The Good Earth

Can you discuss at least three passages from the novel that relate to the land and what it means to the main character?

I cannot find an answer for this one

Asked by
Last updated by Aslan
Answers 1
Add Yours

Three examples are a bit much for this short forum space. I can give you one example to get you going. To Wang Lung, owning land means everything. He begins as a peasant farmer but longs for even one plot of land for his own. To Wang Lung, land means status and a sense of identity. Owning land sets him a part from a poor sharecropper to a man with distinction and dignity. 

He would pull up the stones later and he would put his own name there—not yet, for he was not ready for people to know that he was rich enough to buy land from the great house, but later, when he was more rich, so that it did not matter what he did. And looking at that long square of land he thought to himself, “To those at the great house it means nothing, this handful of earth, but to me it means how much!" Chapter 6