The Good Earth Novel Analysis

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and O-Lan agreed. Once in the north, they learn to beg for charitable donations to feed their family but Lung finds no work there. They begin to steal just to survive. When a revolutionary riot erupts, a rich man's house is looted and O-Lan finds jewels that she hides and brings to Lung so that their family can return back to the farm. With the jewels, Lung becomes a rich man and restores the farm and buys the house of the Hwang's where O-Lan was once a slave.
As his riches grew, his morality eroded. Lung began to change and became interested in riches over the land that he loved and he even purchased a second wife or concubine name Lotus. She was arrayed in fancy attire and she was beautiful but not half the woman that O-Lan was. She was materialistic and her feet were bound. O-Lan endured the betrayal of her husband and remained faithful even as he took from her the most prized of her possessions, two pearls of the jewels she found in the north, and he gave them to Lotus. O-Lan ...

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be with your own hands. How could this be? What factors could cause a woman to need to make such a drastic decision with the life of her own child? In Chinese culture, male children were praised and brought great joy to their families. However, the female children were often killed, sold, or used as slaves. They did not have as much value in society. In American society we would view a woman killing her newborn as horrible, wretched, and punishable. However, in Chinese culture it was a very common practice. In fact, in China even today there are about 120 boys to every 100 girls that are born each year and many couples abort the children who are revealed through ultrasound to be girls. ...

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