The Significance of the Earth in The Good Earth :: The Good Earth

  The logical implication of the Earth in The earnest Earth         And O-lan in the field was not idle. With her own hands she lashed the mats to the rafters and took ball from the fields and mixed it with water and mended the walls of the house, and she construct again the oven and filled the holes in the floor that the rain had washed. There merchantman be no doubt that the symbol of earth in cavalrys novel, The Good Earth, is one so potent that it permeates and binds the entire tale. It is presented repeatedly by dint ofout the novel, each through gentle allusion or outright statement. None can brawl that the earth itself is a vital component in the livelihood of either farmer, thus it is not surprising that the farmer Wang Lung places so much nurture into his lands however, there is a separate element of the earth that Pearl S. Buck brings forth in her tale about a farmers prosperous ascending in feudal China, that element of regener ation and revitalization that is so manifest within this selected passage from the book.   Many times throughout the book did the earth pull Wang Lung through hardship and difficulty, and it was the one constant factor in his life, even as things changed--people dies, great houses fell, war and famine raged, and inner rumpus plagued his very being. Throughout all of these obstacles the earth was always there, waiting for Wang Lung--whether as poor farmer or as wealthy man of the village--to effect to it, and draw from it those ever-present qualities of life and healing. The very words of the selected passage be pregnant with these qualities, as Wang Lung and his family, returning from the south to his land after a great and terrible period of famine, close those horrible years through the almost magical substance of the earth. It is symbolic how O-lan the wife, tending to the structure of the tilled land house (a symbol itself in the Wang family) uses the earth from the fie lds to mend the walls of the house--thus the ailments of the house are healed by the richness of the land.