The Good Earth by Pearl S Bucks Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Good Earth by Pearl S Bucks - Essay Example As with the ox, Wang Lung is reduced to a passive role, burying the infant and contemplating, in so far as hes able, his wifes striking drive to live (Baw 16). This is actually one of the more tragic events that occur in this book. After the birth of her latest child in this chapter, when Wang Lung goes into his wifes room to see how she is and how the baby is, O-Lan tells him that the girl child has died, with the simple word "dead"(Baw 24) However, Wang Lung heard the baby cry after it was born, and so he is somewhat suspicious. When he takes the babys body and sees two â€Å"dark, bruised spots" (Baw 24) on the neck of his daughter, he understands that his wife, driven by desperation of the poverty and want that his family were facing, actually killed her own daughter to spare her a life of starvation and slow, grinding death. Wang Lungs response to this is a sign of the depth of his despair (Baw 23). During the period of the devastating drought and famine, the family has to flee to the south in a large city to find work for them to survive. Wang Lung’s uncle, for significantly lesser value, offers to buy his possessions and land. Expect for the house and land, everything else is sold by the family (Baw 17). Wang Lung later found out that O-lan had a bundle that contained many jewels that were very precious. She had come by the jewels when she, together with her husband, happened to be in a house of a rich man. Wang Lung used the jewels to buy more land (Baw 16). Then there came successive prosperity years and Wang Lung became very rich landowner and farmer. He then decided to educate his sons, ware of the disadvantages of his illiteracy. He now had a boy and girl- twins, apart from the daughter and two sons they had before they went south (Baw 18). Much of Wang Lung changed after he got rich- his attitude, his personality as well as his family life. He started having affairs. He was