The Good Earth: Summary
We now interrupt our regularly scheduled discussion of The Store to catch up on some old business… a long-overdue summary of The Good Earth.
The opposite of a Shakespearian comedy, The Good Earth starts with a wedding. Wang Lung, a Chinese peasant farmer who lives with his crochety father, heads into town to purchase a bride from a family of wealthy landowners. He receives O-lan from them, a plain, but devoted and hardworking woman, who seems to bring prosperity with her into his house. She works tirelessly in the fields with Wang Lung, only interrupting her constant labors to give birth to four children (get it? labors? *sigh*). Alas, only two are sons; the elder daughter is malnourished from famine and becomes the family’s “poor fool,” and the younger daughter is killed at birth. During this punishing drought, the family flees by train to become beggars in the city, while Wang Lung finds meager work as a rickshaw driver, and then a porter.
Life in the city is marginally better: no one’s starving to death, but it’s crowded and violent and Wang Lung misses his green giving land. When a peasant riot breaks out, Wang Lung stumbles onto some fortune when a rich man offers Wang Lung all his wealth to spare his life. They use this money to return to their home, buy tools and provisions, and return their upward struggle with the land. Discovering some jewels that O-lan stole during the riot, Wang Lung is able to go on a land grab with the dissipated House of Hwang, taking fierce pride in the lowered circumstances of the rich family. This wealth allows him to send his sons to school or an apprenticeship, but it also makes him discontented with O-lan and turn to Lotus, a concubine.
O-lan “conveniently” dies from a stomach complaint, and from this point on Wang Lung is increasingly prosperous by outward appearances but becomes unhappier and unhappier by turns as more demands are placed on him and he watches his family become softened and turn from the land he loves. They move into town into the rented House of Hwang, and when the novel closes, we see Wang Lung’s sons conspiring to sell his land against all his wishes upon his death. Oh, and somewhere in there is a corrupt uncle and family who are a constant thorn in Wang Lung’s side, what with their laziness and thieving and general bad vibes, so he gets them hooked on opium to pacify them. And his aged father cackles and says crazy shit throughout and the poor fool plays with a bit of cloth in a patch of sun. Cheerful stuff, really.
