Wang Dynasty In The Good Earth

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In pre-revolutionary China, people were usually bound to a position in a class system. The rich people lived in a lifestyle of luxury and comfort, with slaves and servants to take care of tasks for them. On the other hand, poor people stayed on their land and worked hard throughout their entire lives just to “make ends meet.” Wang Lung is one of the people in the latter category. The main character of the book The Good Earth, Wang Lung works constantly on his farm to make enough money for his father and himself to survive. This begins to change, however when he marries O-lan, a slave from the great House of Hwang. His poor family, who never even had enough tea for Wang Lung’s father, became a great dynasty and Lung becomes the father of sons, …show more content…
Without O-lan, the Wang family never would have become a dynasty. She is able to help work the land in order for them to be able to grow more crops and is also very good at managing finances and knowing what money is needed to be spent and when in order to achieve the most from it. On page 252 in chapter 25, when the doctor says that he can save her life for 500 pieces of silver, she said, “No, and my life is not worth so much. A good piece of land can be bought for so much.” This proves that she is good at managing expenses because she knows that she cannot be saved and doesn’t want Wang Lung wasting his money on trying to save her life. She says that a good piece of land can be bought with that money she is demonstrating one way that the Earth is very important to the family. It is so important that, like O-lan, it is another thing that the Wang Dynasty is built on, physically and metaphorically. At one point in the novel, everything that the family had came from the Earth. Their furniture was made of Earth, their house was made of Earth, they even end up eating dirt just so they do not starve. They rely wholeheartedly on the Earth and it eventually rewards the family. When Wang Lung is able to buy more land from the falling House of Hwang, he is able to grow more and more crops, leading to the family becoming very rich and eventually becoming a
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