The Good Earth Essay

Imagine living as a poor peasant who has to work day after day without rest and have no comforts except a house and some land. With that upbringing, now imagine yourself with riches that few have and a power few will ever know. What choices would you make with your newfound riches, and who might you hurt with your decisions? Author Pearl S. Buck presents us with this and many other questions in her novel, The Good Earth, a masterful tale that weaves Chinese and Western influences together to create a tragic story that shows just how easily it is to become what you have hated your entire life with the influence of money and power.

The beginning of this novel is an extremely odd one. Wang Lung is a poor farmer who has nothing to his name except a small piece of land, and a small house. As is tradition in his family, Wang Lung is to be married to a slave from the House of Hwang, an tremendously rich and powerful family that resides in the city. When Wang Lung goes to the House of Hwang to fetch his bride, he is treated without respect from everybody there, including the gateman and some of the slaves. This moment is the world in conflict moment as there are people who should be above others in importance, and yet they are being treated like dogs, while those who are way above everyone else do nothing but stand by and watch. Up until this point, Wang Lung had looked at the House of Hwang with awe, but after this incident he now views them with contempt.

The wife Wang Lung obtains from the House of Hwang, unbeknownst to Wang Lung will play a role in Wang Lung’s rise to power, and eventually his tragic fall. O-lan is a quiet and hardworking woman, who worked as a kitchen slave in the House of Hwang. The first few months that Wang is married to O-lan he treats her more like a property instead of like a wife, thing that would be peculiar in America, but normal in China. However, as time passes, Wang Lung really starts to consider O-lan as not only a woman, but as an equal and wife. She keeps a cool head throughout everything that happens to them, and always manages to make the best decisions for their family. With O-lan, Wang begins to start making profits off his land, and he even has to start saving money so he will not spend it foolishly. He even begins to buy land from the great House of Hwang. “Wang Lung was conscious that he had more money than he need spend, and when he walked among his fellows he walked at ease with himself and with all.”(pg. 45)

“Across the pale, oyster- colored sky of twilight a flock of crows flew, sharply black, and whirred over him cawing loudly. He watched them disappear like a cloud into the trees above his house, and he ran at them, shouting and shaking his hoe. They rose again slowly, circling and re-circling over his head, mocking him with their cries, and they flew at last into the darkening sky. He groaned aloud. It was an evil omen.”(pg. 66)Despite the fact that Wang Lung’s life has reached a high point, his situation quickly takes a turn for the worse. A disastrous flood comes that floods all of Wang Lung’s land and destroys all of the crops. Their predicament becomes so bad that they are forced to kill one of their own children at birth, just to save the money and food it would require to feed her. Wang and O-lan eventually make the tough decision to move to a city in the south, where it is easier to make a living. Wang Lung and his family eventually make it to the city, dirt poor and nearly dead from starvation.

While in the city, Wang Lung’s life hits a low. He’s stuck in a city with no money, no way to make money, and no knowledge of how to make money. O-lan again proves her worth in the city, as she learned how to beg from her mother. While O-lan, the kids, and the old man beg, Wang Lung learns to pull a rickshaw. While in the city, Wang Lung really realizes his love for the land and his passion for farming.”But Wang Lung thought of his land and pondered this way and that, with the sickened heart of deferred hope, how he could get back to it. He belonged, not to this scum which clung to the wall of a rich man’s house; nor did he belong to the rich man’s house. He belonged to the land and he could not live with any fullness until he felt the land under his feet followed a plow in the springtime and bore a scythe in his hand at harvest.”(pg. 123) Luckily for Wang Lung, he manages to get in with a band of other poor as they ransack a house of the rich. Wang Lung manages to escape with a box of gold, and O-lan, once again, used her previous knowledge to find a box filled with jewels hidden within a wall. With his newfound wealth Wang Lung makes the easy decision to go back to his land. Amidst all of the poverty and hard times that Wang Lung experienced in the city, the end of his time in the city, and the time immediately afterwards is Wang Lung’s rise to power. He has a healthy family, a large piece of land, and most importantly, he is now extremely wealthy.

As the years pass, Wang Lung’s power and wealth steadily grow until they eclipsed even the House of Hwang, which by now has faded into a shadow of its former self, and the great house now stands empty, waiting for another owner. As Wang Lung becomes richer and richer, he becomes less and less content with what he already has. The land, which he had once been so proud to own, now becomes just a fraction of what he what wants. The house, which he had been born in and spent his entire life in, appears to him now as just a mud shack that only the poor should live in. His wife, who has always been there for him and provided him with children, is now nothing but a maid that isn’t worthy of someone of Wang Lung’s importance. Wang Lung’s morals also start to become very different from what they used to be. As a man who previously loved to work and farm the land, Wang Lung now becomes lazy and fat and rarely goes out on to his own land like the old lord from the House of Hwang.

Wang’s tragic fall occurs at the same time that all of these changes are taking place. Wang is in town one day, at his usual tea shop, when it suddenly struck him that he was above such a tea shop. Wang decides to go the new tea shop, where the rich go. While his first time in the tea shop was uneventful, his behavior after he visits it is soon becomes very different. Despite the fact that Wang Lung claims that he is a man of the land and a man of the people, he begins to think that his lifestyle is too rugged for someone of his stature. As he begins to visit the tea shop more frequently, he starts to fall in love with a woman named Lotus. Before long, Wang decides that he wants this woman to be his wife, and he takes her in as his concubine, yet another step towards becoming like the House of Hwang. Wang Lung’s life now rapidly becomes a downward spiral of women and money. Wang Lung leaves O-lan and his earlier life behind and embraces his new life as the House of Wang. Even when O-lan dies, he never thinks of what he could have done to love her more until the day she is buried. “It is not meet for a man to love his wife with a foolish and overweening love, as though she were a harlot.”(pg. 289)Wang Lung just keeps on getting richer and richer, while his life keeps on getting more and more hollow. The death symbolism in this novel is Wang Lung’s transformation from being a farmer to being the House of Hwang. “Well even great families are from the land and rooted in the land.”(pg. 313)

Buck’s masterful novel shows that money and power can transform even the simplest people into greedy lords who care about nothing except for their money. The Good Earth warns us all of the damage that can happen when the amount of power you wield exceeds your ability to control yourself.