Throughout The Good Earth, by Pearl Buck, the land brings forth nourishing food and wealth as well as comfort to those who work it. Those who are not close with the land suffer immensely and are corrupted by their distance from the land. Distance from their land is usually because of money, which is overriding corrupting force. The corruption of money causes people to leave their land. This in turn causes further corruption because the nourishing land is not able to save the people from their obsession with money. Wang Lung starts off poor, but happy. While he is not satisfied with his place in life, especially compared to the seemingly mighty and rich House of Hwang, Wang Lung is pleased to have a wife, Olan. Olan helps him in the fields, in addition to all of her housework, and she bears him sons. With her help, Wang Lung becomes successful and rich. His displeasure in his place in life is evident with Olan; while he is pleased to have her as his wife, he is upset that he cannot afford to have a wife with bound feet. Although he is disappointed in Olan’s appearance, it does not truly affect him until he becomes rich, at which point he decides that she is too ugly and he must take another wife, against his father’s wishes. Wang Lung is happy when he works the land. The land brings him peace and keeps him sane through trying times. Wang Lung is happy while he is close with the land. He forgets all of his cares and troubles in the world while he works the land. The act of farming becomes therapeutic for Wang Lung, to the point that if insomnia sets in, he simply goes to the fields and works. As Wang Lung gains his wealth, through hard work of the land, he becomes increasingly dissatisfied. Whereas before Wang Lung is happy to h... ... middle of paper ... ...nds peace and comfort and is able to die easily. Wang Lung sons constantly bicker about money. They are corrupted by wealth; they care about nothing but their money and physical possessions. They care so much about money that they sell all of Wang Lung’s land after his death. Even though the land can still make more money for them and it is what brought them out of poverty and into a high status in life, they want nothing to do with the land. The corrupt sons live in the corruption of the city and sell the nourishing land. On a basic level the land nourishes their body, but on a more complex level the land nourished Wang Lung’s soul and brought him comfort as well as providing for his needs. Like the Hwang house, the Wang house will fall because it sold its land. No matter what hard times they went through, there is still the land, and no one could steal the land.
Feng Meng-long’s story, “Du Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box in Anger,” authentically represents how money is valued between Du Tenth and Li Jia. The classic story brings forth how tradition and family values are upheld in the highest honor. The young master Li Jia, who is the son of a prominent local official, embarks on a journey to the Ming capitol of Nanjing with the intention of taking exams. During his travels he meets the beautiful courtesan named Du Tenth who is bound to her madam in a house of ill fame in what is known as the pleasure district. Li Jia, being an immature and unmotivated by any type of responsibility, finds himself splurging all of his travel funds on pleasures with the beautiful Du Tenth. The couple find themselves to have fallen in love with one other. Du Tenth proves to be a very smart and loyal character. She cleverly devises a plan to escape her bind to her madam and leave to be with her love. When the couple make their departure, they go on their journey to their new life together as husband and wife. Du Tenth continues to prove how smart she is by showing time and time again to Li Jia that she was very prepared for their future. The story tragically ends when the gullible Li Jia is tricked by the manipulating Sun Fu to trade his love, Du Tenth, for a thousand pieces of white silver.
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.
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...
The contrast Huong provides between the reality of Hang’s impoverished life and the beauty of the scenery that she experiences, emphasise the powerful effect the landscape has on her. When describing the first snowfall she ever observed, Hang noticed that the snowflakes “flood[ed] the earth with their icy whiteness,” this observation “pierc[ing her] soul like sorrow.” The scenery had such a moving effect on Hang, perhaps because she longed for the familiar sight of a Vietnamese landscape. Then recalling a time when her mother took her to a beach, the exquisiteness of the scene at dawn was equally emotionally poignant to Hang, not because she wished for a recognisable sight, but because it was such an extreme difference from the slum in Hanoi where she grew up. The sensory details of her childhood remain with Hang even years later, acting as a reminder of her humble beginnings even as she advances in life. The stench of “rancid urine” that permeated the walls of the slum and the hut where she and her mother lived, with its persistently leaky roof “patched together out of…rusty sheet metal” ; build a vivid picture of poverty. To then be exposed to the breathtaking vista of a natural landscape, having experienced the scarceness of beauty in the slums that is her home, causes distress in Hang.
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.
Timothy Brook’s book, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China is a detailed account of the three centuries of the Ming Dynasty in China. The book allows an opportunity to view this prominent time period of Chinese history. Confusions of Pleasure not only chronicles the economic development during the Ming dynasty, but also the resulting cultural and social changes that transform the gentry and merchant class. Brook’s insights highlight the divide between the Ming dynasty’s idealized beliefs, and the realities of its economic expansion and its effects. Brook describes this gap through the use of several first hand accounts of individuals with various social statuses.
Huong uses a circular writing style to portray the characterization of Hang. As the novel flows from Hang’s past memories to the present, her feelings are paralleled with the different events. This allows the reader to see Hang’s feelings towards her current situation. Because the reader is exposed to Hang’s feelings, her journey to find her self-purpose is
...h he forgot it for many months together, when spring came each year he must go out on to the land." (Chapter 34, pg. 257) Wang Lung was not aware of his son's interest in selling the land though, and thus died contently. He wished he had done things differently with O-lan and probably would have been happier if he was still a pheasant but we all wish there were things we could have done differently. To Wang Lung the earth was good. He never saw the ending picture and how his faith in the earth wouldn't carry on because of his money hungry sons, but his love for the land ended with him, and peace in his heart.
The author demonstrates how one can lose sight in life and become corrupt through focusing only on wealth, supremacy and materialistic possessions
Wang Lung needs a wife so saves up the little money he has and buys a woman who is a slave named O-lan. O-lan is sold to Wang Lung so she can take care of the home, cooking and bear children. Wang Lung is disappointed when he first sees O-lan because she does not have bound feet which was a desirable quality at that time but he does enjoy when O-lan has the food ready when he comes in a night from the land. Wang Lung is very proud when O-lan makes cakes that no one else in the village knows how to makes and when his family comes to feast for the new year at their house.
This part is comprised of seven chapters, each about a different aspect of living in the country from what to do in your free time to its influence in American culture. In the first chapter titled “Country” Leopold describes the difference between “land” and “country”. Leopold states that land is, “where corn, gullies, and mortgages grow” while country knows “no mortgages, no alphabet agencies, no tobacco road”. According to Leopold “poor land may be rich country, and vice versa”. What Leopold means by land is the product that people value not based on by beauty but by location or natural resources, to Leopold country is more than location near the city or being able to farm but is about natural beauty and is valued by quality not by quantity, like land is.
Wang Lung once said, “Land is one’s flesh and blood”. In the book The Good Earth, the main character Wang Lung has a very special connection to his land. It had brought him good fortune, and many great harvests throughout his lifetime. When he was away from his land he couldn’t bear it, and did everything possible to get back to it. Although, Wang Lung had aged and became very rich, his love for the land never faltered and he visited it often.
After working as a local government official for nearly 20 years, Wang concluded that the unlimited annexation of land weakened the economy. In 1058 Wang Anshi traveled to the capital, Kaifeng, from his home province of Jiangxi to present what would be his most famous memorial to the Emperor Renzong (1023-1064)(For more information please check 宋仁宗 ). Wang’s “Ten Thousand Word Memorial” outlines his general political philosophy while giving a brief preview of the...
Wang Lung’s family is the source of his love, support, and drive to accomplish his dreams. Wang Lung’s opulence is reached with the help and support of Olan. Olan is hardworking and efficient, obedient to her husband’s every command, and never squanders money, for she “through all these years had followed him faithfully as a dog, and . . . when he was poor and labored in the fields himself she left her bed even after a child was born and came to help him in the harvest fields” (Buck 181). And, to help Wang Lung accumulate up wealth, she willingly gives up her precious bag of jewels to buy land with, mends and makes the family’s clothes instead of buying them, and repairs their home with her own hands and resources rather than hiring other people to do it. Additionally, Olan bears Wang Lung sons to continue his bloodline, never complains about having too much work, and never requests for a servant. Olan is an ideal and perfect wife, and without her resourcefulness and multitude of skills, Wang Lung is never able to end up with an expanding farming empire. The Wang family also respects their elders, and they treat them as superiors, for “‘in the Sacred Edicts it is commanded that a man is never to correct an elder’” (Buck 66). When the Wang family is starving, Wang Lung gives all the food they have to spare to his father so that “none could say in the hour of death he had forgotten his father” (Buck 82). And, even though Wang Lung despises his lethargic uncle, he still treats them courteously and allows his family to live in his house, because he knows it’s a “shame to a man when he has enough to spare to drive his own father’s brother and son from the house” (Buck 203). Furthermore, Wang Lung is a decent father, and exceptionally affectionate towards his innocent oldest daughter with the special, heartwarming smile. Even though
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