In her award winning novel, The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck uses O-lan and Wang Lung to create a metaphor about love and affection. She uses the theme of the care and love going a one way road throughout the book by making Olan an ugly character with a desire for love. When Olan died, she passed on all of her values, such as blind loyalty, being a hard worker, and caring love, to Wang Lung.
The first of Olan’s morals is her blind loyalty. She has never disobeyed the wishes of her husband. For example, when he asked her to hand over the pearls that she earned herself, she gave them to him as “...tears dropped slowly and heavily from her eyes…”. She also never left him while he was head over heels in love with Lotus. She was completely aware of this, but only showed objection to it in her most desperate moments, such as her death and the time when she told him that she “...bore you children…”.
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While alienation from the land is associated with decadence and corruption, O-lan shows us that the farther we get from the Earth, the farther we get from the center. For example, Wang Lung has an intimate relationship with the Earth because he produces his harvest through his own labor. In contrast,the local Hwang family is estranged from the Earth because their wealth and harvests are produced by hired labor. It suggests Wang Lung reverence for nature is responsible for his inner goodness. This is also seen through a series of events such as Wang Lung’s rags to riches, rural to city, and routine to the unexpected
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.
When his wife, O-lan sees this drastic change, she is horrified and rebukes her husband, telling him he “cut off his life”. O-lan’s criticism leaves Wang Lung regretful about his decision to cut his hair. Buck emphasizes the mutation of the symbol of hair in this passage, as Wang Lung’s hair no longer represents his loyalty to tradition, but rather his yearning to be modernized. O-lan emphasizes Wang Lung’s conversion to modernism when she exclaims that he “cut off his life”, which indicates that Wang Lung is ditching his traditional lifestyle by modernizing his hair. While Wang Lung does assimilate more to modern culture, he does experience guilt, realizing that he is being controlled by Lotus. Wang Lung’s regret proves that while his hair represents mostly modernism, it also of a bit of traditionalism. Therefore, Buck utilizes hair to highlight Wang Lung’s shift in
Throughout the book The Good Earth written by Pearl S. Buck, it shows the evolvement of the main character Wang Lung and how owning or not owning land in the 1920s is affected by peasants in China. It also shows the struggles of a peasant’s life, going through poverty and what happens when wealth enters their lives. Owning land as a peasant is an important aspect of their living style, simply because they live off of what they are able to grow that season. They depend on their land for resources to provide for themselves and family; and also selling crops or trading crops in order to make money. The peasants of China exemplify how important their crops and land are to them throughout the whole book by showing love and compassion for them; but,
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.
In every story, there is a protagonist and an antagonist, good and evil, love and hatred, one the antithesis of the other. To preserve children’s innocence, literature usually emphasizes on the notion that love is insurmountable and that it is the most beautiful and powerful force the world knows of, yet Gen’s and Carmen’s love, ever glorious, never prevails. They each have dreams of a future together, “he takes Carmen’s hand and leads her out the gate at the end of the front walkway… together they… simply walk out into the capital city of the host country. Nobody knows to stop them. They are not famous and nobody cares. They go to an airport and find a flight back to Japan and they live there, together, happily and forever” in which their love is the only matter that holds significance (261). The china
... by it. This is symbolic of her marriage which started out as happy and desirable and in such a short time she doubts her love for him and starts to see him as undesirable and animal-like. Women are afraid not to submit to the male species in fear of losing what they have and not being able to make it on their own.
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.
“Even in the darkest hour, when all hope seems lost… there is light.” Tolkein. The story, Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys, is about the a few survivors of WW2 who go on a long journey to get to the Wilhelm Gustloff. They end up meeting multiple people along the way and they all end up developing and changing along the journey. The families and children like Florian, Joana, Halinka, and Klaus that survived the “darkest hour” represent the future and the start of a new, better life. All of the characters that ended up surviving were driven by the need to create a future for the children and the need to be with their “family” they found along their journey.
O-lan was obviously a very bold and important woman in this novel yet never knew it. She would do what she was raised to do and try her best to make her husband happy. Through all her marriage, she helped Wang Lung to be one of the wealthiest men in his city. While O-lan endured many difficulties, she continued with her duties as wife through thick and thin. Whether it was her begging on the streets for food and money, or putting up with Lotus, her husband's concubine, O-lan remained a strong woman with good qualities until the day she died. While she usually had little to say, O-lan's impact on the Lung family is one that wont be forgotton. She accomplished all of her goals in life and fulfilled her marital duty in making Wang Lung very happy. Even after all this, O-lan still was a very modest woman.
Power and Money do not Substitute Love and as it denotes, it is a deep feeling expressed by Feng Menglong who was in love with a public figure prostitute at his tender ages. Sadly, Feng Menglong was incapable to bear the expense of repossessing his lover. Eventually, a great merchant repossessed his lover, and that marked the end of their relationship. Feng Menglong was extremely affected through distress and desperation because of the separation and he ultimately, decided to express his desolation through poems. This incidence changed his perception and the way he represents women roles in his stories. In deed, Feng Menglong, is among a small number of writers who portrayed female as being strong and intelligent. We see a different picture build around women by many authors who profoundly tried to ignore the important role played by them in the society. Feng Menglong regards woman as being bright and brave and their value should never be weighed against
...irl she always, throughout the end of the play, tends to bow down to her lord with no opposition showing the claim of her character being nothing more than an object for the men in the play to use as a slave with no pay as well as a consistent source of sexual desires.
“‘If you sell the land, it is the end.’” (360). There is absolute truth in these words, if one was in rural, turn-of-the-century China. These wise words, quoted by the main character Wang Lung, come from Pearl S. Buck’s enlightening historical fiction, The Good Earth. In the story, Wang Lung, a poor young farmer, marries a slave of the powerful Hwang family, O-lan. Together, they face hardships and triumphs, prosperity and famine, along with the birth of their three sons and two girls (the fifth child died of strangulation). Throughout Wang Lung’s life, he evolves dramatically in response to the many challenges he faces. In particular, his wealth, idea of women, and the earth itself change Wang Lung’s attitude and point of view as he rises in the social classes of China.
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.
Paul A. Doyle, a literary critic, remarks that Buck's stories were improbable and simplistic (Chauhan, 1994, 120). He later adds: "In structure, The Good Earth uses a chronological form which proceeds at a fairly regular pace. Buck's stories take the epic rather than dramatic form, that is to say, they are chronological narratives of a piece of life, seen from one point of view, straightforward, without devices; they have no complex plots, formed of many strands skillfully twisted, but belong to the single-strand type, with the family, however, rather than the individual as a unit (Buck 35). As Wang Lung and his father begin this family strand, one by one characters are introduced from Wang's viewpoint. In regards to women in his society, he objectively portrays them for what they are worth. In spite of his smooth surface, the novel shows a complicated feminism. On the one hand, the woman's situation is clearly, almost gruesomely, presented: Chinese village society is patriarchal, oppressive, and stultifying to women (Hayford, 1994, 25). The clearest illustration of this occurs through O-lan, the wife of Wang Lung.