O Lan's And Wang Lung's First Child example essay topic

The following in a report on the themes and action of The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck as it relates to food and culture. This novel tells the story of Wang Lung. He is a man who rises from being a poor farmer to a very wealthy man because of his faith in the good earth. In the beginning of the story Wang Lung tries to see as little water as possible because he feels safest with his land under his feet.

His family is very poor so he must feed his father corn gruel and tea. 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. As a humble farmer Wang Lung always pay his respects to the figures of the Earth god and his mistress when he passes. Wang Lung's love for the earth is the chief driving force in his life. It is also the foundation of his family and the one he turns to when he has troubles. Land is a sign and a symbol to Wang Lung.

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.

The following year the rains don't come and the land dries up. The family is barely able to grow much and must kill their ox to eat. He resents the gods for the misfortune and drags himself to the temple of the earth. He spits at the earthen figurines in anger and bitterness. The uncle brings men to help Wang Lung sell his land. Looking at the well-fed men from the town, Wang Lung says that he will not sell his land.

When he asks one of the men how much he will pay for the land, the man states a price that is hardly anything for a piece of land. Wang Lung yells that he will never sell his land: 'I shall never sell the land! Bit by bit, I will dig up the fields and feed the earth itself to the children and when they die I will bury them in the land, and I and my wife and my old father, even he, we will die on the land that has given us birth. ' Because of the famine that follows the family goes south to find food because the can no longer grow anything on their land.

In the city they must go to the public kitchens for food and beg in the streets. Wang Lung works by pulling a rickshaw to earn money. Kiangsu, the city, is very different from Anhwei, Wang Lung's birthplace. Another thing that Wang Lung learns about the city is that there is a general abundance of food.

In the city, markets are filled with various foodstuffs, and no one seems to starve. Wang Lung and his family go to the public kitchen to be fed because they can never afford to get enough money to cook in their hut. Whenever they have any extra money, the family buys some cabbage to cook, and the boys steal fuel from the fuel carts in the streets Wang Lung's family and many others live in poverty, unable to participate in any of the luxuries of the city, working at the service of the rich. The children steal whenever they can. They work all their lives only to be living on the fringes of poverty, barely able to feed themselves. The father tells Wang Lung that he always returned to the land.

O-lan tells him that it is possible to return if they would only sell the girl child. To Wang Lung, there is always the land. 'Money and food are eaten and gone, and if there is not sun and rain in proportion, there is again hunger. ' One day, Wang Lung is told to stop coming to the houses of merchandise, and the public kitchen closes. Wang Lung steal gold from a rich man and returns home He plans that they will go back to their land tomorrow. He prepare for the homecoming by buying wheat, rice, and corn seeds from the south, vegetable seeds, and an ox.

Once they are home in the evening, he stands and looks out at his land, wishing to be alone with it. Completely devoted to his land, Wang Lung spends days thinking of what to plant on what part of his land. When he is tired, he lies down on the earth to sleep. Before long, things are as they were before. O-lan, his wife is pregnant again, and the children play.

The rice and the beans grow in the fields. They again have enough money to buy more land. Wang Lung again buys land from the house of Hwang. Ching and Wang Lung plant rice in the fields that have had much rain and Wang Lung hires two workers for the harvest.

He also has his two sons work I the fields. O-lan does not work in the fields because Wang Lung can afford laborers. Wang Lung expands his fortune and enlarges his house. Although a prosperous landowner, he is ignorant. One day, he decides to put the eldest son in school so that he may be a scholar, accompanying Wang Lung to grain markets to read and write for him. During the seventh year, the lands are flooded.

There is enough in the storage for the family to survive and his house is built on a hill. The lands cannot be worked. Wang Lung is very proud when his son is able to read and write. The New Year comes, and villagers come to see Wang Lung to wish him happiness. With food everywhere on the table, people know that Wang Lung has had another good year. One day, the locusts come, threatening to destroy the crops.

Although people are hopeless, Wang Lung, forgetting all his domestic troubles, is determined to fight the locusts. Wang Lung and his laborers do whatever they can to save the fields, and even after the locusts come, Wang Lung's best fields are salvaged. One day he notices O-lan is constantly in pain. He feels guilty about O-lan, but comforts himself with the thought that he has always been good to her, never beating her and always giving her the money she needed. Winter comes and Wang Lung sits by O-lan, warming her bed with fire. Near the New Year, O-lan is better and tells Wang Lung that preparations need to be made for the New Year.

She teaches the young girl that is engaged to their oldest son how to do all the cooking. Shortly after O-lan passes away. After O-lan dies, Wang Lung asks his uncle's wife to prepare the body for burial. Wang Lung goes to make the necessary preparations.

Wang Lung does not mind that the land he will bury O-lan and his father in is a good piece of land because being buried in the family's own land is what a proper, established family does. A short time later Ching tells Wang Lung that there will probably be a flood this year. Wang Lung looks over his fields and finds them already wet and muddy. Just as they had expected, there is a flood that year.

There are no harvests and people starve. Famine continues because water does not recede in time for the seeds to be planted for next year's harvest. One day, Wang Lung buys five daughters from men in exchange for seed, oxen, and plow. A few days after that, a man comes to Wang Lung, wanting to sell a girl of seven. Wang Lung is unwilling to buy her because the girl looks weak Wang Lung finally agrees to buy the small frightened girl because she looks hungry When Wang lung's eldest child has his first son the have a feast, inviting guests and dying hundreds of eggs to distribute to the guests. After the feast, at the eldest son's suggestion, tablets of ancestors are set up with the names of Wang Lung's grandfather and his father When Wang Lung asks his youngest son if it is true that he does not want to work on the land, the boy answers it is true and Wang Lung becomes angry.

The oldest son does not want the family to be anything less than a great house whereas the second son is more concerned about conserving money. The youngest son is trying to learn as much as he can. The winter of the fifth year is colder than any other winter. At this point, Wang Lung is close to sixty-five years old and has five grandsons. One of his sons wishes to become a soldier. Angry and astonished, Wang Lung forbids it.

Wang Lung says that it is disgraceful to have a soldier for a son. For Wang Lung, 'still one thing [remains] to him and it [is] his love for his land. He [has] gone away from it and he [has] set up his house in a town and he [is] rich. But his roots [are] in his land and although he [forgets] it for many months together, when spring [comes] each year he must got out on to the land.

' Spring wears on and summer passes. It is now autumn. Wang Lung is now so old that he does not think much about anything except his food, his drink, and his land. When he holds his earth in his hands, Wang Lung is content. One day his sons come to visit him and they go out to the land. The sons, not knowing that Wang Lung is following them, talk about selling the land for the money.

When Wang Lung hears of selling the land, he cries out: 'Now evil, idle son-sell the land! It is the end of a family-when they begin to sell the land. Out of the land we came and into it we must go-if you will hold your land you can live-no one can rob you of land-if you sell the land, it is the end. ' Wang Lung cries and his sons assure him that they will not sell the land.

Holding the earth in his hand, Wang Lung cries. The sons repeat that they will not sell the land, "but over Wang Lung's head, they look at each other and smile as though they are only humoring their old, feeble father.".