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Here we see how Wang Lung likes to control different aspects of his household, including his children.
Wang Lung's relationship with his daughters represents how individuals can have different attitudes toward men and women. Women are generally very quiet and they are treated more like objects as they are traded and sold for marriage. One of the most powerful scenes in the novel occurs after O-Lan kills her daughter just after giving birth to her. Wang Lung realizes that O-Lan killed the child and after he removes the dead baby from his house, he realizes O-Lan was right and thinks, "It is better as it is" (59). Here we see how he realizes O-Lan was right. At the end of the novel, he asks Pear Blossom to poison his "poor fool" (253) of a daughter because there is no hope for her having a decent future. Here we see how women are seen and treated...
While he is a normal man with normal emotions, we see how his culture taught him to treat men and women differently. At times, he loved his wife and at other times, he resented her for having big feet because it is desirable for Chinese women to have small feet. He also treats his children differently. He banishes his rebellious son from his household and is determined not to let his other soon become rebellious. He also treats his daughters indifferently at times. He does not mourn the loss of his daughter like he would had the child been a male. The Good Earth tells Wang Lung's story but it also tells the story of Chinese culture at the turn of the century.
Works Cited
Buck, Pearl. The Good Earth. New…
Works Cited
Buck, Pearl. The Good Earth. New York: Pocket Books. 1975.
Fascination with the East: A Realistic Look Introduction Both Rudyard Kipling and Pearl Buck provided their readers with a realistic view of life in the East. Kipling’s Kim was a detailed account of the variety of life in India at the end of the 19th century. Buck’s The Good Earth, chronicled the lives of a peasant family in China as it dealt with the challenges and obstacles of famine, poverty, and oppression.
The other major theme that appears again and again in this novel is that of the common person being uprooted and pulled along based on grand, historical movements. Living in abject poverty, Wang Lung's family is nevertheless honorable to each other, but not a part of the culture of the city -- they neither speak with the same accent, nor have any friends or relatives to help them with emotional
Accordingly, Wang Lung is overjoyed when he learns that his first child is a son, and he and O-lan attempt to fool any contemptuous spirits into thinking that the child is an undesirable girl: "What a foolish thing he was doing, walking like this under an open sky, with a beautiful man child for any evil spirit passing by chance through the air to see!... 'What a pity our
limiting free speech ID: 53711 The arguments most often used for limiting freedom of speech include national security, protecting the public from disrupting influences at home, and protecting the public against such things as pornography. Of the three most often given reasons for limiting freedom of speech, national security may well be the most used. President after president, regardless of party has used national security as a reason to not answer
It was a new means of defining a control over the cultural aspects of the society. Mao had envisaged a cultural background that would rise from the middle class, the social level on which the Communist Party based its electoral and strength. Given the tight control exercised by the communist party through all its regional, local, and national mechanisms, a new sense of fear and submission affected the society.
" (Honestly, what more needs to be said?) Now that it has been established that both Call of the Wild and "A New England Nun" have elements of both realism and local order, it's time to present them in terms of their most powerful literary attribute, categorically speaking (of the three aforementioned literary categories): naturalism. As mentioned, naturalism in literature is the notion that social conditions, heredity, and environment unalterably impact