives him and his family to the city to beg and perform hired labor. Chapters 11 to 14, which take place in the city, provide a striking contrast to the earlier depiction of country life and its traditional values. The climax of the first part of the book occurs in Chapter 14 when city unrest leads Wang and his wife, O-lan, to join a raid on a rich man's house. The money and jewels they steal enable them to return to the land. The illegal gain proves the turning point of Wang's life and fortune.