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The not so good earth
Significance of the title the good earth
The not so good earth
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Objects and Places in The Good Earth
Earth/ Land/ Field: Wang Lung's love for the earth is a chief driving force in his life. The only thing he loves with any constancy is the earth, and this is because the earth is constant as well. Unlike food or silver, the earth is something that can never be taken away from him. Wang Lung always keeps returning to his land, and yearns for it whenever he is away. It serves as a healing element for him whenever he has domestic troubles, and is the foundation upon which he has founded his great family.
Temple to the Earth God: The temple is on the western field, and it was built by Wang Lung's grandfather who was also a farmer. It is made of bricks and tiles. Under the roof of the temple, there are two small earthen figures. It is the Earth God and his mistress. They wear robes of red paper, and on a good New Year, they are given new robes. As a humble farmer, Wang Lung always remembers to pay respects to the god and his lady, but as a wealthy landlord, he becomes careless.
House of Hwang: This is where the great Hwang family dwells, and Wang Lung initially goes into the house to get O-lan who has been a slave in the family. Later, Wang Lung, as a man of fortune and land, rents the house to live there with his own family.
(Un)Bound feet: Wang Lung is disappointed and repulsed when he realizes that O-lan's feet are not bound. O-lan was sold to the great house as a child, and thus, her mother did not have the time to bind her feet. Later, O-lan insists on tightly binding the feet of their second daughter so that she may have small feet. The girl cries every night because of the pain. Lotus has small feet that have been bound.
Shantung: Shantung is the northern city where O-lan's parents came from to sell O-lan to the great house.
Dyed Eggs: Wang Lung dyes eggs in red dye to distribute to other villagers in honor of the birth of his first male child. Later, Wang Lung's son does the same when his first son is born.
Wang Lung's ox: The ox has been Wang Lung's field companion for many years, but must be killed during the famine to provide food for the family.
Liang's main interests consist of movies, stories, tap-dancing, and imitating Shirley Temple. Wong-Suk buys her expensive, beautiful ribbon one day for her second hand tap shoes and Poh-Poh helps her tie them into fancy flowers. -- This is where we learn a bunch about Poh-Poh's childhood. She was born in China and so it was already too bad that she had be born a girl child. But further more she was sort of disfigured. Her forehead was sloppy and mis-shapen and immediately everyone told her mother she was the ugliest baby ever. Her mother sold her to a wealthy family; where she was a servant. The concubine would beat her and their other servants with a rod-- as if they were oxen. Poh-Poh had to learn to do things quickly and flawlessly or she would be beaten. Her fingers would bleed because she was practicing tying these intricet(abc?) patterns. She of course grew out of her 'deformity' and was quite a pretty lady.
family was they had three-rooms which were placed on a hill facing the "Big House". The
I would like to point out that Wang Lung was never the most filial of men. Early in the novel, we saw him slip up once or twice. However, at a younger age, he felt guilty when this happened and was able to hold his tongue in most situations. Wang Lung’s uncle is able to exploit Wang Lung based on his filial piety. When the uncle, a lazy man who blames his struggles on an “evil destiny”, asks his nephew to borrow money, Wang Lung explodes, saying, “‘If I have a handful of silver it is because I work and my wife works, and we do not…[let our] fields grow to weeds and our children go half fed!’” (65). But right after he lets these words slip, he “[stands] sullen and unmovable” (66) because knows that his outburst is wrong. However, later in the novel, Wang Lungs lack of sense for filial piety grows evident as he becomes more arrogant. For example, when he is nearing the end of his life, Wang Lung asks without a second thought to be buried below his father but above his uncle and Ching. Asking to be buried above his uncle makes the statement that Wang Lung believes he is a greater man than his uncle. Before his rise through the ranks of society, Wang Lung would never have even considered being buried above his uncle, even though he always had a disliking for him. However, because of his power, he feels that he has the right to disrespect his
The beginning of the book starts out with Liang’s typical life, which seems normal, he has a family which consist of three children, two older sisters and him the youngest, his two sister’s reside in Changsha 1 his father has an everyday occupation working as a journalist at a local newspaper. Things start to take a turn early in life for Liang Heng, his families politics were always questioned, the mistake mad...
From the beginning of Wang Lung’s marriage to O-lan, she saved him time, money, and effort without complaint. She offered wisdom when asked and was smart in the ways of the world. During the famine, when the family went south in search of food, O-lan taught her children how to beg for food, “dug the small green weeds, dandelions, and shepherds purse that thrust up feeble new leaves”(p. 128). She raised her children prudently. She knew how to bind her daughter’s feet, and she gave them a better childhood than she had had. O-lan knew that the land was the only consistent thing in her life, so she willingly helped Wang Lung as he bought more and more land. O-lan knew her place in the family was as a wife and mother. As a wife, she fe...
Most critiques of The Good Earth are preoccupied with the authentic quality of the novel, and while the Western critiques praise it as a novel based on facts, the Chinese hold a different view. Kang Younghill, a Chinese man, in reference to the image Pearl Buck created of China, stated that "it is discouraging to find that the novel works toward confusion, not clarification" (Kang 368). This statement illuminates Kang's feelings that the details, which Buck had presented as factual in the novel, were contrary to the actual life of the Chinese. Yet researches have shown that Buck was rightly informed and presented her information correctly. One detail that she paid special attention to was the family structure within the rural Chinese family, which she presented in the form of the Wang Lung household. The family structure demonstrated by Buck is not restricted to the Wang Lung family, but was a part of every rural Chinese home in the early 1900s. Every member's experiences within the family structure are determined by the role and expectations placed on them by the society, and Buck was careful to include these experiences in Wang Lung's family.
In her article "The body as attire," Dorothy Ko (1997) reviewed the history about foot binding in seventeenth-century China, and expressed a creative viewpoint. Foot binding began in Song Dynasty, and was just popular in upper social society. With the gradually popularization of foot binding, in the end of Song Dynasty, it became generally popular. In Qing Dynasty, foot binding was endowed deeper meaning that was termed into a tool to against Manchu rule. The author, Dorothy Ko, studied from another aspect which was women themselves to understand and explained her shifting meaning of foot binding. Dorothy Ko contends that “Chinese Elite males in the seventeenth century regarded foot binding in three ways: as an expression of Chinese wen civility,
Chapter one, The Observers, in the Death of Woman Wang demonstrates the accuracy of the local historian; Feng K'o-ts'an, who compiled The Local History of T'an-ch'eng in 1673. The descriptive context of the Local History helps the reader to understand and literally penetrate into people's lives. The use of records of the earthquake of 1668, the White Lotus rising of 1622 and rebels rising vividly described by Feng the extent of suffering the people of T'an-ch'eng went through. Jonathan Spence stresses on how miserable the two-quarter of the seventeen-century were to the diminishing population of the county. The earthquake claimed the lives of nine thousand people, many others died in the White lotus rising, hunger, sickness and banditry. P'u Sung-ling's stories convey that after the loss of the wheat crops there were cases of cannibalism. On top of all of this came the slaughtering of the entire family lines by the bandits. The incredible records of women like Yao and Sun in the Local History present the reader the magnitude of savagery the bandits possessed. All of these factors led to the rise of suicides. The clarity of events Spence given to the reader is overwhelming.
Each Mother brought baggage with her across the pacific. They wanted to teach their daughters from all of their pain and suffering, but were never able to communicate the complexities of their life. Suyuan Woo struggles to explain herself to her daughter "'This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.' And she waited, year after year, for the day she could tell her daughter this in perfect American English"(3). The journey that brought Suyuan to America was long and full of hardship. From the Japanese invasion of Kweilin were she lost her husband and had to leave her daughters, to her assimilation in America. Suyuan wanted to teach her daughter about these hardships so that she could understand the extent of her potential. " My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in Ameri...
When O-lan’s and Wang Lung’s first child is born they dye eggs red and distribute them to the village to shown their first born is a male. After a year of good rains Wang Lung begins to amass a good fortune so he hides the money that they make so people will not try to borrow it. Again, the produce from the year is good, and Wang Lung is able to hide more silver. He buy land from the great house in town and it is very fruitful, yielding more harvest than his own land. Now everyone in the village knows that Wang Lung is the owner of a piece of the Hwang land. His status rises in the village.
In the book Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Suyuan Woo reluctantly left her twin daughters at the side of the road while fleeing from Kweilin. She had reached her limit which was brought upon by being forced to lighten her load while traveling on foot with two babies. Suyuan realized she did not have a high chance of survival with all the casualties from the war, so she trusted her faith in destiny as she carried her slings with her babies until her “hands began to bleed and became too slippery to hold on to anything” (14). By the time Suyuan arrived in Chungking she “had lost everything except three fancy silk dresses” (14). Her sacrifice showed how much Suyuan wanted what was best for her babies even if it meant she would lose them. When Suyuan
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China begins with author Jung Chang’s grandmother, who was born in 1909 with the name Yu-fang. In traditional Chinese culture, for any hopes of marriage, the mother must first bind her daughter’s feet. Though a long and painful process, foot binding was considered a beautiful trait in Chinese men’s eyes. By the age of two, Yu-Fang’s feet were bounded and were referred to as “Lotus Feet”. Having one’s feet bounded during this time period, made it difficult for a woman to walk, and spent their life in pain due to the broken arch and constant bending of the toes. Her father, Yang, was determined to have his daughter’s social status...
During the early 1900s, it was expected that all women have their feet bound at a young age to be considered marriage material. Ailin’s sister explained to her that, “women all have to go through this ordeal: Mother, Grandmother, Eldest Sister, Mrs. Liu, your amah. Life is hard on women” (Namioka 21). It was acknowledged that life was not what it should have been for women, and Ailin was able to grasp this concept very early on, which gave her an advantage. She understood that generation after generation had to go through the painful process of having their feet bound, even if it was against their own will. Ailin was almost forced to have her feet bound, as described on page 39: “I began tearing at the cloths around my feet… they tried to hold me down, but I just thrashed and screamed more and more loudly” (Nomiokas 39). Ailin had to conquer many obstacles because she was a girl, but she literally had to fight her way out of this one. She never gave up though, and made the commitment of having unbound feet, no matter what the long term consequences ended up
Paulshock, MD, Bernadine Z.. "Chinese Footbinding". Journal of the American Medical Association. August 12, 1992.
In 1899, a Chinese scholar was given a packet of animal bones covered with mysterious ancient writing. Archaeologists were sent to a site along the Huang He. They determined that a kingdom called Shang developed there at around 1700 B.C. A single family ruled the kingdom of a long time, So the government became known as the Shang dynasty. For 600 years the Shang dynasty shaped the lives of people living along the Huang He. The Shang dynasty ruled hundreds of towns along the Huang He. Shang kings also created new towns by giving land to their relatives, who oversaw the construction of the new