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What can you argue from the short story a good man is hard to find
Tone of the story a good man is hard to find
Tone of the story a good man is hard to find
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Though Wang Lung has his had a concubine. He persists on keeping the land and did not want to sell it even though his family was starving. He has more bad points than his good points. Now I will explain why Wang Lung is a bad man. Money was a main factor in Wang Lung's attitude which changed completely many times because of his wealth. At the beginning of the story Wang Lung is a poor farmer who always thinks carefully about how he spends his money. As he was a poor farmer, Wang Lung was filled with fear when he first approaches the House of Hwang to collect O-Lan . On his second visit, Wang Lung is already prospering from his crops. This behavior is in contrast to the beginning of the plot, where he is reluctant to drink tea because it is expensive. When O-Lan asks Wang Lung if she should put tea leaves in his father's hot water, he would have liked to say, "`Certainly there must be tea leaves. Do you think we are beggars?'”. However, he does not want O-Lan to think that they are poor, so instead he makes an excuse, "`Tea? No no it makes my cough worse.'". These two incidents illustrate how wealth can affect a person's outlook. Clearly, Wang Lung's attitude has …show more content…
He took her as a concubine even though his father strongly disagreed. O-Lan’s contributions are valuable, although she wasn’t as attractive as Lotus, O-Lan never uttered a single complaint about the hard work. Wang Lung did not care about O-Lan after having Lotus and started to engage in sexual affairs with Lotus. Wang Lung also bought her expensive gifts and demanded what seemed to be the only valuable possessions with O-Lan, the two pearls. Wang Lung is also easily influenced by his uncle to smoke opium, which is a expensive substance in those times. Wang Lung stole from a fat man when he told his sons not to. This shows he was setting a bad example to the children. He was doing an illegal act but had the audacity to tell his sons not
Yan Zhitui states that, "women take charge of family affairs, entering into lawsuits, straightening out disagreements, and paying calls to seek favor...the government offices are filled with their fancy silks." (Differences between north and south, 111). Yet, even in the Qing dynasty women were still restricted by and expected to uphold more traditional ideals, especially in the public eye. So, in the end, through her virtue, Hsi-Liu’s two children we able to become upright. Here, there is a split between what a woman is supposed to be according to old Chinese tradition, and the realities facing women in Tancheng. The loss of her husband, and economic hardship had forced His-Liu to behave in a different way, as if she were usurping the power from the eldest son so she could teach the two boys a lesson about being good family members. While she still maintains the ideals of bearing children, and being loyal to her husband, even after he dies, out of necessity she is forced to break from Confucian ideals of being only concerned with the domestic issues. This too put her at odds with the more traditional society around her, as the villagers pitied her sons, but vilified the Hsi-Liu for being so strict with them (Woman Wang, 65). Had she remarried, she would have been looked down upon even more because she would had broken her duty to remain faithful to her deceased
Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was brutally beaten by two white men with baseball bats in Detroit during the summer of 1982. They had just lost their jobs in the auto-industry because Japanese cars were gaining popularity in America, and they had assumed Chin was Japanese. Chin died a few days later in the hospital due to injuries sustained during the attack. When the case was brought to court, the courts ruled that the two white men has simply been attempting to teach Chin a lesson, and the two men got off with a fine of a few thousand dollars and a couple years ' probation. This ruling was what sparked the modern Asian American civil rights movement in the United States. The information presented here is what I already know from multiple workshops I 've attended and led on Vincent Chin and his story. What I want to know is how much of this information should Wayne State’s faculty and students know? Telling and hearing this story multiple times, I personally feel that residents of Detroit should know about the spark of a revolution in their hometown, but should they really? My personal attachments the Vincent Chin story have led to pursue the attempt of answering this question.
In the epilogue to The Death of Woman Wang, we see several ways in which Chinese culture determined the sentence meted out to the Jens by Huang. False accusation of innocent persons was a capital crime in 17th century China, punishable by death. The Jens, however, were not executed. The largest factor in sparing the younger Jen, was based around the cultural importance placed on continuation of family lines and the strict ways in which this could acceptably happen.
Jonathan D. Spence weaves together fact and fiction in his book The Death of Woman Wang. Approaching history through the eyes of those who lived it, he tells a story of those affected by history rather than solely recounting the historical events themselves. By incorporating factual evidence, contextualizing the scene, and introducing individual accounts, he chronicles events and experiences in a person’s life rather than episodes in history. Spence pulls together the narrative from a factual local history of T’an-ch’eng by scholar Fenge K’o-ts’an, the memoir of magistrate Huang Liu-hung, and fictional stories by writer P’u Sung-ling. The book closely resembles an historical fiction while still maintaining the integrity of an historical reconstruction.
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...
He uses the money to buy some seeds, a new ox and he is able to return back home. The greed starts to set in when Wang learns that his wife stole some jewels from when there the looting was happening. They talked it over and agreed to buy some more land leaving O-lan with two pearls. The good thing that has come out of Wang looting another person’s home helped him understand why others did so to him and led him to forgive them. He becomes so wealthy that he is able to buy Ching’s land and build enough rooms for him to live in and to also buy laborers. Wang buying laborers shows what wealth does to a once poor peasant man. He is not the one that cares for his land nor is he compassion about his land anymore. Wang hits the biggest turning point when he disrespects his wife and tells her that she is not fit to be a wife of a wealthy man. “Now anyone looking at you would say you were a wife of a common fellow and never of one who has land which he hires men to plow!” (Buck, 168). Wang then starts to “buy” more wives because that is what wealthy men do. In the end Wang ends up like the rest of the wealthy men the he never thought he would become. He got his own uncle’s family addicted to opium, wouldn’t give other refugees seeds without either having high interest or giving up some of their land. This was one of Buck’s main goal, to show the readers what happened to people when they were consumed by wealth and started to become
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 Chinese possessed strong beliefs about astrology, so when it was prophesised that a women ruler would soon ascend the throne word quickly spread throughout the common people. It was predicted that within 30 years this woman known as ‘The Prince of Wu’ would rule over China. Whether or not Empress Wu’s rise to power was due to ‘heaven ordained fate’, she fulfilled the prophecy and became China’s first woman ruler in the 7th century. Historians, scholars and common people alike have long debated Wu’s reign. She is commonly referred to as an evil usurper due to the way she took power. However whether she fully deserves this reputation is to be examined. As the only female Chinese ruler, Wu challenged traditional gender roles and legitimized herself as a leader at a time when women were not meant for such positions. Empress Wu came to power through self-determination and a remarkable gift for politics. Once on the throne, she kept her power by all means necessary, often those means being murder and betrayal. Some of her actions were undoubtedly cruel. However once she was established as an empress conducted a mostly peaceful and prosperous reign. Empress Wu was by definition a usurper of the Chinese throne however not necessarily an evil one. She was manipulative and ruthless yet brilliant and exceptionally gifted. Her rise to power through sheer determination is to be commended despite the harsh tactics she used along the way.
Sanki (Japanese and Koya’s friend) started off as a banker forced to protect his corrupt boss and when fired from his job at the Joryoku Bank, he ended up working in the Trade Division of Far East Cotton Mills zaibatsu. Fang Qin-lan was the beautiful Chinese-female communist spy/ factory worker for the Far East Cotton Mills company. Qian Shi-shan is an opium addicted Chinese pro-capitalism/Nationalist who believes that China must support Chinese capitalism to become world power and no longer be exploited by European imperialist powers. These characters best represented the opposing sides in Shanghai during the timeline of the novel. Their struggles gave a look into the personal experiences of the day to day workings of the every aspect of life for the residents of Shanghai.
1/ Explain the concepts of “Yin” and “Yang”. Using pp. 227 ff in the textbook, try to tie them together with an early understanding of the “Dao” (“Tao”) and the Chinese dream of a ‘Golden Age’.
The Cultural Revolution in China was led by Mao Zedong, due to this Liang and many others faced overwhelming obstacles in many aspects of their life such as work, family and everyday encounters, if affected everyone’s families life and education, Liang lets us experience his everyday struggles during this era, where the government determined almost every aspect of life. The beginning of the book starts out with Liang’s typical life, which seems normal, he has a family which consists 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 family politics were always questioned, the mistake made by one of his family members would impact his entire family and it would be something they would have to suffer through, it was impossible for them to live down such a sin.... ...
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.
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.
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 roles and normalities of women in Chinese society have remained fluid for centuries, influenced by changing dynasties, colonizers, and the presence other cultures. Politically, particularly through Confucianism, rigid expectations of women began to develop. Strong emphasis on morals, traditional values, and respect shaped the developing gender roles of the era. As Confucianism spread, trends such as foot-binding emerged amongst the elite, and Europeans began to discredit Chinese morality using cultural differences as a means of claiming authority. The validity of European moral superiority is brought into question when contrasted with actual experiences of Chinese women