Wang Lung And O-Lan In The Good Earth

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This story follows Wang Lang a poor young farmer in rural China that is forced by his father to marry a slave that belongs to the powerful local Hwang family. The Hwangs sell Wang a 20-year-old slave named O-lan who becomes his wife. O-lan and Wang Lung are pleased with each other, although they exchange few words and although Wang is initially disappointed that O-lan does not have bound feet. Together, Wang Lung and O-lan have a cultivate, beautiful and profitable harvest from their land. O-lan becomes pregnant, and Wang Lung is overjoyed when O-lan’s first child is a son. Meanwhile, the powerful Hwang family lives decadently the husband is obsessed with women, and the wife is an opium addict. Because of their costly habits, the Hwangs fall …show more content…

Wang Lung allows her to keep two small pearls, but he takes the rest and hurries to buy three hundred acres of Old Master Hwang’s land. O-lan gives birth to twins shortly thereafter. The strongest and most memorable character in The Good Earth is O-lan she exemplifies the situation of women in traditional China and the sacrifices they had to make in order to adhere to cultural notions of feminine respectability. Wang Lang’s position, and she receives neither loyalty nor passion from him in return. He is annoyed when she becomes pregnant with her second child, fearing that her condition will keep her from working in the fields, and later he has no qualms about cruelly insulting her unbound feet and taking her treasured pearls to give to his concubine. O-lan spends most of the novel as victim. It is O-lan who makes many of the hardest decisions in the novel as killing her infant daughter to spare food for the family, for instance and she has these hard decisions with admirable fortitude. O-lan never complains about Wang Lung’s cruelty in insulting her feet—but she does immediately begin binding her daughter’s feet, warning her daughter not to complain of the pain for fear of angering Wang Lung.O-lan represents the dignity and courage of the marginalized

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