The Rich In The Good Earth

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In the novel, The Good Earth author Pearl S. Buck describes the life of a struggling farmer Wang Lung. The summer season dries up the crops prompting Wang Lung and family to travel South where Wang and his family live on the outskirts of the city. Buck portrays the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer when the poor revolt against the rich in the South, the poor having to sell their daughters for money, and the rich in the House of Hwang expending their wealth unto poverty.
The Lung household go South in hopes of getting better food accommodations, but instead they end up in the revolt against the rich. During the revolt, O-lan finds jewels and Wang Lung acquires handfuls of gold pieces which Wang Lung uses to get back to the land, “… The hour has come−the gates of the rich are open to us!” (Buck 134). The rich think they can only become richer, they do not think about the consequences of being too rich. Some consequences the rich experience include the poor revolting against the rich and the rich disbursing all their wealth on useless materials. The rich become clumsy and do not think about the poor’s desire to get rich thus, “When the rich are too rich …show more content…
The man says, “Last winter we sold two girls and endured…this is one of the ways when the poor are too poor” (118). In 20th century China, some break moral values to survive the famine the good earth causes. Wang Lung thinks about selling his young girl to get back to the land, but he cannot sell his daughter when he hears O-Lan’s tales of being a slave. When the poor sell their child, it must be because they do not have anything else to sell so they sell the next most valuable thing, girls. This could be the reason for the revolt, the poor seeing the riches of the rich when they go to sell their daughters wonder why the rich could not help the

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