The Good Earth

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1931

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-7

Chapters 8-14

Chapters 15-26

Chapters 27-34

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Character Analysis

Wang Lung

The Good Earth follows the life of its protagonist, Wang Lung, from age 20 until, at 70, he awaits his death. In Chapter 1, he’s a farmer, who is illiterate and the only surviving child of his aging father. He yearns to marry to accommodate his physical desires and so that he doesn’t have to take care of his infirm father. Eager to farm and ambitious, Wang Lung jumps at the opportunity to acquire more farmland, which he does in every section of the narrative. He has high moral values and is scandalized by the inappropriate behavior of his relatives and, later, his sons. In addition, he’s soft-hearted and sentimental, especially toward his daughter who has an intellectual disability and other female characters. He beats his older sons when they disappoint him but never his daughters or wife.

Wang Lung’s character develops significantly throughout the narrative. In Chapter 1, he stands anxiously before the village’s wealthy matriarch in the inner chamber of her great house, fearful of embarrassing himself and even of facing the young woman he just bought as his wife. In contrast, at the height of his influence near the novel’s end, he’s the sole owner of the 60-room great house he was afraid to enter in Chapter 1. He turns up his nose disapprovingly at the common people of whom he was one. He has purchased all the available farmland around the village, has stored years’ worth of grain, has hidden money in many places, can purchase anything he desires, and has both an old and a young “concubine”; however, his acquisitions and relationships give him no peace of mind. The only tranquility he knows comes from his excursions to the farm where he grew up.

In the deepest understanding of the narrative, Buck uses Wang Lung—whom she always refers to by both names—as emblematic of the Chinese people. During the period in which the novel is set, China underwent tremendous change as many powerful outside influences tore it in various directions, subjecting the population to war, famine, and cultural upheaval. Likewise, Buck portrays Wang Lung as enduring brutal hardships, changing social values, irresistible temptations, life-threatening crises, and continual uncertainty. Wang Lung’s ability to endure and overcome each challenge relies on his unflagging love of the earth, to which he returns after each successive obstacle. Through Wang Lung, Buck argues that the Chinese can redeem themselves from the upheaval they’ve faced for decades by focusing again on the simplicity of their traditional agrarian roots.

O-lan

A former enslaved woman of Mistress Hwang, O-lan becomes Wang Lung’s wife in Chapter 1 when the mistress sells her. Buck characterizes O-lan as tall, strongly built, homely, and perpetually quiet. She’s initially fearful of Wang Lung, continually watching him to see if he’ll reproach her for any small mistake she might make. She reveals little of her history, but the narrative gradually reveals that her parents sold her to the mistress when she was 10 to prevent her from starving during a famine. Her fear of Wang Lung is a vestige of the constant beatings she received during her 10 years of servitude. Immediately, Wang Lung discovers that O-lan is dutiful, hard-working, skilled in all types of homemaking, and completely subservient.

O-lan’s character development is less a matter of her changing than of Wang Lung’s gradually discovering her strength, wisdom, and loyalty. Mistress Hwang completely underestimated O-lan and deemed her unintelligent. Rather, O-lan is a resourceful survivor and consummate realist. She remains calm during times of crisis, saving the family’s lives and property more than once. In addition, O-lan enables Wang Lung to achieve his dreams of expanding his property. She bears six children, raising five to adulthood. While she’s a true source of maternal love, she pushes her sons to act as they must—even begging and stealing—to help the family survive. The author reveals O-lan’s secret inner world through her rare comments and emotional outbursts, such as when she proclaims that she’ll show her former “masters” that she’s a wife who has born a son—the ultimate demonstration of a woman’s status among Chinese commoners.

For Buck, O-lan symbolizes the earth itself: dark, supple, fertile, and cyclically reliable. Like the earth, she regularly brings forth new life. Wang Lung’s father refers to her children as harvests: Just as good harvests bring wealth and opportunity to Wang Lung, his wife’s pregnancies bring him honor and potential. O-lan’s death, as Buck presents it, is a completion. The author often describes life as a cycle that begins and ends with the earth and leads to renewal. O-lan and Wang Lung find comfort in this, knowing that they’ll return to the good earth, helping renew it with their bodies and bring forth new life.

Lotus

Like O-lan, Lotus became enslaved as a girl. Because she was beautiful, however, her destiny was sex work. Buck describes her as small, with pale skin and tiny hands and feet. The author points out that she isn’t local but from a distant part of China, making her seem even more “exotic” to the smitten Wang Lung. She appears to him as a fragile, fragrant lotus blossom, the most beguiling of the many sex workers at the teahouse-bordello.

Lotus enters the narrative near the midpoint of the story, when Wang Lung is prosperous enough to visit the teahouse recreational hub. She remains a central figure because the obsessed Wang Lung pays to move her and her female servant, Cuckoo, into his country home, having built a courtyard and three additional rooms to keep Lotus separated from his wife and children. Her character transitions during the narrative, though not in the way of growth and knowledge. After hearing of Wang Lung’s enchantment with her irresistible charms, Lotus accepts his invitation to live in his home because she’s older than she pretends to be and faces losing her career at the teahouse. She’s perpetually greedy, a petulant gossip, and refuses to be with Wang Lung when he comes to her after working in the fields without bathing.

Lotus symbolizes the allure that the greater world displays in its attempt to seduce and rob the Chinese. Behind a strange, “exotic” appeal, Buck implies, the outside world is a deceptive sham. Given that Lotus ultimately becomes a financial burden, loses her appeal, and no longer has sex with Wang Lung, Buck contends that the foreign interests engaging with China during the historical era of the story likewise turn out to be more deceptively troublesome than advantageous.

Uncle

Like most of the characters in Wang Lung’s family, the name of Wang Lung’s uncle, the story’s antagonist remains a mystery throughout the novel. From the beginning, however, Wang Lung tags him as a troublemaker. The younger brother of Wang Lung’s father, he initially appears as a small landowner with a self-indulgent wife and seven children. Wang Lung is averse to him because Uncle isn’t industrious and allows his children to behave luridly in public. Uncle knows that Wang Lung won’t violate social custom by disrespecting him. Thus, while avoiding his older brother, Uncle approaches Wang Lung for handouts, eventually moving into Wang Lung’s home.

Over the course of the story, Uncle’s character develops in that it becomes increasingly reprehensible: He goes from being a liar and annoying gossip—who causes starving citizens to falsely believe that Wang Lung has a hoard of food and silver—to attempting to cheat Wang Lung out of his land, to selling most of his children for food, to becoming second-in-command of the Red Beards, a roving gang of thieves.

Uncle is a farmer who has wandered away from the land. Thus, Buck uses Uncle to exemplify what happens to those lured away from the good earth by the intoxicating power of all that is not the earth. The author depicts Uncle’s demise disparagingly: Because of his addiction to opium, Uncle wastes away. This fate, Buck implies, awaits the Chinese people who forsake the land.